401(k) Plans Leading To Retirement Crisis (Courant LTE)
http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-digbrflets0423.art3apr23,0,5262720.story
YOUR LETTERS
April 23, 2010
By advocating that state workers be placed in 401(k) retirement plans [editorial, April 18, "Curbing Pensions"], The Courant is promoting a race to the bottom. The editorial correctly states that most private-sector workers are now in those plans. But what it neglects to mention is that those plans are the cause of a serious retirement crisis in this country. Numerous studies have shown that they, while being enormously profitable for the financial services industry, provide much less retirement support than the traditional pensions they replaced.
I am a member of the minority of state workers who already have the 401(k)-like plans that The Courant would like to be imposed on all state workers. I will gain in retirement less than half what colleagues in the traditional pension will, in large part because of the rake-off of administration fees, commissions and profits by the financial services industry. Yet, contrary to what is widely and erroneously believed, my plan costs the state more in contributions than the traditional pension plan does.
All workers deserve retirement security. The way to get there is to reinstitute traditional pensions for all workers, not take them away from those who still have them.
James W. Russell, Storrs
•The writer is a professor of sociology at Eastern Connecticut State University and author of “Double Standard: Social Policy in Europe and the United States.”
Copyright © 2010, The Hartford Courant
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