Imagine a California where every employee has the option to participate in a work based retirement savings plan.

Imagine a California where all workers retire with enough savings to sustain them through old age, so they do not have to depend on the government for assistance.

Well, this may not be too far-fetched of an idea, because California is taking strong steps in this direction.

Yesterday, the California State Senate Public Employment and Retirement Committee passed Assembly Bill 125, the California Employee Savings Program. Authored by Assemblyman De Leon, AB 125 aims to create a voluntary, universal, portable retirement account for California workers who do not have access to a retirement savings plan. Furthermore, AB 125 would enable thousands of small businesses to offer low-cost retirement savings to their employees.

If you’re like me, you have no interest in foolishly looking at the dwindling numbers in your retirement plan. Luckily, I’m decades away from retirement and can afford occasional market volatility. My initial concern during this crunch, however, wasn't the fluctuating values in our nest eggs. Instead, my worry was that employers might draw back from automatic enrollment programs, and that new employees might consider opting out of plans more frequently. Not so, according to people smarter than myself. According to a recent Chicago Tribune article, not only has the number of companies automatically enrolling employees in retirement plans doubled, but there shouldn’t be much cause for concern that, despite what looks like prolonged doom and gloom for our economy, companies may find auto-enrollment less attractive.

For behavioral economists (and their many fans), this probably comes as no surprise—default options work. What the article argues and suggests by its title, however, is that automatic enrollment (despite its increasing popularity) is insufficient in creating a robust nest egg at current match rates. Likely true, though the Tribune makes it seem as though auto-enrollment is a static business decision by saying that it “may create a false sense of security and discourage workers from putting more away.” A false sense of security is an issue, of course, but I would argue that a balance of $0.00 in an employer-sponsored plan is far, far riskier.

The real fix lies in automatic escalation—the next generation of automatic enrollment.

On 6/26/08, the House Ways & Means Committee held a hearing on Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA) due to concern over underutilization and reasons why many small businesses did not offer some type of IRA plan for workers. The GAO report on the topic was highlighted. Subsequent to this hearing, a few other committees held hearing on retirement savings and a report was released by Ernst & Young on people not having enough to live on in retirement.

There are some troubling data and realities about IRA participation and inadequate retirement savings. For example: