Demystifying the Decline

It is unfortunate that charitable giving, particularly donations to churches, has declined in recent years, as Nate Bernhard notes in “The 401(k) Is Tearing Society Apart” (March). Similarly, the personal-savings rate of Americans has also declined, from above 10 percent of earnings in the 1960s, to just around 4.5 percent in 2025. Nearly half of Americans carry credit-card debt and have less income to contribute to both charity and their retirement.

The decline in charitable giving is attributable to many factors, two of which are noted in the article: the cost of living and declining religious affiliation. Other reasons include consumerism and distrust of nonprofit organizations. Many consumers are remodeling houses, spending on entertainment, paying for their children’s extracurricular activities, and upgrading whatever they can. By making such choices, whether or not out of necessity, many consumers trade their charitable giving for personal spending. Another reason for declining donations is the lack of trust in many organizations’ use of the donations. Publicized fraud and misuse by the nonprofits, high payments to executives, sex-abuse scandals, and nonstop solicitation soured many on charities and churches as a whole.

There are benefits to having retirement savings. Financially independent retirees experience less stress, engage in more social activities, and have the funds to continue donating to charity, sometimes leaving substantial donations in their wills. A preretirement lifestyle of spending will likely result in placing a higher burden on children, relatives, community, and future generation of young workers to provide support for many years of retirement.

The problem with 401(k) plans is not that they are an option that diminishes charitable giving; rather, they are an option that is inadequate for the retirement needs of many people. As noted in the article, lower-income households barely scrape by and don’t have excess cash to save. The “employer match” of 401(k) plans rewards higher-paid employees over lower-paid workers—higher-paid employees have more wages to contribute, thereby getting a higher match. Perhaps employers should be required to contribute minimum dollar amounts for all employees and an additional amount based on a percentage of the employee’s salary, regardless of employee contribution. The 401(k) penalties for early withdrawal might also be eliminated for people who need the funds to help support a family member or pay for an unexpected large expense. In addition, the government should provide protection of the 401(k) assets to insure that they do not fall below contribution rates. The current government push to permit risky alternative investments in retirement plans—cryptocurrency and private equity, for example—is reckless and places retirement plans at risk.

Indeed, the U.S. retirement system can use some major tweaking, and a secure retirement can lead to an uptick in charitable giving. But the picture is not all gloom and doom: while my parish’s financial offerings are a bit below the budgeted amount for the year, it is gratifying to see the tables in the church vestibule loaded with bags and boxes of donations of canned goods, clothing, and other items to be distributed to local soup kitchens and charities. Many of the volunteers who coordinate and handle the donations are retirees who remain active and charitable.

Tanya Solov
Former Director,
Illinois Securities Department
Chicago, Ill.

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The Warmth of Collectivism

I liked very much Nate Bernhard’s article on 401(k)s’ negative impact on how we live and relate to each other as fellow citizens.

The points I might disagree with are the author’s apparent skepticism regarding the viability of Senator Sanders’s ambitious proposal to require companies to provide pensions equivalent to what Congress provides to elected officials, and the author’s apparently related view that the way to improve people’s lives as they grow older must “balance economic security and free enterprise.”

As Bernhard explains, the free-market system has failed a large percentage of Americans, asking them (with government encouragement) to shoulder most of the cost of assuring a dignified life in their later years through the flawed 401(k) framework­ (and only for those who are “lucky” enough to have access to those programs—most working people do not have access).

Zohran Mamdani is giving us all an example of how government can and must be more ambitious in assuring the basic human needs of its citizens; it only took him one week to score his first significant victory on this front with the cooperation of Governor Hochul: universal childcare for the under-two-year-old children of all NYC (and NYS) residents.

In these times, when some state governments and the federal government are teaming up with corporations to enforce cruel austerity while cutting back on basic social services, Mamdani’s promise to “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism”—encouraging a shift towards community over self-reliance and contrasting individual autonomy with collective well-being (a point the author makes himself)—is the example to follow, rather than depending on private-enterprise players to fill a role they have no intention of filling.

Kevin Sturr
Washington D.C.

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An Enough Agenda

I consider myself a progressive, but admittedly an ambivalent one. The promises of progress, aligned with technological innovation and application, has had mixed results over my Baby Boomer lifetime. Caution and hesitation influence my thinking when reading about any abundance agenda—the very problem that the abundance agenda decries. Reading Alexander Stern’s interview with Marc J. Dunkelman (“Delivery Problems,” April), I felt that ambivalence. Consider the big projects led by Robert Moses and David Lilienthal: Were they really for the people, razed neighborhoods and flooded farmsteads be damned, or were they for producing something more exploitable and profitable, like cars, power grids, and, above all, consumers? In the midst of a climate crisis with no end in sight—a mess that cars, power plants, and overconsumption have in no small part created—I am skeptical of the ways an abundance of unfettered technological innovation can save us. Wendell Berry, perhaps that most Jeffersonian of thinkers, in his essay collection What Are People For?, quotes the poet William Blake: “You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.” Although we need to adapt to survive, and I get that populist anger and frustration have contributed to the Trump travesties, I see our best hope as not an abundance agenda but an enough agenda.

Tom Crotty
Sinking Spring, Pa.