Given that reality, argues Lawrence, it becomes increasingly important for society, to the extent possible, to make benefits and education– the two key ingredients of employability-as flexible as possible. You don't want people to feel that they have to stay with a company forever simply to keep their pension and health benefits. The more the workforce feels mobile -in terms of health care, pension benefits, and lifelong learning possibilities-the more it will be willing and able to jump into the new industries and new job niches spawned by the flat world and to move from dying companies to thriving companies.
Creating legal and institutional frameworks for universal portability of pensions and health care -in addition to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid-will help people build up such muscles. Today roughly 50 percent of Americans don't have a job-based pension plan, other than Social Security. Those who are fortunate enough to have one cannot easily take it with them from job to job. What is needed is one simple universal portable pension scheme, along the lines proposed by the Progressive Policy Institute, that would get rid of the confusing welter of sixteen different tax-deferred options now offered by the government and consolidate them all into a single vehicle. This universal plan, which you would open with your first job, would encourage workers to establish 401 (k) tax-deferred savings programs. Each worker and his or her employer could make contributions of cash, bonuses, profit sharing, or stock, depending on what sorts of benefits the specific employer offered. These assets would be allowed to build up tax-free in whatever savings or investment portfolio options the worker chose. But if and when it came time to change jobs, the worker could take the whole portfolio with him or her and not have to either cash it out or leave it under the umbrella of the previous employer. Rollover provisions do exist today, but they are complicated and many workers don't take advantage of them because of that.
The universal pension format would make rollover simple, easy, and expected, so pension lockup per se would never keep someone from moving from one job to another. Each employer could still offer his or her own specific 401 (k) benefit plan, as an incentive to attract employees. But once a worker moved to another job, the investments in that particular 401 (k) would just automatically dump into his or her universal pension account. With each new job, a new 401 (k) could be started, and with each move, the benefits deposited in that same universal pension account.
In addition to this simple, portable, and universal pension program, Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, proposes legislation that would make it much easier and more likely for workers to obtain stock options in the companies for which they work. Such legislation would give tax incentives to companies to give more workers more options earlier and penalize companies that do not. Part of making workers more mobile is creating more ways to make more workers owners of financial assets, not just their own labor. “We want a public that sees itself as stakeholders, sharing in the capital-creating side of the flat world, not just competing in global labor markets/' argued Marshall. ”We all have to be owners as well as wage earners. That is where public policy has to be focused-to make sure that people have wealth-producing assets as they enter the twenty-first century, the way homeownership accomplished that in the twentieth century.“
Why? Because there is an increasing body of literature that says people who are stakeholders, people who have a slice of the pie, “are more deeply invested in our system of democratic capitalism and the policies that keep it dynamic,” said Marshall. It is another way, besides home-ownership, to underpin the legitimacy of democratic capitalism. It is also another way to energize it, because workers who are also owners are more productive on the job. Moreover, in a flat world where every worker is going to face suffer competition, the more opportunities everyone has to build wealth through the power of markets and compounding interest, the more he or she will be able to be self-reliant. We need to give workers every stabilizer we can and make it as easy for them to get stock options as it is for the plutocrats. Instead of just being focused on protecting those with existing capital, as conservatives so often seem to be, let's focus instead on widening the circle of capital owners.