Costly Regulations Will Reduce Your Retirement Options

The Department of Labor is pushing a new regulation that will limit consumer choice when it comes to retirement savings, and like everything the government does, it’s going to wind up costing you a lot of money.

The rule would impose greater regulations on brokers of retirement accounts such as 401ks and IRAs, to whom people turn for investment advice. Why are stricter rules needed? The proposed rule claims it’s because people generally cannot “prudently manage retirement assets on their own” and therefore the government has to come in and do it for them.

This profoundly condescending attitude is typical of big government regulators. The common man is too dim-witted to function on his own, so he must be controlled. It’s the same sort of reasoning that led to the increased regulations on what kinds of plans insurance companies could offer under the Affordable Care Act, a fact which led John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute to dub the rule, “Obamacare for your IRA.”