Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyTexan
They can do that to themselves because they are the employer. But so far the public discussions have only talked about the other retirement vehicles..401K and IRA and have never even mentioned private pensions.
I'm following this and have been for a few years. Us peons are still safe.
If I were a government worker though I would definitely get myself educated on their proposals and weigh the effect on one's retirement.
The problem though is not how money goes INTO the accounts but how it would come out.
I have read proposals of putting people on annuities with COLA adjustments each year. That takes away your choice, doesn't give you access to your funds and treats your retirement funds like SS. What if you wanted a lump sum distribution or part distribution, part annuity ?
Anyway..it pays to pay attention to what the government does with their own workers' pensions because it's plausible that they could try to implement this to the public.
FWIW, Americans have amassed over $1 trillion in 401K/IRA/Roth/etc retirement accounts.
You can only imagine what Congress would do if they got access to those funds.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyTexan
Hey..follow what is going on if you want. If you don't think this is plausible then don't follow it.
But don't deny that the talks and proposals aren't happening because they are and have been for a few years now.
Even the DOL had a public hearing (3 days I think) on "Lifetime Income Options" for Americans.
Here's the link: (links to the transcripts of those hearings are on that page)
Lifetime Income Options For Participants And Beneficiaries In Retirement Plans
In all cases it involves the Fed Government taking ownership of all retirement funds and making decisions on the distribution of those funds upon retirement. |
Don't let them push you into one mass retirement plan.
You need three potential sources of retirement income:
1] a pension plan or some kind of 401(k) plan
2] your personal retirement savings
3] some form of guaranteed income, like Social Security, but not necessarily Social Security.
Some kind of end-of-life insurance would be best. Pay $21/month and get $500,000 guaranteed, like life-insurance.
Retiring...
Mircea
Quote:
Originally Posted by toodie
Thank you for posting! Anything with the words, "Government run" makes me shiver. No, thanks. Our SS trust fund has been stolen, and that's bad enough.
best, toodie
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Doesn't matter. Even if you had gold bullion sitting in your OASI, OADI and HI Trust Funds they will fail, because they were never fully funded.
Or to use Democrat-speak, they were "unfunded social welfare programs."
Realistically...
Mircea
Quote:
Originally Posted by tofurkey
TENTH ANNUAL PENSIONS AND CAPITAL STEWARDSHIP CONFERENCE
March 2012
Pensions and Capital Stewardship Project, Labor and Worklife Program
Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Hank Kim, Executive Director, National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems
“What Can the Role of Pension Funds Be in Economic Growth and Job Creation?”
Financial Market Post-Meltdown: Are We At the Beginning or the End of the Change That is Needed?
“Should Pension Funds Invest in Commodities? If So What Are the Implications for Them....and Others?”
“Infrastructure Investments by New York City Unions’ Pension Funds: A Promising Plan? Reasons, Risks, Recommendations”
“Investment in Private Markets: Rewards, Risks, and Implications for Economic Growth and Jobs – Good Jobs? – Creation”
Doing Well by Doing Good? The Public Sector Plan Role in Enabling Private Sector Worker Participation Retirement Plans
http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/...Hank%20Kim.pdf
April 2012
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That is all bad.
The only thing more frightening than "White House" is "Ivy League" or "Harvard."
LBJ was right...the "you-Harvards" are useless and done nothing but mess up the entire world.
Pension funds need to be kept separate, apart and isolated out-of-the-loop, just like your mortgages need to be.
Note that if your mortgage finance system was isolated, the damage would not have been so great.
Portending....
Mircea
Quote:
Originally Posted by shiftymh
Lemme guess, they're going to steal from people to give it to those who didn't save as much to ensure 'fairness'.
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Yes.
The financial and economic future of your country is incredibly bleak.
The US isn't going to burn down, fall over and sink into a swamp, but let's just say that Disco will sound good (again -- I guess -- not that it ever did) and people will be reminiscing about the 70s.
They're trying to weasel-dick their way out of their obligations by spreading the "pain" around.
Fairly...
Mircea
Quote:
Originally Posted by middle-aged mom
Historical long term capital gains tax rates:
1942-67: 25%
1976: 39.9 %
1979: 28 %
1982: 20 %
1987: 28 %
1997: 20 %
2003: 15% till 2005
2005:15% till 2010
2010: 15% till 2012 ( extended by Obama)
In other words, capital gains were taxed at less than 20% in only 7 out of the past 70 years. There is nothing in our history or experience that says that unearned income has to be taxed this lightly. It’s not a time-honored principle. Should the very wealthy like Warren Buffet and Mitt Romney pay the same % as most?
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There's lots of things that say that it must be taxed that lightly. I was going to go into a rant and throw up some Congressional Research Service data, but BigJon already covered that here...
Quote:
Originally Posted by BigJon3475
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By the way, you can find those same graphs in the CRS reports.
The evidence clearly and convincingly shows that lower Capital Gains Tax Rates produce more tax revenues for government, while higher Capital Gains Tax Rates result in a loss of revenues for government.
One needs only to look at the Clinton Era. Capital Gains rates were cut and tax revenues damn-near started falling out of the sky showering the government with money that it never had before.
Quote:
Originally Posted by middle-aged mom
The average projected life was like 59 years when SS was created in the 1930s. This means if one managed to live 6 years beyond the projection, they got the benefit no matter what they contributed. It took the collective earning power of the baby boom to get the WW@ generation through. What has changed is projected life and the medical costs associated with old age. Using the same logic that was in place when SS was created, people should not be eligiblee for a SS pull till their 80's. With 10,000 people turning 65 each day for the next 20 years, something has to give. And I say this as someone who is a tad closer to 65 than I am to 45.
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Your logic is extremely faulty.
Life expectancy was never the problem. The problem is that Social Security is a Ponzi-Scheme.
At start-up, you had 48 workers for each person collecting Social Security benefits. By the 1950s you were down to 16 workers for each person collecting benefits. That dropped to 8 workers per retiree in the 1960s.
From the 1970s to the first part of this century, it had stabilized at a rate of 3 workers for each beneficiary. That is stable in the short-term, but not over the long-term.
Now, you have 2.1 workers per retiree. You weren't supposed to have a 2 to 1 ratio until 2035.
That's why you cannot fund Social Security....there aren't enough worker bees paying taxes, and worse than that, the wages of the worker bees have been stagnant/declining, so that less money is being collected.
There is no way a 1% tax could have ever funded Social Security through time --- even if the life expectancy decreased.
You can "fix" Social Security, but only for the short-term and mid-term, and only at great cost to your economy, meaning you'll lose jobs, have even lower wages, and a lower standard of living.
There is no way to save Social Security for Generation Y.
Quote:
Originally Posted by middle-aged mom
Israel leads the world in VC and taxes capital gains at 25%. 2/3 of funding comes from non- Israel sources.
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The US subsidizes Israel through no-interest loans, low interest loans (below market rates are set rates), and the US gives away tax-payer money to Israel.
Israel also benefits from the fact that all Israeli imports are tax-free, tariff-free and duty-free, which means US taxpayers lose money because they are not collecting imposts from Israeli imports.
What Israel does concerning tax policy is hardly relevant to the US.
Economically...
Mircea
Quote:
Originally Posted by malamute
You will still have social security checks if you worked a mere 10 years. That is the government's forced retirement plan, we don't need another.
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That isn't entirely true.
You need 40 quarters. During each quarter, you must earn a certain amount of money in order to get credit for that quarter. The amount of money you must earn changes over time, meaning that when this was enacted (I believe in the 1970s) $258 and is now $1,130 per quarter.
Bending points...
Mircea
Quote:
Originally Posted by Minethatbird
Pardon me, but the last I checked an IRA was a private investment product. Who is BO to tell me I can't buy it?  |
He is The Boy King™.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mohawkx
Social Security has been modified twice since it's inception to stabilize it. Both efforts succeeded. Once in the 70s and again by Reagan in 1986. It can be modified and stabilized again to account for the changing demographics. Dems want to modify and stabilize. Repubs want to kill it. that's the basic difference.
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You don't understand the underlying issues.
There is no way to "
modify and stabilize" Social Security without destroying your economy.
You don't have enough people working to fund Social Security. Make no mistake about it -- this has nothing to do with unemployment rates. Whether your unemployment rate was 10% or 1% does not alter the fact that you
cannot fund Social Security.
The issue is your labor participation rate. It is not where it needs to be to generate the tax income necessary to fund Social Security. Like I said, a 5% unemployment rate with a 64% labor participation rate is a total fail.
You need a labor participation rate of 66.8% to 67.4% to fund Social Security -- and you'll still need to raise the FICA/SECA tax rate to do that.
On top of that wages have been declining since the Clinton Era, and they will continue to decline for the next 40 years until there is some global equilibrium among wages.
No, sorry, eliminating the cap for Social Security will not cover the sort falls. You'll need to find $500 Billion per year in just 8 years, and then 8 years later you'll need $1 TRILLION -- and you ain't got it.
Financially....
Mircea
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