Expand Social Security.
Strengthen retirement, disability and survivor benefits. Add one universal public pension and, separately, no-fee public retirement accounts. Keep basic income open for exploration.
Realistic now
Improve benefits for people with low lifetime earnings. Raise SSDI and SSI, remove asset traps and process disability claims faster. Employers with 100 or more workers must pay into the one government-run universal pension system for their staff; companies do not each run their own pension. The mandate starts at employers with 100 or more workers and phases in for every employer; universal coverage is the end state, and smaller employers get a phase-in runway. Publish a financing plan.
The ideal
An adequate, durable public income floor through old age, disability and unemployment: a pooled universal pension, plus individual 401(k) and IRA accounts held publicly with no account or management fees.
Benefits
Shared protection covers risks private savings alone may not. The pension is pooled and universal; the no-fee accounts are separate individual savings. One is not the other, and neither charges savers a fee to take part.
Costs / risks
Contribution rates, eligibility and benefit formulas must add up. Basic income requires separate analysis of funding and benefit interactions.
Real life
Social Security already provides retirement, disability and survivor benefits under separate eligibility rules.