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$1,000 for your vote!!!!
Do you remember when George McGovern ran for President against Richard Nixon in 1972 he promised to give every American $2,000? Talk about pandering and having the taxpayer pay for what amounts to campaign financing. (This would have increased federal spending by about 50% for this plan alone……..no wonder he was 100% behind having Senator Eagleton on the ticket as V.P. originally before he fired him……..Wiki Eagleton if you want in on this bit of humor :)
Well now we have it again with Hillary offering to set up everyone a 401-K with the Government kicking in $1,000 per plan. Gee thanks, just write me the check and forget the bureaucratic costs. Lets see, you have had the Republicans saying (along with myself on a few NSL posts) that private retirement accounts are the only solution for solving the Baby Boomer retirement equation.
I think this proposal is a defacto admission that no form of modification (short of changing the retirement age to death + 1 year) of the Social Security System will keep the program solvent. But wait………..now we have them also proposing a system that basically turns the money that employers and workers put in retirement savings over to those nasty Wall Street boys, and get this, along with taxpayer money as well. I wonder if Harry Reid will immediately jump on this and accuse her of having retirement savers put their money in a “risky” stock market scheme like he accused Republicans of when proposing private accounts. (you don’t think that the 401-K managers will simply purchase Treasury Bills do you?)
Now here is the sweetest part of all. She is talking about financing this through a modification on the Estate Tax laws and according to her statement at a campaign stop in small–town central Iowa she is going to tax Estates over $7,000,000 to fund this program and again according to her own statement that from each estate exceeding $7,000,000 5,000 families would get the matching funds of $1,000 (i.e. $5,000,000). Wow, that sounds generous of her…….and to think she can do all this with only taxing estates at the rate of 71.4%. Although she didn’t admit it out loud you can see that if a single estate of $7,000,001 would fund $5,000,000 (5/7 = .714 - that is 5,000 families at $1,000 per family) you end up with a confiscatory estate tax rate of 71.4% at the Federal level alone plus what ever the state accesses.
I wonder if this proposal will last any longer than last month’s little bit of pandering where she stated at an address to the Congressional Black Caucus that she wanted to give every child born a $5,000 baby shower gift from Uncle Sam which could be used to pay towards college or a first home. Her office claims that she has now given up on that proposal, but not until after (I am sure) it obtained its desired impact on impoverished and black communities relative to their support for her candidacy.
I am sure she took pains to calculate at what threshold she could put the Estate Exemption (less than $7,000,000) so as not to disturb or rattle the majority of Iowa farmers that have land values not exceeding that amount with those exceeding being a small percentage. For additional information on this latest and greatest from the geniuses in the Clinton camp, check HERE.
Come Let Us Reason Together on Financing Retirement
This has been an interesting week in the stock market if not for any other reason but that the Stock Market closed over 14,000 for the first time ever [Note the long-term Dow Jones Industrial Averages Chart pictured above]. One of the first posts that I made to this blog (my third to be exact) was on April 23, 2007 and it was titled “Are you Pro-Choice? (on Retirement Planning).” HERE I remember in the wake of 911 after the stock market resumed activity (with a strong downward bias) the Democratic leadership trotted out in front of the U.S. Capitol and explained how this “collapse” of the stock market is the reason that allowing private equity accounts within the Social Security system was a risky idea put forth by the evil Republicans so their friends on Wall Street could get rich. These timely comments by the esteemed Democratic Senators turned out to not only be wrong, but if you were listening to them it may have caused you to miss one of the best stock BUYING opportunities in quite some time. You see, once again (like on taxes) they were not only mistaken, but exactly 180 degrees out of phase with the truth. Hope your family’s security wasn’t damaged because you followed their “timely” advice then.
As I said in my April 23rd post that there isn’t one day since the institution of the Social Security System where dollars from the fund could have been invested in the US Stock Market and preformed worse to date than the so called “risk free” investments of the plan as it exists. Read more
Are you Pro-Choice? (on Retirement Planning)
The beat goes on. After decades the political apparatus in this country has continued to fail concerning the bankrupt and obsolete retirement system. I read posts and hear speeches and sermons about how little people have to live off from their “Social Security” checks and what is a “caring and socially conscience society” going to do about it (on both the corporate and individual level), but I never hear the socially aware say anything about the fact that the original proponents of the Social Security System designed it to be a “supplement” to retirement income and never expected to be a full retirement system, but you have heard that before. They still continue to ignore this because of the greater problem of caring for the elderly (which I am rapidly approaching myself, but no faster than you, just probably much closer) and the impact on society of ignoring it. If this is a boring topic for you, think again, this will indeed affect you adversely more and much more than you would ever believe and the younger you are (and farthest away from retirement) the greater the negative impact will be. The problem is the solution has been taken off the table by the left and made Read more
