Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Cato podcast. I'm Rumi Nabacha, Director of Budget and

Entitlement Policy here at the Cato Institute. And I'm Adam Michelle. I'm the Director of Tax Policy

Studies at the Cato Institute. Today we're talking about savings and retirement security. Should

everyone be saving for retirement?

And what role should the government play helping people build a nest egg?

The Social Security Trustees report just came out, and it's yet another reminder that the largest retirement program that the federal government is running is over-promised benefits and is severely underfunded.

At roughly the same time, we've seen some news reporting about California's public pension

program for state and local employees that is asking lots of questions about governance, transparency,

and the investment performance of the nation's largest institutional

pension fund. Both of these stories raise different questions about how much Americans should be

relying on the government, federal or state, for their retirement versus preparing for

it themselves. Avonim, I know you've been thinking about this from the tax and savings side,

especially in your new paper on Trump accounts.

How do you think about questions around governance risk in government-provided savings

versus the kinds of risks an individual takes on when they make their own savings

and investment decisions.

Thanks, Ramina.

The poor distinction here is really centralized versus decentralized decision-making.

When the government is running savings programs, whether they be Social Security or pension programs that state and local governments

run, when decisions are, when poor decisions are made, they impact everyone and they are,

they become systemic risks to the entire system, where individuals certainly are, can make

mistakes in their own investment investment but they aren't any

...