Dem leaders in the U.S. House discuss confiscating 401k, IRA

[brinstar]

war is peace
freedom is slavery

[Arlos]

Oh please. Stop with the Chicken Little with no evidence already.

Might I suggest you look up a logic term called: "The Slippery Slope Fallacy"?

-Arlos

[Diekan]

Is there ANYTHING you don't trust the government with?

How many programs do they need to bankrupt, detroy or mishandle before you admit they are not the cure-all for everything?

You don't think they'd chomp at the bit (once they get control of YOUR retirement) to start putting age limits in place?

[Kramer]

i get it that people don't want the government involved with their money, and the argument that it's socialist is weak but i get that too, though you criticize a new "liberal" government for this but what do you say about your own party that HANDED 700 BILLION DOLLARS to people who pissed it away in the first place?

i mean, what measure are you using to say, "it's SO much worse for the govt. to attempt to look out for people's investments by taking control of them and reducing the risk of potential collapses?"

certainly it's not perfect and i think the govt. should take it's hands out completely, but it seems like you want to support an admin that made heinous mistakes and then turn around and attack another one for trying to do something to actually DIERECTLY protect a citizen's investment, even if it is at a lower interest rate

i mean do you think the "indirect assistance" of govt. hand outs to billion dollar corporations is WAY better than actually intervening on the individuals behalf and trying to look out for them?


You use Socialist like it is a 4 letter word, have you got any idea that in the majority of the world, of which 2/3 + live in poverty, Capitalism is a 4 letter word?

[Arlos]

Oh please.

I repeat something I've said before. Look at the administrative overhead for Medicare compared to private insurance companies. Medicare is 3%, private insurance companies run 20-30%. Which one is mismanaging money?

Yes, previous congresses have borrowed the hell out of social security, which will cause problems later if something isn't done. But I think we've just seen that Bush's plan of putting everything in the stock market would have been utterly and totally disastrous. Even as it is, how many people lost their entire 401k's because they were invested in financial stocks, say? You don't think those people wish their money had been invested in a governmentally guaranteed account?

You are making absolutely wild accusations with absolutely no basis in evidence whatsoever. You are also ridiculously conflating stalinist communism with socialism, which are two radically different things. Not to mention, this country is HARDLY socialist, even if we DO borrow some ideas that might traditionally be considered as having originated with socialism. Gee, looking at what works and borrowing those ideas and adapting them to ourselves.... WHAT A HORRIBLE CONCEPT.

Seriously man, you have descended well into the Tinfoil Hat Zone recently. I remind you that I accurately predicted just what a disaster Bush's 2nd term would be, including calling a lot of what went wrong, and specifically said that people would regret it if they gave him a 2nd term. You, meanwhile, cheerfully voted for the bastard. Which one of us has a better track record of accuracy, hmmm?

-Arlos

[Diekan]

Looking back to the irresponsibility of the government's past (especially with social security itself), how could anyone think their taking over our private retirements a good idea?

If they take over our retirements the next step will be for them to place age limits on when we can access it. They do it now with social security. And why wouldn’t they? The longer they hold the money, not only do get the more time to spend it, but the longer you work the more income taxes they collect from you. Not only that, but if you read the proposal you’ll see that as part of the move they’ll be taxing the hell out of our retirements as well. Moreover, they’re going to guarantee a meager 3% return? So instead of the letting the free market build our retirements at 10% or more we'll be foreced to work longer just to compensate the differences in growth.

Here again we’re attacking something that isn’t the problem instead of fixing it. People didn’t lose money in the retirement accounts because of a “flawed” retirement system. People lost money because Wall Street was left unchecked and virtually unregulated. But, rather than focusing on where things went wrong there and subsequently fixing THAT problem, we’ll just let the government take everything over. As you pointed out Bush's investment in an unchecked Wall Street was a large part of the problem. Before that things were fine, so rather than reversing what Bush did do we now suddenly need a Nanny Government taking everything over?

They’re already in charge of a “retirement plan” and they’ve practically bankrupted it. What gives you the confidence they won’t do it again?

Do you honestly think either Democrat or Repbulican isn't licking their chops at the idea of getting their hands on the BILLIONS of dollars of our retirements funds? You don't think they're standing in line waiting to "borrow" from it to fund this or that project, plan, policy, whatever? Come on, I know you're smarter than that.

You can make all the tinfoil hat remarks you want, but I am simply amazed you don’t see the danger (in light of our government’s long storied history of utter incompetence and inefficiency) of the government taking over our PRIVATE and personal retirements.

I want to know why we don’t make a concerted effort to fix the problems of the systems we already have in place; or enforce the laws that have always been in place.

The difference between us is that I don’t trust the government as much as you.

[Harrison]

Where the fuck do they get off doing anything with PRIVATELY invested money anyways?

Fucking stupid idea and anyone who goes along with it might as well be castrated as to prevent that level of stupidity passing on to their retarded children.

[Diekan]

I understand what he [Arlos] is trying to say. He expects that the government will be able to provide a greater degree of stability with more of a guarantee that our money will still be there when we retire. And, IF our government was responsible with money and IF they hadn’t already brought social security to the verge of bankruptcy, I’d agree with him.

The facts are though that our government can’t and shouldn’t be trusted with our private retirements. He gets a dig in that I’m being too paranoid, but he forgot the recent bailout bill that was passed by BOTH Democrats (with a majority) and Republicans. I think this is an important point to reference because the bailout bill ended up including close to 108 billion dollars of extra pork. Both parties have become spend thrifts with our money and neither have manned up to take responsibility.

I am basing my distrust of our government on past experience and observation. For me it’s analogous to a football game. If your place kicker has a record of 1- 19 are you going to trust him to make the game winning field goal, or are you going to risk the 4th and inches and head to overtime if necessary?

About the age limit. I am sure they’ll strive to include it just as sure as I am sitting here. I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the bill have a stipulation that we won’t be allowed to activate our retirement payments until we reach a certain age. They’ve already done so with social security and it is the social security administration that’s supposedly going to manage this new program. There are just too many benefits for them not to. For one, as I said before, by imposing an age limit they can be assured to gain that much more income tax from you in the long term. Secondly, the older you are, the closer to death you ultimately are. Sure, that sounds a bit out there, but if you start collecting at 65 as opposed to 55, that’s that much less money they’ll have to pay out (when you die, they'll get to keep the balance). Third, by forcing you to wait to a certain age before declaring retirement, they’ll have that much more time to “invest” your money in their agenda with the promise to “pay it back” when the time comes. The same BS they fed us with social security – and it didn’t work.

They offer a promise of a 3% return per year. That’s shit. A good CD can earn more than that. The markets in the long term result in well over 10%, ultimately. With that low of a return you’ll have to, again, work that much longer to accumulate enough “wealth” to retire.

I keep screaming about fixing the problem rather than simply smoothing it over with another incentive, law or “proactive initiative.” There is nothing wrong, nothing broken, with the current 401k / IRA programs. The problems have arisen from the lack of oversight and a failure to enforce existing laws that would have prevented Wall Street's wolves from getting away with what they did. It was a failure of the SEC, the Justice Department and both political parties. The solution is actually very simple. Fix Wall Street by enforcing laws and oversight. Hold CEO’s accountable for their actions. Eliminate short selling. Etc and etc.

Besides it never fails... we hear cries that sky is falling every time we're in a bear market. The markets are cyclic, always have been, always will be. FIX the corruption on Wall Street and you'll be very surprised how quickly things will turn around...

But you see, that’ll never happen because the idea of getting their hands on billions and billions of dollars is just too tempting.

[Gaazy]

I didnt bother to read that big ass article about what they want to do, but I just have a bad gut feeling about giving my accounts over to the government. Of course, they arent real huge or anything, im only 23 for fucks sake, but still. All the shits that happened lately financially, why should I trust anyone with anything anymore?

[Kramer]

He {kramer} i think is who you were referring too, and i agree that it is total folly to take private money from people to keep it safe, i don't think anyone trusts the government that much....

i am buying up all the bullion i can and making a bunker west of Santa Fe


and the reference to Stalin is pure Dramarama