Today, the President offered up some common sense ideas to help people save for retirement. It's hard to disagree with any of them (except one) but here they are: more "opt out" 401(k) type plans -- so your employer can sign you up and have you contribute 3% to a pre-approved investment option and can even increase your contributions as time goes on; let workers who leave a job with accumulated vacation time take compensation in a retirement account rather than as taxable cash; let people take tax refunds as government savings bonds.

The "Opt Out" plans are really problematic. Obama is right -- Americans are lousy joiners and if you sign them up when you employ them, they're more likely to save. It is effective policy but I have a couple of moral problems with it: 1) my employer should ask me before they do anything with my money, I shouldn't have to ask my employer to stop 2) what if these pre-approved investment vehicles (mostly lifecycle mutual funds or balanced funds) stink?

Everything else, I can get behind. Except that this doesn't go nearly far enough for most Americans.  For most workers the problem is that they don't make enough money to pay for current living expenses and to save for decades later. 20% of employers have stopped matching 401(k) contributions at exactly the wrong time.  If you lost 50% in stock funds in 2008 you need 100% gain just to get even.  The only way to get there is to invest more, ideally to have invested more after the market bottomed in March and the only way to invest more on a limtied budget is to leverage the employer match. But the employer match dissapeared for 1 in 5 workers at exactly the wrong time.

Remember, when the market crashed in 2000 the Dow and S&P didn't regain former levels until 2007 (and then promptly crashed again). The Nasdaq is still at less than half of its highs. Losses are not quickly regained, the only way to do it is to invest more.

We need to augment the employer match with a public match. The government should match any individual 401(k) contrbution up to 3% of salary up to $75,000 a year for an individual.  Yes, this is a vast new entitlement but it will save us money decades hence because it will be more expensive to deal with the problem of senior poverty when an entire generation tries to retire without guaranteed pensions of any kind (Gen X and everyone that follows will be in that boat).  People need help, their employers abandoned them and it's time for the government to step up.

People need to invest between 8-10% of their salaries every year. Most will only reach that level if they're getting their contributions matched and the money has to come from somewhere. People's personal balance sheets are too thin.

We also need an absolute commitment to social security -- more funding and yes, more generous benefits.  This year, because of temporary deflation, Social Security recipients got no cost of living increase.  But energy prices have been volatile. Health costs have risen. The costs of local services have gone up as city an state governments have had to raises fees sales taxes to plug budget holes... Living in 2009 really isn't cheaper than living in 2008 and the government knows it.

There's a lot right with what Obama said this morning but helping Americans save for retirement isn't enough. We have to view retirement as a right after a lifetime of work. Labor is not supposed to be a cradle to grave activity.

DanK and Stillidealistic and most everyone here contributed great thoughts to a very necessary "What are we doing here?" kind of discussion and while there will be no answers I learned a lot by reading everyone's thoughts. I'd also like to suggest, not originally I'm stealing from other commenters here that some of what we're dealing with now is the change in power.  Obama's presidency is still new. The Democratic party isn't easily steered in one direction. We're not all of us sure what we want to make of this moment and maybe that's a good thing because a sure mind tends to bespeak arrogance.

We are, however, ascendant. What can we do with it? Some ideas, take them, leave them, praise them or mock them.

1) Lets fight against the right's best arguments not their worst. It's fun and easy to take on Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh but is it worth it for us? We can waste a lot of time on some real drivel if we spend too much time on them. Also, their most ardent followers will not be convinced by us, they're dead-enders. But more than that -- I like some elements of right wing thought and I think we do best by ourselves when we take on what's best of the "Classical Liberal" traditions that the best thinkers on the right really believe in.  I like the conservative intellectual's faith in individual potential and their willingness to celebrate an individual's success. We can smartly point out, in those cases how society helps people succeed and realize their potential though. There are smart and thoughtful conservatives out there, lets take the discussion to them and lets let them challenge us. I definitely respect the intellectual conservative reverence for individual freedom when they are honest about it.

2) Let's not become yes-men for Obama or for the party leadership. They need to hear from us, even when it's inconvenient.

3) Keep a sense of humor. Nothing is too serious to joke about and being humorless technocrats is something we have to overcome in the public mind anyway.

4) Afghanistan and Iraq... lets not forget those wars because everyone seems to think they've gone away and it's freaking me out.

5) Wall Street -- lets not be done with that issue either. We're in danger of saying "TARP went okay" and moving on. Even our own Nathan Newman is falling for this.

6) Civil Rights. We still have to convince members of our own party that same sex marriage rights are the civil rights issue of this era. That's not over yet either.

7) Self interest. In the spirit of compromise, Democrats will quite often means test away great public services that people, had they access to them, would like. Every time somebody tells you that a public service should go to people at 3 times the poverty level or 5 times the poverty level say to yourself "why not 10 times the poverty level?" or "why not everyone?" One way to win support for our ideas is to start providing benefits for everybody.

8) Putting the deficit in perspective. $9 trillion over 10 years. Sounds like a lot. But even our currently depressed GDP is nearly $14 trillion in 1 year. In 10 years it'll be over $20 trillion. We have our own growth story to tell!

Anyway, those are some ideas. Some ways of thinking and talking and writing. Better get back to the day job...