SOPHIE QUINTON
MAY 13 2013, 10:29 AM ET

The state wants to protect lower- and middle-class families, but Republicans are calling it "one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation I've ever seen"

When California State Sen. Kevin de Léon talks about his plan to help people save for retirement, he usually starts by describing his Aunt Francisca, a housekeeper. "She's north of 70 and she still cleans homes," says de Léon. Francisca can't afford to retire because she has no savings. Even with help from Social Security, she struggles to make ends meet.

If there's one thing the debate over public employees' pensions has taught us, it's that California needs to invest more in mathematics instruction in its public schools.

When Stanford professors who receive special interest funding for their work and self-proclaimed  "taxpayer" organizations bankrolled by anti-union groups  wag their finger at an an investment system that yields 8 percent annual returns, it's clear there's a fundamental misunderstanding of the numbers.

No wonder the state budget is never balanced.

But let's back up for a moment. When governments hire teachers, first responders, parks maintenance workers, garbage truck drivers, et cetera, they make certain promises regarding those employees' retirements. Then, they often have decades to pay for those promises. It's the same as when a family buys a house -- they finance the large amount, and pay it off over 30 years.

By Christian E. Weller

The dream of retiring is fading away for many households.

That dream meant relaxing after a lifetime of hard work, spending time with family or volunteering for a good cause. Now many middle-class Americans are waking up and realizing we are facing the gravest retirement crisis in at least a generation.

That's because the dream requires savings beyond Social Security -- money that many households simply do not have. Without adequate savings or a defined benefit retirement plan, an entire generation of workers will delay retirement for as long as possible or work until they die.

We are headed for a catastrophic retirement train wreck. A Wall Street-driven financial crisis has stripped millions of people of things like jobs, pensions and home equity that were supposed to deliver a dignified retirement after a lifetime of hard work. The crisis has also provided certain interests the opportunity to make false claims about the "unaffordability" of vital social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare that help the 99% make it. These opportunistic "Raiders of Your Lost Retirement" do not give a hoot if you starve in your golden years - this is about money to them. American financiers hate Social Security, for example, because they want to push us toward private retirement accounts on which they can charge fees. A large swath of the wealthy does not like Social Security and Medicare because they do not like to pay taxes.

Money management firms frequently offer workers misleading and self-serving information about how to handle their retirement savings when they change jobs, according to a Government Accountability Office report to be released Wednesday.

Departing workers are often encouraged to roll their accounts into individual retirement accounts, or IRAs, run by the firms that already manage their retirement money, even when it would be best for employees to keep the money in a 401(k), the GAO investigation concluded. Having workers move their money into IRAs typically allows money management companies to harvest bigger fees for handling the retirement money, the report said.

Public employee critics, in their continuing attempt to place all blame for economic woes on public employees, have begun a new line of attack. This time they're employing social media and shadowy websites to bolster their cause.

Here in California, they've have created a "think tank" to operate a series of websites that appear to be nominally independent. The group churns out "analysis" and opinion pieces to make it appear as if there is a groundswell of interest behind their unsubstantiated attacks.

The mother ship of this activity is the independent-sounding "California Public Policy Center" (CPPC). Among its active supporters are well-known pension opponents Jon Coupal, Jack Dean, and Steve Greenhut, the former Orange County Register columnist who also writes for the Pacific Research Institute.

I began working as a social worker in Northern California in 1966, at a time when public services were seen as an important investment in the community infrastructure. I worked for 45 years in different public service capacities until I finally retired at age 74.

During those years I saw firsthand how those services benefited the community and hardworking families. I also saw how those services were gradually eroded over the years. These services that Congress has further diminished with across-the-board "Sequester" cuts will only serve to impact seniors, the disabled, women, students, and people of color. They will have an enormous negative effect on an already crippled economy.

Here's a watershed: Baby boomers are expected to have a lifestyle in retirement that's not as good as their parents' golden years.

 

That reverses more than a half century of American progress.

 

"This is the first time that Americans are going to be relatively worse off than their parents or grandparents in old age," Teresa Ghilarducci, director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research, told The Washington Post.

 

While the prospects of aging boomers dim, some lawmakers are clamoring for cutbacks to Social Security and Medicare.