Pensions For All: What happened to the idea that some day every one of us could reach an age when we could sit back, fish, play a little golf, take up a new hobby, maybe watch our children and grandchildren play or just simply relax and watch the grass grow—without worrying about whether we had money for food and rent?

We think that that each person in our community should live safely and fulfill a life of opportunity and prosperity at every stage of their lives. But, the U.S. pension system is under attack. Look at what’s happening to people who put money—their money—into corporate pensions? The money is disappearing—corporations and bankruptcy courts are taking away the hard-earned fruits of our labor. That’s not right.

Even where we don’t see outright corporate abuse, the number of firms offering traditional defined benefit pensions is falling rapidly and many of the ones that still exist are badly under-funded. Only half of the people even have the opportunity to contribute to a 401(k) pension at their workplace. Since workers often change jobs frequently because corporations discard workers so easily, many never vest in pensions at their jobs or they accumulate very little money in their pensions if they do vest.

Our first line of defense must be to strengthen and support the system of defined benefit pensions. Nothing in the current economic system has changed that makes defined benefit plans passé—other than, in the private sector, the unwillingness of corporations to support real retirement for workers and, in the public sector, the undermining of a progressive tax system. We need a voice that reminds people of the main reasons defined benefit pensions are disappearing—corporate greed which dictates that executives get paid tens of millions in pay and benefits, while workers’ don’t get decent wages or retirement; the destruction of a progressive taxation system that drains billions of dollars out of our governments who, then, find pensions are under-funded; and, obviously, the decline of union power.

In addition, we are proposing a pretty simple idea called Universal Voluntary Accounts.

Here’s how it would work: The government should create a universal system of universal voluntary accounts (UVA) that everyone can contribute to at their work place through a deduction from their paycheck. Employers would also contribute to these accounts on behalf of their workers—a minimum of 3 percent of wages. The system will be comparable to the federal employees Thrift Savings Plan, which has extremely low administrative costs.

Right now, your IRA is being drained by Wall Street because of high costs. In a UVA system, your existing 401(k) plans would increase retirement savings by 10-15 percent. The plan will also allow for workers to convert their savings to annuities in retirement—a life long stream of income. Since a plan administered for the benefit of the community could issue annuities at very low costs, this would further increase retirement income by approximately 10 percent compared with the existing 401(k) system.

Here’s the biggest difference: our plan would not leave your retirement up to the casino-atmosphere of the stock market, where you have to worry where the stock market will be when you retire. The pension would be based on workers’ contributions, the age when they contributed and the age when they begin to draw their pensions. It would remove market risk for individual workers, since the UVA system could even out payments over up and down markets, taking advantage of the size of a community-wide system. The UVA system could even allow workers to chose to have a guaranteed defined benefit pension—a set amount you can count on.

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