Maybe not in so many words, since most of their audience is much more interested in privatizing and thus extinguishing it, plus defaulting on the billions already extracted in "borrowing."
But the takeaway from this story is that in order to get ordinary people to do the stuff that the Peddlers of "Prudence" from the Heritage Foundation to the Cato Institute to the Hoover Thingie wag their fingers at us for not doing, that is, being good old self-reliant hairy-chested God-Guts-and-Guns Individualists, we oughta be SAVING for our OLD AGE so the RICH would not be bothered by claims to "support us." Out of the money we have extracted from our paychecks, for 401ks and FICA.
The lede: "How to Make Americans Really Save." MAKE, of course, from the people who tell us any government intrusion into Rampant Capitalism of the Freedom Market is BAAAAAD. And it turns out that "automatic payroll deductions" are the most effective and efficient way to get people to be prudent. Which at least might reduce the future interest in for-profit suicide parlors, since Ice Floes are not convenient throughout the country to maroon the old, sick and weak on, nor a freezing sea to push them out into.
This seems a little topical, given how many people in kosland seem to be willing to eat a toxic dose of chained CPI, bite off a ration of bullshit about how SS is just a scam to steal from the young to enrich the undeserving old, and the other crap that the 0.01% and a lot of uncritical believers from various political persuasions have invented or swallow. Others have tried to dispel the ignorance, pull the fraudulent wedge issues out of the all too apparent cracks, and otherwise explain that Social Security, along with Medicare/Medicaid and the other little relatively INEXPENSIVE (compared to wars of choice, uncared-for infrastructure, that outrageous wealth transfer called "bail out the too big to failouts" and other scams. Here is an opinion from the Mouth of the Few that maybe at least one piece of the "safety net" actually WORKS, a whole lot better than the privatized-profit-socialized-harm alternatives.
More text below.
Cynics like me do wonder when an orifice like CNBC publishes something like the following text, whether there is some bit of Wall Street skuldugery buried in what might be just baitfish on another hook, but here is what their staff writer, Kelley Holland, had to offer:
If you're still preparing your taxes, you know that available deductions often come and go. But there is one that's easy to find: the deduction for retirement savings in a 401(k) or IRA.
It's a nice deduction to be had, and its policy aim — to promote savings — is laudable. But is a tax deduction really the best way to induce people to save more? Put another way, is the government getting what it wants for all the money it's giving away?
Not necessarily, says a new report.
Researchers working with the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College have looked into the most effective, and cost-effective, way for a government to promote savings — and according to their findings, tax subsidies aren't it.
The team studied retirement-saving policies in Denmark, where the plans offered are quite similar to the 401(k)'s, IRAs, and employer pensions available in the U.S. They found that automatic saving plans — either government requirements to put away a certain percentage of income, or automatic pension contributions — "could increase household saving much more, at a much lower cost to the government."
The key, they say, is in how people behave toward saving. They argue that most savers are not active savers: most people won't actively choose to increase their savings, but they will save if, say, a company plan presumes a certain contribution unless the person changes it.
"We're finding that if you want to increase savings, you have to use passive policies, not active which rely on you going out and doing something," says John Friedman, an assistant professor of public policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and a co-author of the study. "If I force you to save more" or if a company's retirement plan has an automatic minimum contribution unless employers choose otherwise, "the fact that you are not paying attention is what will actually make you save more."
How common is this phenomenon? When a tax incentive like the deduction for 401(k) contributions is available, "only about 15 percent of people are responding" to it, he says. "The other 85 percent of people are just doing whatever it is they would have done before."
The effect of passive, or default, options, isn't limited to retirement savings. For example, in countries where people are presumed to consent to organ donation, and have to opt out if they don't want to consent, one extensive study shows that donation rates are 25 to 30 percent higher than in countries where people have to choose to be donors.
There are more problems with the retirement-savings tax break, not least the fact that the 15 percent of people who really take advantage of it are those least in need, according to the Center for Retirement Research study. "The people who are more aware of what's going on with these policies," and thus more likely to use tax-advantaged savings, "are people who are wealthier have more education, and are older," Friedman says. "The whole point of these savings policies is that some people aren't saving enough, so you want to target them to people who aren't wealthy. But in practice, you're targeting the policy at people who are already saving enough."
http://www.cnbc.com/...
The Obama campaign was well informed about the importance of default thinking in orchestrating both electoral victories. Too bad that understanding does not carry over into development of wise policies and legislative initiatives and that silly notion of using the bully pulpit to stand up for, rather than grand-bargain-ing away, the work that wiser, kinder people, more concerned about the General Welfare than the Welfare of the Generals, including General Bullmoose, http://itsnutsoutthere.blogspot.com/... put in place and maintained. If for nothing else, as a bulwark against the kind of desperation that our great-great-(great)-grandparents felt, as they tried to rebuild from the last really big predator-triggered collapse (and giant Vampire Squid face-sucking wealth transfer, complete with the abuse of foreclosure and a lot of Big Bankery not very distant from the scene you see today,) especially if you spend any time looking at Yves Smith's honorable efforts over at Naked Capitalism, a good place to visit every day for reliable information on the various moves in the Wealth Wars. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/
Two fundamental truths: We really are all in this together, like it or not, and mutually vulnerable -- though the "haves" know they can get away with stealing big, encouraging the rest of us to burn our homes and bridges in the name of consumption, will escape from the comfortable, nay, luxurious lives they get to lead completely free from any consequences. And, there really is enough of everything that matters to go all the way around the table -- except that for some reason, most of us find it OK that a few guys in "bespoke" suits can scrape all the meat, except one little chop, and all the potatoes except for one little scoop, and all the broccoli except for one little spear, onto their capacious plates, and then stuff all but one of the sweet, warm, chocolate chip cookies we baked into their mouths. And that we are then suckers enough to buy into it when those suits look around the table with their beady little eyes, and tell us "Look out! the person sitting next to you is gonna try for that last chop and cookie! Don't let 'em get away with it!"
Do we get it, folks? Social Security works. There's maybe a bit of fine tuning required to ensure a steady stream of Trust Fund money in that intergenerational faith-based trust (the part about how we all take care of each other.) But the people who are all about privatizing, or CUTTING, or "reforming" or whatever other bullsh_t label you want to hang on that lipsticked pig, are either thieves, or what might one say without offending anyone, "not very bright"?