Comments on: Guaranteed Retirement Accounts: Trick or Treat?

By: L Mad

L Mad — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 11:23:07 +0000

The mass media is in it with the progressive movement so do not expect to here anything about this until a bill is introduced and sold the same way the health care bill was.

This progressive movement began with Pres. Woodrow Wilson continued with Pres. Franklin D Roosevelt then LBJ, Clinton now Barak.
This movement has been taking place for over 80 years, by progressives infiltrating politicians, govt workers, academia, and major news networks. Progressives have figured the best way to hide their intention for more govt control is saying they are creating fairness. So they think your stupid, the question is are you? God gave us brains to figure this out but we have also become apathetic as the middle class is to busy with family and work.

By: Tom Martin

Tom Martin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:21:33 +0000

Is it my imagination or doesn’t this sound just like another attempt by our government to take more away from us? Why don’t we hear more about these things in the media?

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:03:19 +0000

Teresa Ghilarducci isn’t the only one advocating “reforming,” that is, eliminating 401(k) plans. For example, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008, on PBS’s Newshour, Jacob Hacker, professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of “The Great Risk Shift,” said “I think that we should be taking this opportunity to start thinking about how we might want to restructure 401(k) plans so that they can provide a more secure source of retirement income for workers….such as providing people with a promise of a relatively guaranteed benefit…” [transcript available here http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec08/retirement_11-20.html
Furthermore, Hacker continued, 401(k) plans “…are highly unequal. So 70 percent of the $135 billion that we spend to subsidize 401(k)s and IRAs is going to the richest 20 percent of Americans. We need to make that more broadly distributed as part of a larger package of reforms that will put our retirement security system on a more secure foundation for the future.”
The subsidy Hacker is talking about the fact that employee deposits to 401(k)s, 403(b)s and IRAs are made with pretax dollars. I think that, like Teresa Ghilarducci, he would favor refundable tax credit — basically a government match — for low and middle income workers — “funded” by denying a tax advantage to anyone for savings beyond that basic amount.
This approach appears to be favored by advisers to president-elect Obama. It makes sense to replace tax deductibility with a refundable tax credit when you apply it to a consumption good that you want everyone to purchase a comparable amount, such as health care. But what this does for savings is raise the marginal tax rate on saving, discouraging those with higher incomes from saving at all. It would, instead, encourage them to change their pattern of saving and consumption so as to minimize their tax burden. This could result in a net reduction in saving , and therefore less capital investment. (Just the thing our economy needs right now!)

By: Scott Norman

Scott Norman — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 04:41:40 +0000

Very informative. In these times of crazy confusion and speculation, it is comforting to find useful information that is thoughtful and well researched.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 22:02:29 +0000

I agree. I think I’d rather be responsible for my own savings rather than entrust them to an organization that has shown time and again that saving money or even breaking even is a foreign concept.