Republicans often talk about individual responsibility and state-level innovation and things like saving for the future or retirement. But they seem to be against state programs that will help with retirement saving. Why?

Is it because this is directed toward workers without an employer retirement plan who tend to be poorer? Is it because this innovation was supported by a Democratic administration? Is it because Wall Street cannot make its share of profit off this?

I don’t know the motivation to prevent these retirement saving plans but Republicans in the House seem very intent on repealing the regulations that make this possible.

These plans make perfect sense to me and I wrote about the Republican opposition to them several weeks back (see Repeal but not replaced ). But I am not an economist so I was interested to read an article on this by a professor of economics.

This is not an academic or technical article on retirement saving.

So here is how it starts –

Thirty-nine million Americans work for an employer without a payroll-deduction retirement savings plan, and many of them are saving little or nothing. In the absence of a federal plan for this problem, states including California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland and Oregon have taken it upon themselves to create their own solutions.

This flurry of state-level innovation might be cause for celebration, except for one major impediment: Congress may kill the nascent plans. Why? Republicans, who typically call for less regulation, say the state programs won’t be sufficiently regulated. You can’t make this stuff up.

See, not very dry at all. It is well worth reading the whole thing, so here is a link –

State I.R.A. Plans Are Ready, if Congress Doesn’t Interfere