Teresa Ghilarducci is saying what I said when the 401(k) first came out:
"public pension plans usually outperform 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts, because instead of a single worker managing a single account, large institutional plans pool workers of all ages, diversify the portfolio over longer time periods, use the best professional managers that aren’t available for retail accounts and have the bargaining power to lower fees and prioritize long-term investment. By some estimates, costs for public pensions are over 45 percent lower than for individual 401(k) plans.”
Not just retirement, but health care plans, savings plans, the "christmas plan", dental care, vision care, life insurance, disability insurance, all of these employment compensations are always best managed by a professional and for larger groups. Larger groups (ie "socialism") have better bargaining power, can shop for better rates and better advantages, and do so at less cost per person.
That was the whole point when employers first started taking over the administration of various things like pension plans and health insurance. When the 401(k) plans came out whereby individuals had to administer their own retirement funds, I knew it would fail, that people would be left without the needed retirement funds - and here it is, less than 20 years after the 401(k) came out and it's in distress and in need of serious help.
Unions provided the bulk care employees needed, and when laws and employers both heeded the unions and created a decent workspace for employees, the unions went adrift for a while, fell into disfavor. But once the unions were mostly out of the way, employers found ways around the laws, and lobbied to change the laws, and employees are finding themselves back in the state they were in before our government and the unions cared about us, before insurance and group compensations (I refuse to call them "benefits" - we earn them, they are compensations, a portion of our wages), and here we are, circling back within my lifetime to where a professor of economics is once again proposing that privatization isn't working and we need to restore group power.
I know, I know, "socialization". But socialization isn't a nasty word. It's a word that means we are socialized people who care about and for one another and our society as a whole. We provide group compensations that are available to everyone in society so we can all concentrate on other, possibly more important things.
I see nothing wrong with socializing certain aspects of our lives, those aspects that are better professionally run as a group in order to take advantage of group bargaining power and longer term investment rates that individuals just can't get.
These are the things I think should be socialized, administered by public professionals for the advantage of all, on a corporate level, on a city, county, or state level, or even on a Federal level:
Health care (dental, vision, mental, and physical)
Long term and Disability care
Sick leave
Pensions
Life Insurance
Pre-paid Funeral/Legal Insurance
Utilities
Roads and bridges
Building codes
Education
Law Enforcement
EMT services
Fair trade practices
OSHA
With the first 3 things on the list socialized, we wouldn't need Worker's Compensation anymore - so you'd think employers would be begging the voters and encouraging their employees to vote for them to be socialized.
Everything else, of course, would be a matter of individual preference, so it's not like we'd be socializing all aspects of our lives, just the ones that are best administered as part of a large group. These are the very things we are theoretically paying taxes for, so why should we be denied them by people who claim privatization is best?
Of course, our taxes pay for other things, too, so this would be just part of what we, as citizens get to take advantage of.
What's the point of belonging to a great country if we can't get great things as a part of it. Whenever you join a club, you do so for the advantages being a member provides you. Being a citizen of a country is no different than joining a club.
Why are we letting some people talk us out of the advantages we deserve as citizens?