The Presidential Candidates on Retirement
Retirement security might not be a voting issue the way the Iraq war, healthcare, and the economy are for many people. But Darden Business School professor Ronald Wilcox, a former Securities and Exchange Commission economist and author of Whatever Happened to Thrift? Why Americans Don't Save, and What to Do About It, recently blogged about the presidential candidates positions on retirement. The highlights:
Barack Obama supports a savings-match program for lower-income Americans that would give a 50 percent match for the first $1,000 of savings to people who make less than $75,000 annually. He also proposes a federally mandated IRA plan that would require small businesses to allow employees access to a government-sponsored retirement savings plan.The savings-match program proposed by Hillary Clinton (she hasn't officially withdrawn yet) would match funds dollar-for-dollar up to $1,000 for families earning under $60,000. She's also for an "American Retirement Account" plan, which would allow all Americans to contribute up to $5,000 to an IRA on a tax-deferred basis, regardless of their employment situation.
John McCain proposes partial privatization of Social Security and decreasing taxes on capital gains and dividends.
I asked Wilcox what advice he has about being a better retirement saver, regardless of how the election turns out. "Set it up so that money is automatically deducted from your paycheck so you never see it," is Wilcox's time-tested advice. "Divert a portion of your raise into savings."
Tags: candidates | presidential election 2008 | retirement
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Reader Comments
More macro, less micro, please
You might want to ask these candidates which ones have a plan for recouping from payers of income and estate the $2 trillion (and still growing to 2017)) Social Security Trust Fund that they "borrowed" from payers of payroll tax in order (among other things) to wage wars that no one would have otherwise agreed to pay for
Liberal Press Bias?!?!?!
Wow, could you have gone into less detail of McCain's plans? Better yet, could you have used a more negative buzzword to describe part of it? Perhaps it would lend some balance if you called the Obama and Clinton savings-match plans the socialist savings plan.
Too bad this magazine has become such a liberal rag.
And to Daniel David, I agree fully. Lyndon Johnson's decision to raid the Social Security Trust Fund to finance the War on Poverty and Great Society programs have been an utter failure! We've been engaged in this war on poverty for 40 years. Make our 5-year committment to Iraq and Afghanistan pale in comparison. Plus, we've only lost 4,500 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Compare that to the destruction and devastation of the black family due to the Great Society initiatives! Point well taken Mr. David! Point well taken!
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