To a rough approximation there are two fundamental aspects of economic security: income and savings.
When a worker relies upon an employer's pension plan, that worker is essentially putting his or her savings nest egg in the same basket as his or her income egg, and handing the basket into the competent (or incompetent as the case may be) hands of his or hers managers. Pardon my bluntness here, but this system is just plain stupid. Or at the very least, stupidly risky. (Although considering another significant aspect of our retirement system involves taxing the poor to write checks for the rich, employer pension plans may look almost sane by comparison. But I digress....) To answer Bob's question, I don't think that the question is how can Congress make employer's pension plans illegal. No American worker should be duped into entrusting nearly his or her entire economic security - both income and savings - into the hands of the managers of a single corporation. Such a strategy is simply too risky, and given that the government is the ultimate insurer against catastrophic risk, that is simply an unfair risk for workers to be imposing upon the community. JDG _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
