"Broken" Premises
Perhaps because of the recent full moon, the nation’s 401(k) “haters” were out in force. Yes, last week we were “treated” to a Bloomberg op-ed with ideas on how to “fix” America’s broken retirement savings system, a back-handed compliment (of sorts) on SECURE 2.0 in Forbes from Teresa Ghilarducci, and the trifecta was completed with an academics op-ed in the Washington Post alleging that the current retirement system is “built for the rich.” Most of the criticism was focused on the same old myopic view on taxes and tax preferences—all flavored through the prism of a highly biased preference for the involvement of the federal government in such matters, rather than the private sector. Key Points So, let me take a couple of minutes to make a few points that always seem to be glossed over: Tax deferral is not tax avoidance. Those contributions and earnings will be taxed (though generally outside the 10-year budget scoring window Congr...