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(Let’s) Never Forget

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  It’s hard to believe that today there are people in the workforce who weren’t even alive on Sept. 11, 2001. In fact, it’s been labeled a defining event for Millennials – a date marker between those who were alive on that date and those (Generation Z) who weren’t. That said, the passage of time has surely dimmed the memory even for many who did live through it. More’s the pity. Odds are if you were “here” on that most awful of days, you’ll remember exactly where you were. I was travelling from one coast to the other – heading to speak at a conference early on that bright Tuesday morning in 2001. In fact, I was in the middle of that cross-country flight, literally running from one terminal to another in Dallas, Texas when my cellphone rang. I was annoyed – the hour was early, my flight in had been late, and the timing between that and my connection was uncomfortably short – particularly for a flight that was in another terminal.  The call was from my wife – I assumed she was simply che
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ERISA—Still ‘Nifty’ at 50

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I’ve long relished telling “newbies” to the retirement space that ERISA was the   second   big executive act of then-newly enshrined President Gerald R. Ford—less than one month after he took office.  In fairness—and I’m not exactly a kid—I was barely out of high school when that event occurred.  I’ve never had a benefits program (retirement OR healthcare, and us retirement geeks tend to forget that ERISA also has sway over workplace health plans) that wasn’t operating under its auspices—and so, talking about what ERISA has done/changed requires going back before my personal experience. And yet, despite the disparaging acronym “Every Ridiculous Idea Since Adam,” what ERISA has accomplished—and what has emerged in its aftermath—seems truly remarkable to me.  ERISA is, of course, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974—and on Labor Day 2024, that legislation will be 50 years young. Not that ERISA created either the concept or the reality of pensions and retirement plans; in f
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Facts Versus Factoids

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“What if the entire retirement-crisis narrative playing out in opinion polls, the government, and the media was a massive case of confirmation bias?” That’s the provocative position of an intriguing new white paper titled “ America’s ‘Retirement Crisis’: The Emperor Has No Clothes ” by  Andrew Biggs . [i]   Readers of my work will note that with frightening regularity there are any number of assertions, “studies” and surveys all painting a dismal picture of the state of the nation’s retirement—each and every one embraced and promoted with attention-grabbing headlines without so much as a question as to the veracity of the underlying data, the logic of the conclusions drawn, or the motivations of the proponents that have drawn them. Consequently, I was delighted to come across this paper that provides a detailed, thoughtful, and data-driven analysis that focuses on a number of points that have been made (and uncritically trumpeted by the media) by none other than Teresa Ghilarducci [ii]
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