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This schadenfreude is narrow sighted. You can stiff me by asking me to fund a Mickey mouse 401k to the tune of 50-75% of my full time employed income to an amortization of 30 years. I'll end up underfunded just like 95% of the working stiffs out there. Then comes the swath of under-funded retirees pushing back on society and taxes will have to fill in the differential in order to avert civil unrest and mass insolvency in the streets. We're paying either way.
Now, you offer me an employer funded B-fund or double my wage to effectively make that contribution myself? Sure, it's all good. But you can't tell the median in this Country to self-fund retirement on their current wages, that paycut is unworkable. All that does is further incentivize underfunding.
I can do the math today at 32, knowing I can't get there on defined contribution alone. Even as a 80th percentile household and a savings rate of 24K/yr that's enough to cover the revolving rainy day fund, maintenance funds on housing, transportation and medical emergencies, and maybe steal a bit of it to top off a kid's college education or so, while having a social life worth waking up in the morning for in the first place. I would need to save at least an additional 15K/yr in untouched retirement contributions at my current age to get to a dopey 1MM in order to retire. Starting a decade earlier was impossible; I made nothing as a 22 year old. So let's get real. That's almost 40K/yr net between straight savings and retirement fund contributions. 90% of the Country can't do that. Make more money, right? Exactly. Good luck with that one. And I'm an 80th percentile household. This Country is flocked.
I'm personally comfortable with my choice to be employed by the government and get that pension promise along with SS. By the time we default on that promise, all y'all will be right there with me, and I like socialized losses if you're gonna stiff me out of socialized profits.
It's time private industry figure out a way to profit share better. I'm cool with B-funds if wage increases or pensions are not palatable. But you can't treat people like commodities. They don't die quietly, they never do. You pay for it on the back end.
I couldn't agree more, most people couldn't save enough in their 401K even if they maxed it out every year, which most do not. The defined contribution method is a cruel scam played on the American people.
Honestly, a portion of every pension, IRA, and 401K should just be nationalized into an annuity now and get everyone back to some sort of defined benefit. Maybe even a one time 20% corporate tax. The country would be better off.
Of course, Lessing is best known for this little gem about the two toddlers that she abandoned. "There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children."
Of course, Lessing is best known for this little gem about the two toddlers that she abandoned. "There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children."
I will admire that . . . and this rag.
And this has what to do with the topic of the thread?
I expect them to live very modest lives than enable them to get by on your 60 hour scenario.
Your boundless cluelessness allows you to expect the impossible. You want those with two jobs to get third. While the bottom 40% has virtually no wealth of any kind at all, your response is that they should open a 401-k. You could hardly be any further into la-la-land.
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Originally Posted by bobtn
That might mean living as a boarder, using only public transit or driving a old car, no cable, nothing beyond a very basic phone, no entertainment in ones budget..whatever it takes to make the budget work.
In comparison to you, Marie Antoinette was a paragon of understandng and compassion for the poor.
not necessarely. 4% "gain" vs 6% gain (in your example)
Then you pay fees and taxes on that gain...
You didn't note the loss of tax deductions (every year) that results from paying down a mortgage. Your gross cashflow in that case stays the same, but your after-tax cashflow worsens. This is a durable loss that persists until the note is paid off. But such marginal effects are not the point of a gross analysis.
Paying off a low-interest mortgage (and most by this time should meet that criterion) is not necessarily a wise move. Period. Cuckoo pop-media blabberers can say whatever they want, but the math won't change. As I've more than once previously said -- YMMV: Your mileage may vary. Examine the landscape that you are standing on, but know that trying to pay off a mortgage can be among the worst financial choices available to you.
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Originally Posted by Themanwithnoname
Personally I chose the mortgage... It was a mistake. Not loosing, but the return isn't enough for the trade off. Risk is dependant on your comfort level.
That's fine. It's a free country. People are allowed to make choices. Choices are best made when fully informed about the facts, but there are no criminal sanctions involved in deciding to max out touchy-feely factors instead the hard, cold, practical ones. If that's what you choose to do however, advertising it as having been a financially savvy move would be dishonest.
Yeah, the national debt is staggering. There seems to be not a single iota of recognition by Obama that this is a problem.
That's because it isn't a problem. It wasn't for the Republicans either until they needed something to attack Obama for. Since dealing with the Republican-inspired Great Recession was going to involve increases in spending and debt, they decided to attack -- spending and debt. The gullible fall for this nonsense because they are not educated enough to be able to keep themselves from falling for the goofball notion that a national government budget is just the same as a household budget, only bigger. People actually sit around worrying about how we are ever going to pay off this $17 trillion debt as if it were all owed to some payday lender and goons were going to come over and bust our kneecaps or something. That's not going to happen and neither is paying off the debt. We will NEVER pay off the debt and neither will any of the other major national economies who are carrying public debt, which is all of them.
What's actually staggering is the general lack of understanding of public finance and national economics. Read something. Take a course at your local community college. Simply relying on stupid partisan propaganda is not going to get the job done.
Never said tarp and bailouts were the same.GM got money for stocks certainly and now we see them wanting to sell the stock at loss. Bet GM can't wait as terms like bonus end then.Kind of like blaming the lenders without looking the those who took loans .A lot of blame to go around right back to congress and its wealth sharing thinking.
The auto bailouts cost a few billion borrowed dollars of TARP money that was mostly recouped, and at a critical juncture, they saved about 3 million jobs, including in some ancillary industries that were critical to non-auto sectors as well. Would have been a bargain at many times the price.
What I find ironic about the thread topic is what has occurred in the past. Charles Grassley (been on the government tit his whole life), and John Boehner were the sponsor of the Pension Protection Act of 2006 that essentially doubled the burdens of these plans pushing them sooner onto the PBGC. By going back to the table now, are we saying they didn't do enough? Did not we screw over our elderly fast enough. Why did GOP members who are typically opposed to anything to do with Unions take on Pension reform as if they were helping Americans?
IMHO, placing additional burdens on multi employer pensions will only speed up their default. Some of these plans are strong like the one I belong too, and others have been significantly reduced in favor of corporate management styles like Walmart were taxpayers subsidize their profits.
A lot of people today complain that the current ACA is going to be a welfare program of healthcare for the poor. Honestly, I just don't see the poor as having the resources to even make a minimum payment. The point is that the 401k (of which financial institutions get to skim, and pensions couldn't be) push that started back in the early 80's by Reagan of personal responsibility (typical Ayn Rand ideal) as a way of replacing pensions is not working. Some manage to save a little when times are good, but it's a proven fact that most spend this money prior to retirement. Bottom line is that it is not working as thought originally.
Social Security was intended to be a supplement to other forms of aged income. However, more and more people it is becoming a sole source of income. If something in our working class structure doesn't change soon we will have an aged population of welfare recipients. As citizens we only expect our government to govern, and the current trend of total unleashed, deregulated, corporate capitalism's greed is leaving the citizens of this country behind. Without placed expectations on these corporations the above mentioned will only get worse.
Our fore father put into place the estate tax, because in England they saw the corruption of what occurred when wealth was allowed to pass from one generation to the next. Currently, each child may inherit in excess of 5 million, but some feel that's not enough, and call for the estate tax to be abolished. They use terms like death tax, and or a family will lose it's farm. Reality is that people that lose the family business is such a small percentage, and usually is due to mismanagement, or not staying updated. What would the founders think of what we've done by selling out to the very ideals they fought against?
In 2001, the American Farm Bureau Federation set out to document the many cases of family farms being sold off in order to pay the estate taxes due on them. The number of cases that they uncovered was -- ZERO. None at all. And that was under the much more stringent estate taxes of the pre-Bushie era. The whole notion is nothing but a perpetuated right-wing myth sopped up by the incredibly dull and gullible.
The corporatists of course operate on the same principle when it comes to pensions. Lie, cheat, and steal until someone comes along and makes you stop.
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