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Academics Want Your IRAs
Accuracy in Academia ^ | November 6, 2015 | Malcolm A. Kline

Posted on 11/06/2015 7:11:59 AM PST by Academiadotorg

When academics are ready to fix a problem, hold onto your wallets.

“America’s middle class faces a growing retirement crisis,” Christian Weller and Teresa Ghilarducci write in an issue brief for the Center for American Progress (CAP). “More than half of all working-age households are expected to be at risk of having to cut back their standard of living—often making painful adjustments—when they retire. “

“There are several reasons for the ever-larger looming crisis, but people’s inability to save enough money is a key obstacle to achieving more retirement security. On average, Americans need to save between 10 percent and 20 percent of their salaries each year outside of Social Security to ensure a secure retirement. Yet nearly one-third of working-age Americans have no retirement savings or pension, and less than half of all private-sector workers participated in a retirement plan at work in 2013, the last year for which data are available.”

Weller is a senior fellow at CAP and a professor at the University of Massachusetts. Ghilarducci is director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at The New School for Social Research.

The problem as they see it is threefold:

“First, existing savings incentives can be overwhelming and incredibly complex.” “Second, savings incentives often benefit higher-income earners more than middle- and lower-income earners.” “Third, even as the savings incentives fail to prepare households adequately for retirement, the public loses out on increasingly large amounts of tax revenue that otherwise would have been collected without these tax breaks.“ In remarks at CAP, Ghilarducci repeatedly referred to the contributions Americans make to plans such as IRAs as “subsidies,” “tax expenditures,” and “money on the table.”

In a panel discussion at CAP on the day before Halloween, Ghilarducci’s characterization of individual savings plans was echoed by New York University Law professor Lily Batchelder who characterized employee retirement accounts as “sort of like the government dumps the subsidy into your 401K.”

That academics view individual earnings as government subsides is problematic enough, especially for the individuals. Even eerier, that notion has taken hold in the U. S. government, particularly during the current presidential administration, where Batchelder served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the National Economic Council.

Ghilarducci is an economic advisor to Hillary Clinton.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Government; US: New York
KEYWORDS: 401ks; clinton; iras; obama
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If you have savings left, academics don't think it's your money, and the government tends to agree--
1 posted on 11/06/2015 7:11:59 AM PST by Academiadotorg
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To: Academiadotorg

Academics who all have nice fat TIAA-CREF accounts.


2 posted on 11/06/2015 7:13:17 AM PST by Steely Tom (Vote GOP: A Slower Handbasket)
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To: Academiadotorg

The progressives are urgently looking for new sources of OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY (other than that of their cronies, of course).


3 posted on 11/06/2015 7:13:51 AM PST by House Atreides (CRUZ or lose! Does TG have to be an ass every day?)
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To: Academiadotorg

Lots of people will be decorating lamp posts around America if they try to seize IRAs/401k, etc.


4 posted on 11/06/2015 7:15:01 AM PST by DCBryan1 (No realli, moose bytes can be quite nasti!!)
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To: Academiadotorg

The US Government is $19 Trillion in debt. Obama alone has added $9 Trillion

The USA faces a tidal wave of Soc. Sec. and Medicare expenses

The result is - any property you have is not safe


5 posted on 11/06/2015 7:16:30 AM PST by PGR88
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To: Academiadotorg

She’s baaaaaccckkkk...Ghilarducci


6 posted on 11/06/2015 7:17:31 AM PST by goodnesswins (hey..Wussie Americans....ISIS is coming. Are you ready?)
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To: Academiadotorg

Everything you ‘own’ belongs to the government. They just allow you to keep a little out of generosity.

America is regressing to the outmoded Leninism of the old Soviet Union.

Ironic that both Russia and China are busily moving in the other direction.

After enormous expenditures of gold and lives in the Cold War, America surrenders to communism without a shot being fired.


7 posted on 11/06/2015 7:17:37 AM PST by Jack Hammer
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To: Academiadotorg
but people's inability to save enough money is a key obstacle to achieving more retirement security

Yep, but their inability comes for their poor financial judgment and decision making skills. They put all of their income into lifestyle (elaborate vacations, the latest consumer electronics, eating out rather than cooking, high end cars, etc.) and none into savings.

8 posted on 11/06/2015 7:18:05 AM PST by from occupied ga (Your government is your most dangerous enemy)
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To: Academiadotorg

In other words, a ‘comfortable retirement’ has become an entitlement, not merely a goal.


9 posted on 11/06/2015 7:18:12 AM PST by Wiser now (Socialism does not eliminate poverty, it guarantees it.)
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To: Academiadotorg
If I didn't have to pay so much taxes, I could save much more.

10 posted on 11/06/2015 7:18:18 AM PST by BitWielder1 (I'd rather have Unequal Wealth than Equal Poverty.)
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To: Steely Tom

Unless the grandson decides to go to college or trade school. I tied every thing into trust funds. I left the grandson’s money in a trust fund for education, and not any thing else, if he does not go for higher ed or tech school for a trade, they he has to wait until he is 25.

Eliminated probate that way and possible lawsuits.


11 posted on 11/06/2015 7:18:38 AM PST by GailA (If You don't keep your Promises to Our Troops, thu won't keep them to anyone. Ret. SCPO's wife)
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To: Academiadotorg

Said the fox to the farmer, “I’ll guard your henhouse. Trust me.”


12 posted on 11/06/2015 7:18:52 AM PST by ScottinVA (If you're not enraged...why?)
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To: DCBryan1

>> Lots of people will be decorating lamp posts around America if they try to seize IRAs/401k, etc.

I personally think academics look really cool hanging from lampposts. Every university town should have a few (dozen) decorated lampposts.


13 posted on 11/06/2015 7:19:59 AM PST by Nervous Tick (There is no "allah" but satan, and mohammed was his demon-possessed tool.)
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To: Steely Tom

The grifters are saying in a nice way, “we’re about to pickpocket you but don’t touch mine”. Maybe the socialists should go live in Venezuela and see the end results of their madness.


14 posted on 11/06/2015 7:20:15 AM PST by jsanders2001
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To: Steely Tom

Academics who all have nice fat TIAA-CREF accounts.

...

And many of them have an income that is largely due to Big Government.


15 posted on 11/06/2015 7:21:56 AM PST by Moonman62 (The US has become a government with a country, rather than a country with a government.)
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To: Wiser now

>> In other words, a ‘comfortable retirement’ has become an entitlement, not merely a goal.

You left out “equitable”, as in “EVERYONE is entitled to a comfortable, equitable retirement, regardless of gender, race, sexual preference, creed, ability, or work hostory”.


16 posted on 11/06/2015 7:23:36 AM PST by Nervous Tick (There is no "allah" but satan, and mohammed was his demon-possessed tool.)
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To: Academiadotorg

Mark Levin interviewed this gal in 2008. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jehb3S6Sr4o


17 posted on 11/06/2015 7:24:01 AM PST by Dana1960
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To: GailA

I made my heirs wait till they are 60. They can work and have the money that will continue to grow for retirement.


18 posted on 11/06/2015 7:26:10 AM PST by therut
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To: Academiadotorg

“You didn’t make that.”


19 posted on 11/06/2015 7:27:00 AM PST by Fido969
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To: Dana1960

Excellent resource.


20 posted on 11/06/2015 7:27:01 AM PST by tbw2
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