[groanup]

I don't have the link to back it up but in my experience, managing money for folks, the vast majority of retirement savings is in pre-tax accounts such as 401(k), 403(b), SEP, IRA etc. MOST people you and I know that have a regular job have almost all of their savings in a 401(k).

The nitpickers say that the retirees that have all of their savings in after tax money will be hurt. In a stretch that COULD be right for the wealthier ones. If so, it should be easy to do some Peter/Paul type of thing with the legislation since the pre-taxers will receive such a HUGE bump in their buying power.

[pigdog]

I've looked at quite a few scenarios (and I suspect Principled has too) with both taxed and untaxed savings and I honestly think the magnitude of this supposed effect is greatly overstated by the opponents (of course).

If you'd do some rational examples using reasonable numbers for the tax free part of spending under the FairTax to get to the likely effective tax rate, I believe you'd find things much less alarming.