Actually, it is absolutely wonderful for anyone under about 50.
Take a 25 year old that puts away 10% of his $50,000 household income per year (that's under the national average household income, btw). At age 65, invested at the average stock market return of 11%, that turns into $3,200,000 and change. $200,000 of that are contributions, the rest is interest.
In the traditional pre-tax 401K structure, the whole shebang is taxable. Keep it in a Roth structure, and EVERYTHING is tax free..... Three million in tax free interest income. That's about a cool million in tax savings in retirement.
Why is anyone complaining about this?
If you can't put it in Roth's either, real estate and mutual funds that create little capital gains (i.e. low turn over funds such as index funds) can approximate Roth, although there you will be taxed at capital gains rates, but they are considerably lower than income tax rates.
That is the way I see it from the snippets given early in this thread. It sounds like they are drastically increasing the amount of money that can go into the Roth style investment, providing better investing options for most of us. The government would lose in the long run, losing out on the taxing of all the money that is made in interest. The Gov would collect more money now.... if that is the goal.
