FORTUNATELY, THE REVOLUTION DOESN'T DEPEND ON THE STUPID PARTY UNDERSTANDING IT:

Revisions to Savings Rules Proposed (Michelle Singletary, September 28, 2006, Washington Post)

The Pension Protection Act of 2006, signed recently by President Bush, made it easier for companies to force employees to save for their retirement. I used the word "force" but I don't mean it in a negative way. After all, traditional pensions, known as defined-benefit plans, are about as rare as a belt on many a teenager's pants. Both are left hanging.

For the most part, workers are signing up for the defined-contribution plans that replaced them, electing to take pretax dollars and invest them in various investment options, including 401(k)s. But there are still holdouts. About one-third of eligible workers do not participate in defined-contribution plans, according to the Labor Department.

To encourage workers to save, some employers decided to automatically sign up workers. The theory is that once you enroll employees in a 401(k), most won't make the effort to stop the contributions.

Some companies, however, worrying that they may be sued for such a paternalistic move, have balked at creating an automatic enrollment system.

That's where the new law comes in. Chiefly, the law amends the Employee Retirement Income Security Act to shield fiduciaries of individual account plans when certain default investment alternatives are selected for workers. After all, if you're automatically enrolling people, then you have to invest their money somewhere.

ERISA would essentially provide fiduciaries relief from liability for the investment outcomes.