On one level, yes. Excessive fees suck. Bidding them down is great! But it's not the core problem.
The 401k system, as it stands, is designed around extremely confused envy. Rather than allowing workers good tax-advantaged options for their retirement, it aims to give them the same options as The Man who currently employs them, in all his mustache-twirling evilness, irrespective of that Man's complete ignorance about mainstream IRA advice.
Did that otherwise-respectable business have an HR moron set up the plan, and not have index funds? Too bad. What does your retirement savings have to do with your current employer? Why should they be so tightly coupled? Well, no reason, but remember that envy above? The plans require that savings (sorry, "contributions") have some parity with those of highly-compensated employees of that same employer.
A sane system would allow anyone the same (index fund) options as say, federal employees, and not care whether some arbitrary cross-section of workers at a particular employer are saving nearly the same amount. As long as we have these Byzantine rules that put you at the mercy of your current HR department and confusedly envious legislators, we're stuck with it -- that is the problem.
The 401k system, as it stands, is designed around extremely confused envy. Rather than allowing workers good tax-advantaged options for their retirement, it aims to give them the same options as The Man who currently employs them, in all his mustache-twirling evilness, irrespective of that Man's complete ignorance about mainstream IRA advice.
Did that otherwise-respectable business have an HR moron set up the plan, and not have index funds? Too bad. What does your retirement savings have to do with your current employer? Why should they be so tightly coupled? Well, no reason, but remember that envy above? The plans require that savings (sorry, "contributions") have some parity with those of highly-compensated employees of that same employer.
A sane system would allow anyone the same (index fund) options as say, federal employees, and not care whether some arbitrary cross-section of workers at a particular employer are saving nearly the same amount. As long as we have these Byzantine rules that put you at the mercy of your current HR department and confusedly envious legislators, we're stuck with it -- that is the problem.