Say What?

Rule would encourage automatic 401(k) enrollment

I found this article to be a bit bizarre. It starts off with a member of the Labor Department saying the following:

"We want to remove barriers for people to save for retirement..."

Sounds promising does it not? When you read this sentence you might think they are proposing abolishing the capital gains tax or lifting the cap on IRA contributions. She goes on to say:

"...and automatic enrollment really addresses one of the problems that people face: They may be overwhelmed with the responsibility of saving for retirement,"

How misleading. They are not "removing barriers", but proposing more regulations. Does anyone else detect a bias towards interventionism by the Labor Department? Oh, and are people really "overwhelmed with...saving"? That sounds like something Barry Schwartz would say. He argues that people are overwhelmed by choice. If you want a good debunking of that nonsense click here.