HA. The tax shelter is one of the FEW reasons why I invest in a 401K. If that is eliminated, I'm sure 90% of "high income" earners will take their money and run. I'd gladly pay the penalties and move it elsewhere.
The recent proposals toward "fixing" this g**damn mess are FREAKIN RIDICULOUS.
Let me get this straight.
First, Congressman Miller, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America’s Progressive Caucus, talks about how “we” (meaning Congress) have “invested” $80 billion annually in tax “subsidies” for the “activity” of tax-deferred saving for retirement. And, naturally, given recent events, this must be reconsidered.
And so the tax deferment finds its neck on the chopping block of the Democrat Congress.
But of course the benevolent Democrats could consider a new option to trade those beleaguered 401k accounts for shiny new “guaranteed” government retirement accounts!
Yes, the same people who thought it was just peachy to shovel millions of six-figure mortgages to illegal aliens without documented income (cf. http://kfyi.com/pages/local_news.html?feed=118695&article=4364653) and millions more mortgages to millions more uncreditworthy folks on the basis of ethnicity, the same people who blocked a dozen Bush Administration attempts to bring Fannie and Freddie to heel, the same people who call any reference to larcenous Obama advisors Franklin Raines or Jim Johnson “racist”, the same people... well, the same people who put us in this mess... the $700 billion of emergency liquidity is not enough for them.
Consider:
The 401k tax deferment is one of only two major deductions left for most middle- and upper-middle-class taxpayers.
The other is the home mortgage deduction.
Will homeownership be the next to go, then? Congressman Miller, how much is Congress investing to subsidize THAT activity?
And, though I’m not into tinfoil-hattery, I must admit: if the intention was to grab the trillions of Americans’ private wealth and savings and soften up the population to accept a thunderclap socialist takeover in broad daylight, this all could not have been better scripted.
Why should my tax dollars subsidize someone else’s 401(k) plan?
The institution of the IRA and the 401(k) was an amazing bit of sanity, considering that it was started when the Democrats were in control of Congress. It has the effect of a savings plan for the government - the government defers taking the tax, and therefore receives the tax on the income when the taxpayer is retired and is collecting Social Security. Consequently the tax paid by the taxpayer on his 401(k) realized taxable income helps defray the cost of the retired taxpayer's Social Security.It's not enough to cover the unfunded liability represented by the so-called "Social Security Trust Fund" (which is nothing actually but a record of how much money the government took on the pretext of saving for future Social Security liability, but which the government in fact actually spent), but it is at least an increment in that direction which is at least in the same order of magnitude with that liability.
So the tax deferral savings plans are atypically responsible policy for a Democrat/ACORN influenced government to be doing - and it should therefore be entirely unsurprising that the Democrats are talking about gutting it.
BTTT
Is it any wonder the market is in a tailspin?
BTTT