Are we facing a retirement crisis?

Economics professor Teresa Ghilarducci, a vocal critic of 401k's, is back in the spotlight, this time with an opinion piece in The New York Times called "Our ridiculous approach to retirement."  

Ghilarducci, also interviewed on NPR's "Here & Now," warns of a pending retirement crisis, with plenty of seniors living in or near poverty. And she's not alone.

Here's basically what Ghilarducci says:

• You'll need 20 times your annual income in retirement savings to maintain your current lifestyle. Ten times will work if your home is paid off and you have no debt.
• Many Americans won't come close. "Almost half of middle-class workers, 49%, will be poor or near poor in retirement, living on a food budget of about $5 a day," she writes in the Times.
• But don't be too hard on yourself. Blame, rather, the system of 401k's and IRAs that puts the burden on individuals, instead of professionally managed pension plans. Asking people to voluntarily save for their entire working lives and invest that money wisely is "like asking the family pet to dance on two legs," she writes.

What's wrong with 401k's? Your company's offerings may not be the best investments, and they often come with high fees that stunt your accumulation of wealth. Contributions are voluntary, and you can borrow from those funds or cash them out early. (Post continues below video.)

Plus, you're required to know the unknowable -- for instance, how long you'll live and how much you'll need to spend on health care in your golden years. And, not least, you're dependent on your investments performing well. 

That's hasn't worked out recently. "With little or no return for more than a decade -- and just as baby boomers begin to retire -- the savings crisis has pushed us to new levels of despair," Dan Kadlec wrote in Time earlier this year.

It seems that 401k's and the like work well for the affluent -- Ghilarducci says 80% of the tax breaks for contributions to these types of plans goes to the top 20% -- but what about everyone else? Only 16% of workers 55 and older said they were very confident they'd have enough money to live comfortably in retirement, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute's new Retirement Confidence Survey (.pdf file).

What does Ghilarducci, the author of "When I'm Sixty-Four: The Plot Against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them," propose instead? Here's part of her explanation from a column on Bloomberg Businessweek:

So let's scale back the tax breaks. Instead, we can use the money to help everyone sock away 5% of their pay in safe retirement accounts that would serve as a universal supplement to Social Security. People could keep their employer plan if it met more stringent standards such as a contribution rate of at least 5%, a ban on early withdrawals, and conversion into an annuity at retirement. Anyone without an employer plan would automatically be enrolled in a Guaranteed Retirement Account to which employees and employers would each contribute 2.5%. The government would then provide everyone a modest tax credit to offset the employee contributions. The return would be guaranteed by the government at about 3% above the rate of inflation -- or close to the real growth rate in gross domestic product.

The investments would be professionally managed, with lower fees and better results common to pension plans, she says.

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has proposed a similar plan, described in this Bankrate.com post.

Other retirement experts say 401k's are not the best way to save for old age. Wrote Alicia Munnell, the director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, in SmartMoney:

The time may have come to consider returning 401k plans to their original position as a supplement on top of Social Security and employer-sponsored pensions. Given the demise of traditional employer pensions, such a rearrangement would require a new tier of retirement accounts.

Ted Benna, regarded as the father of the 401k, says they've gotten far too complicated. Also from SmartMoney:

"We need a legislative mandate that when you change jobs, the money needs to be retained in a retirement account -- there cannot be an option of 'here's a check, you decide,'" Benna says. He also advocates mandating all employees be auto-enrolled in the plans, and that their contributions be automatically increased one percentage point per year to a maximum of 10% to 15%.

Is the outlook really that dire for boomers, many of whom, unlike their parents, will face retirement without a traditional pension? Says the EBRI survey:

Most workers have little put away in savings and investments, although older workers are more likely than their younger counterparts to report higher amounts of assets. However, nearly a third of older workers reported savings and investments of less than $10,000.

A new study by the National Institute on Retirement Security says only 43% of people over 60  received pension income in 2010, down from 52% in 1998. In the private sector, only 15% received a pension in 2010, according to Reuters.

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The Reuters report added:

How important are defined benefit pensions in keeping seniors out of poverty? The study -- which is based on U.S. Census Bureau data -- found poverty rates were nine times greater in 2010 in households without defined benefit pension income. Pensions resulted in 4.7 million fewer poor or "near poor" families and 1.2 million fewer families on various forms of public assistance.

I've often wondered: What did we gain when retirement transitioned from a work-based pension to a system of voluntary savings funded mostly by the employee? It seems that employers and professional money managers got the better end of this deal, not us.

How's your retirement plan? Are you worried or confident that you'll have enough money when you're old? 

More from MSN Money:

• 5 ways your 401k leaks money
• How much money will my 401k provide?
• Is 70 the new retirement age?
• 5 reasons boomers will go bust
• Are you saving enough for retirement?
• What you'll get in Social Security