I was going through a stack of old MONEY magazines when I came across this short "article" from John Bogle, the founder of the Vanguard Group, titled Why We Need A Fed For Retirement. Here's the entirety of it:

The retirement-saving system we have doesn't work. Any program that lets you borrow from it, lets you withdraw money when you change jobs, and gives you too many investment choices - so you can do foolish things - is fundamentally flawed.

The way to fix it is to have a single plan overseen by a regulatory agency: a Federal Retirement Board. It would make sure that the choices offered are appropriate. But I'm in favor of leaving the actual implementation to the private sector, to allow for competition in service and prices.

The federal Retirement Board would reduce your choices to very broadly diversified funds with a focus on the long term and very low costs. And it would give you a range of investment plans based on a sensible balance of the safety of bonds and the risk of opportunity of stocks. I'd allow people to opt out of those core choices, but only with difficulty.

I wanted to post this here just because it might be of interest to a few people, and so that if I want to refer back to it, I have access to it. The magazine is getting recycled.