Either way, the drawdown is a worry in the huge US retirement industry, which managed total assets of $24.8 trillion as of June 30. Massive withdrawals will crimp the lucrative fee income for administrators. And another concern is market performance, with fewer US buyers and sellers available to potentially prop up assets.
Robert Hiltonsmith, senior policy analyst at Demos, a progressive think tank, expects the positive trends to continue -- even if Tuesday’s survey suggests employers overall aren’t relenting on tough and irregular scheduling demands. “I think it’s a slow burn, but the pressure’s mounting,” he says.
Finally, automatic voter registration is good politics for the Democratic Party. "Among eligible voters, some 30% of African Americans, 40% of Hispanics, 45% of Asian Americans and 41% of young adults (age 18-24) were not registered to vote in the historic 2008 election," according to the progressive think tank Demos.
The voting rights groups say that among other things, the federal exchange should be offering to help applicants complete a voter registration form. Although many applicants use the exchange independently, others turn to its call center or to “navigator” groups that have federal grants to help people apply for coverage.
“The navigators aren’t receiving any training or direction that they have to offer voter registration services,” said Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, senior counsel at Demos.
"The Administration strongly supports the goals of the NVRA and is committed to enforcing its requirements, as applicable,” Aaron Albright, a spokesman for the HHS' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in an email.
But the current configuration doesn't meet the specific requirements in the law regarding language and other administrative mandates, the groups say.
According to Sean McElwee, a researcher who studies voting rights at the progressive think tank Demos, some studies suggest up to 2.5% of the population is unable to vote thanks to such laws.
Fees can take a bite out of your retirement income, so it's important to be aware of what advisory or fund management fees you might be paying. Fees for a median-income two-earner family can eat up almost one-third of their investment returns over a lifetime, according to Demos, a think tank. Reining wrote on his blog that he invested in index funds, which typically have lower fee structures than actively managed funds, and individual stocks.
“Alabama’s recent settlement with the Department of Justice doesn’t address the state’s photo ID law,” Lisa Danetz, the legal director for Demos, which before the deal played a leading role in raising concerns about Alabama’s compliance with Motor Voter, confirmed. “Instead, it relates to the federal requirement that the state must provide voter registration during driver’s license transactions.”
Higher turnout has the possibility of weakening the donor class’s grip on policy. It could also reduce the influence of the extreme right wing on politics. It’s not surprising that the GOP, which benefits from a low-turnout, strong-donor environment, supports voting laws that tend to reduce turnout.
All in, 401(k) fees can range from 50 basis points up to 3 percent, said David Walters, a CPA and certified financial planner with Palisades Hudson Financial Group. Any plan charging more than 1 percent, Walters insisted, should be seen as suspect.
"Taken over an employee's lifetime, that can make a huge difference in what [workers] get to spend in retirement," Walters said.
However generous paid leave benefits are, whether employees actually use those benefits will depend a lot on the culture they work in and the social pressures they face.
Amazon, for instance, is "notorious for its competitive work environment, and simply having access to leave may not be enough if workers feel they will be penalized in their careers for taking it," said Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at Demos.
This is doubly true for fathers, who are especially unlikely to take leave no matter where they wo
The elections board said registration activity is back to levels from previous odd-numbered years. Part of the issue, the board said, was local social service agencies had been printing registration forms that were not coded as coming from these agencies. Issues related to DMV's online address updates also are being addressed, Strach said.
Unfortunately, more and more retirees are falling into debt at the exact point in their lives when they should be free from financial worries. Whereas older people paid off their mortgages in generations past, now nearly half of all senior citizens still owe a house note.
But for many, even landing a job was not enough to make ends meet: of those 5 million job openings, nearly half paid less than $15 per hour, leaving only 2.7 million that paid $15 or more per hour. And for workers able to secure only part-time employment, wages were even more inadequate: in 2014, more than one in five part-time workers wanted full-time employment but were unable to find it.
The core finding: there are not enough living wage jobs to go around. And women and people of color are especially impacted by low wages and part-time work.
Advocates of automatic voter registration won two legislative battles in Oregon and California this year, and lost another in New Jersey when GOP Governor Chris Christie vetoed automatic registration legislation last month.
As Black Friday approaches, retailers nationwide are waiting anxiously to see whether the nation’s busiest shopping day will deliver a boost in profits. But perhaps no company has more at stake than Walmart, the shopping behemoth that was the world’s largest retailer until Amazon supplanted it in that role this summer.
Last month, President Obama inaugurated yet another way to encourage Americans to save for retirement. In the new myRA accounts, workers can save up to $15,000 in a low-fee investment plan that, like a government savings bond, guarantees the principal. The accounts are a small step toward helping households save, but they are not an effective solution to the coming retirement crisis.
Starting in 2020, the numbers of very low-income elderly will rise sharply as the retired population soars to almost 56 million.
Robert Hiltonsmith, a researcher at the think tank Demos, has estimated that the average household loses $155,000 in potential gains as a result of unnecessary fees.
