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There is a terrible beauty in how America's constitutional system seems designed to stop big changes from ever happening -- or, more specifically, stops the majority of ordinary people from ever getting their hands on real power.

Here's the latest scary retirement statistic.

The average American couple could pay nearly $155,000 in fees for their 401(k) plans over their careers, reducing their eventual nest eggs by more than 30%, according to a new report.

REPORT: The Retirement Savings Drain: Hidden & Excessive Costs of 401(k)s

American workers who don’t think twice about their employer-sponsored 401(k) plans may be surprised to learn that fees can cut their retirement savings by 30 percent over a lifetime.

A household with two people earning the median income of their age group from 25 to 65 will pay an average of $154,794 in 401(k) fees and lost returns, according to a report from progressive, non-partisan public policy research group, Demos, based in New York.

Americans are increasingly dependent on credit cards just to put food on the table and keep the lights on, a new study shows. Although we’re doing a better job overall paying our bills on time these days, many people are relying on more easily attainable credit just to keep their heads above water.

Question: How much money are you paying in 401(k) fees?

Answer: Have you thought about buying a home lately?

Do you know how much your 401k is costing you? I would wager not, nor have you ever asked your employer about costs or looked in fund documents to find out. Chances are, it’s far too much and it’s eating away your retirement nest egg.

Upcoming Labor Department regulations mandating disclosure of retirement-plan costs are long overdue. Even then (I haven’t seen the final version yet), they may be so bureaucratic that millions may ignore them.

Retirement plan fees consume nearly one-third (30.3%) of an investor’s potential assets, a paper contends.

In a series of posts at The Atlantic, Jonathan Adler has looked at how to advance environmental protection and action on climate change while still adhering to conservative principles like limited government and market-based solutions. Adler’s posts are interesting and thoughtful.

Here’s a question that you probably don’t want to answer honestly: What fees are you being charged by your 401(k) plan?

Don’t feel bad if you haven’t got a clue, because that puts you in the majority. An AARP study a few years back found that 65 percent of 401(k) account-holders didn’t know they were even paying fees.