“The sheer scale of Americans’ retirement assets spurs envy among competing nations around the world who are struggling with aging populations and still depend mainly on tax-based pay-as-you-go retirement systems.”
Benefits bigwig Bob Reynolds took to the pages of The Boston Globe last week to call for the incoming Congress to make retirement saving easier—and coverage legally-required—for American workers.
While noting the impressive figures currently fueling retirement plans and planning, the president and CEO of Putnam Investments and Great-West Financial say more (much more) can be done.
“Consider this: Over the past two generations, through 401(k)s, IRAs, defined-benefit pensions, and other savings vehicles, working Americans have compiled over $28 trillion in retirement savings,” Reynolds, author of From Here to Security: How Workplace Savings Can Keep America’s Promise, impressively writes. “That is well over one-third of the $72 trillion capitalization of all stocks and bonds in the country. These savings form the largest dedicated asset pool on earth. No other nation’s retirement savings even come close.”
Better still, 40 years of 401(k) experience identifies shortfalls in the system as well as what works to “actually solve our savings challenges.”
Leaning on lawmakers love of votes, he adds that Washington politicos are waking up to two important facts; employee angst over retirement resources and their demand for ease-of-use solutions.
“This means that 2019 and coming years will surely see a wave of legislation provide access to job-based payroll savings for tens of millions more workers, who will bring trillions more into workplace savings plans. Over time, this will take America closer to a true ‘people’s capitalism,’ in which nearly every worker can earn a tangible, growing equity stake in our free enterprise system.
Concluding that personal solvency and national solvency actually reinforce each other, Reynolds writes that too few in D.C. and the media “realize what we’ve achieved, but America’s globally unique workplace savings system has become a dynamic engine for capital formation, growth, and American competitiveness.”
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.