Guns and Guts

OK, Now I am Pissed

October 23rd, 2008

It looks like more socialism is headed down the pike.

Story

Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation’s $3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-California, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, are looking at redirecting those tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute.

This is just infuriating. Now they want to socialize our retirement savings even further. Never mind the fact that Social Security is an abysmal failure. More of the same should fix the problem. There’s real HopeChange for you.

A plan by Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic-policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, contains elements that are being considered. She testified last week before Miller’s Education and Labor Committee on her proposal.

At that hearing, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, testified that some $2 trillion in retirement savings has been lost over the past 15 months.

Welcome to the free market and freedom. The markets go up and down. Government involvement is usually the reason for them going down, as we have recently seen in this downtrodden market.

Under Ghilarducci’s plan, all workers would receive a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy from the U.S. government but would be required to invest 5 percent of their pay into a guaranteed retirement account administered by the Social Security Administration. The money in turn would be invested in special government bonds that would pay 3 percent a year, adjusted for inflation.

The current system of providing tax breaks on 401(k) contributions and earnings would be eliminated.

So, our “subsidy” would be a $600 tax break. Keep it. What good is that going to do me? What is that in real money for an average guy, $150? Get real people. Under our current 401(k) plans we can save up to $15,000 a year, tax free.

Now, we get to the very evil part of this whole plan. You read it correctly. They want to take another five percent of your income, and force you to put it in an account ran by the same people that have already ruined social security! Really? That is the plan? Please take that plan and keep it. We don’t want that rotting corpse.

These accounts would supposedly earn a guaranteed 3% interest. That’s right, three measly percent. That means when you actually got your money back it won’t be worth what it was when you put it in.

The sham of the whole thing is in the details. First of all, guaranteed means that we taxpayers are on the hook for the bonds that are going to earn all this lame interest. So if it doesn’t work, we get to pay for it! So on top of our overwhelming obligations to social security, this idiot economics professor wants us to give the government more of our money to throw down the same rabbit hole.

Secondly, remove the tax-incentive for comanies to match 401 contributions and the match goes away. You just killed a massive chunnk of wealth right there.

Finally, what do you think the market is going to do if this happens? Their cash cows, the vehicle most Americans use to invest in the market is going to dissapear. If you think we have a problem now, just wait until that happens. The markets will crash for real then, and those government bonds won’t be worth crap with no one around to buy them. This plan is just plain stupid.

“I want to stop the federal subsidy of 401(k)s,” Ghilarducci said in an interview. “401(k)s can continue to exist, but they won’t have the benefit of the subsidy of the tax break.”

Under the current 401(k) system, investors are charged relatively high retail fees, Ghilarducci said.

“I want to spend our nation’s dollar for retirement security better. Everybody would now be covered” if the plan were adopted, Ghilarducci said.

I sent this woman an email and told her that subsidy is the wrong term. Under the current 401(k) system we actually get to keep our own money if we invest it for the future. This is not the government’s money it is ours. Socialists always paint a tax break as government spending. The truth of course is, it is not government spending. It is our cash not hers, or “the nation’s”. This is a freedom thing here. This plan is nothing short of totalitarian seizure of our retirement savings.

Her last statement was especially egregious. Please FOAD lady! Leave OUR money alone you socialist hack! Go back to Notre Dame and drink another Manhattan and complain about how stupid we peasants are to your friends. We bitter clingers also cling to our money, so keep you damn hands off it!

I was going to comment on the rest of the article, but please just go read the whole thing. I can’t take it anymore. These damn communists are going to force us to revolt if they keep it up! I will be following this one closely.

HatTip: KdT

Categories: Freedom, Politics | Tags: 08 elections, civil rights, obama, socialist stupidity