Let's keep our dual retirement system.

The trend of public policy in two directions jeopardizes the future of our private pension plans. In one direction "sharply rising social security costs and benefits threaten to put the private pension system out of business." In the other direction "proposed restrictive legislation similarly threatens the private system." This article examines each of these threats, and also offers a rebuttal to the charge of inadequate public control over such plans. Mr. Tyson is Chairman of the Finance Committee, United States Steel Corporation. As I view it, the drift of U.S. public policy is endangering the duality of our retirement system. For one thing, as I will develop later, public policy is aggravating inflation, which is, of course, a threat to both public and private pensions. For another, as I will develop now, the drift of public policy is further jeopardizing the future of private pensions--the very pensions to which millions of workers and their families look for more adequate retirement security provisions. To be sure, practically everyone accepts the role of social security in supplying retirement income. And practically everyone accepts the role of private pension plans in also supplying retirement income. Yet even these two parts do not necessarily add up to the whole of retirement security. Workers in our free society seek to build security with still other retirement blocks, such as savings accounts, bonds, common stocks, real property, insurance policies, and annuities. Certainly, this highly individualistic nest-egg building, differing as it does worker by worker and family by family, is part of the American dream. It is part of our heritage of individual opportunity, free enterprise, and limited government. As such, it should not be forgotten that: • This heritage is primarily responsible for the world's highest standard of living. • Income--whether private or public, retirement or preretirement--originates solely from production. • Our productive free enterprise engine is built and expanded by investment, and sparked and guided by profit. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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