Beat the Press - Big Victory on Retirement Income in Omnibus Spending Bill

[June Zaccone]

Good discussion of new bill, including pointing out the benefits of a state strategy:

"The passage of the Secure Act 2.0 provisions is also a vindication of the state-by-state strategy that progressives have been pursuing for the last quarter century when action at the national level seems blocked. This has been done with increases to the minimum wage, paid sick days and family leave, support for child care, and a number of other areas."

Since coming to Washington more than three decades ago, I have spent much of my time working on retirement income. The biggest part of that story was defending Social Security, which leaders in both parties were anxious to cut. This defense was largely successful, as the efforts to privatize it in the 1990s and under President Bush were beaten back, and the efforts at cuts often focused on the annual cost of living adjustment, were similarly derailed.

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Big Victory on Retirement Income in Omnibus Spending Bill Dean Baker, December 24, 2022 Since coming to Washington more than three decades ago, I have spent much of my time working on retirement income. The biggest part of that story was defending Social Security, which leaders in both parties were anxious to cut. This defense was largely successful, as the efforts to privatize it in the 1990s and under President Bush were beaten back, and the efforts at cuts often focused on the annual cost of living adjustment, were similarly derailed. Defending Social Security was crucial, both because tens of millions of people depend on it for most or all of their income, but also because it was a model social program. The administrative costs are minimal, with the total program’s costs coming to less than 0.6 percent of annual benefits, with the costs of the retirement program alone coming to less than 0.4 percent of benefits. By comparison, the fees from private 401(k)s run in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 percent of annual retirement benefits.        Read More     Contrary to What the NYT Tells You, the Problem in An Aging Society is Distribution More Mind Reading at the NYT: Tells Readers U.K. Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak’s Real Concern Is the Working Class The NYT Doesn’t Have Access to Census Data: We Do Not Have a Record Number of Renters Quick Note on Minimum Age for Mandatory Retirement Fund Distributions Industrial Policy Is Not a Remedy for Income Inequality Real Consumption Rises as Inflation Decimates People in Joe Biden’s America Dean Baker, Senior Economist Dean Baker co-founded CEPR in 1999. His areas of research include housing and macroeconomics, intellectual property, Social Security, Medicare and European labor markets. He is the author of several books, including Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer.     Learn More     Support CEPR If you value CEPR’s work, support us by making a financial contribution.     Donate

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June Zaccone
National Jobs for All Network
http://www.njfac.org