Americans aren't saving—or saving enough—for retirement, and the country is heading fora crisis as boomers leave the workplace inever-increasing numbers.

But in a blog post at Seeking Alpha, Patrick Gunn hascome up with an idea that he believes will solve the problem.

Stimulated by changes to the military retirement plan that haveincluded expansion of the government's Thrift Savings Plan, Gunnproposes that the TSP be expanded again—to include all workingAmericans—and to make it mandatory to save a minimum contributionin a TSP account as a means of retirement savings.

Retirement would be less of a crisis if the ceiling were raisedon Social Security contributions—there are plenty ofgloomy predictions on the future of the “entitlement” program, towhich working Americans contribute and are thus entitled.

However, with a Republican Congress in charge, an increase inthe ceiling is probably at least as unlikely as the currentpresidency was at this time last year.

And Gunn rightly notes that Social Security by itself is notenough for retirees to survive on, and given the current rate ofsavings by most Americans, retirement is a grim picture instead ofa welcome later stage of life.

In his post, Gunn points out that according to the March 2015report from Dr. Nari Rhee and Llana Boivie of the NationalInstitute on Retirement Security, “a followup to a 2013 study, 40million working-age households have no retirement account assets atall and the median retirement account balance is just $2,500 forall working-age households.”

Gunn also says in the post that “[t]he Center on Budget andPolicy Priorities points out that 66% of all retirement saving taxincentives go to the top 20 percent of the population and overallcosts taxpayers $117 billion each year. More striking in theirstudy is that the top 20% of households received twice as much insubsidies as the bottom 80% combined.”

Adding the TSP to the mix could change that picture, Gunn says,proposing “to not only give every wage-earning American access [tothe TSP], but to make it mandatory to contribute via a 'retirementtax.'”

Gunn's plan calls for a minimum 1% tax, with the money placed inthe default “G Fund” of the TSP. Individuals could elect to investin other funds, but half would always go to the G Fund, and theycould also elect to allocate a ceiling of 15% of their wages to theTSP.