Is this a good idea? http://schlagelcpa.com/blog/?p=92 http://wn.com/Must_Watch__Feds,_SEIU_Unions,_Democrats_want_your_401k_control_Fox_News http://www.sodahead.com/united-stat...-want-to-confiscate-your-ira401k/blog-398435/ I'm not sure what I thin yet. I'm waiting for the public comment time for the pros and cons.
I need to see more about it than the links you posted. In general, I would oppose forcing anyone to buy govt. bonds over anything else they'd choose. It's the person's money, after all. On the other hand, a 401K is a govt. contrived thing, and they have the right to change the rules for them. At least going forward; the existing investments should probably be grandfathered. In theory, US govt. bonds are the safest investments on the planet. But it sure seems like the govt. has so much need for buyers of its debt that it's desperate enough to take peoples' money for them this way.
I think I'd feel better about it if we had a balanced budget. If not, despite the taking of people's 401K's, they will have to take more and more as the yearly deficit grows.
They need to cut spending instead of talking about taking more control of more programs and more of our money.
The budget is $3.5T or so. About 20% of it is discretionary spending or about $700B. They're not going to be able to cut it all, or likely come close. This is the dirty little secret among the politicians these days. Even if they did, they'd only cut the deficit in half. They're going to have to tackle entitlements to drastically reduce spending. This means more taxes of some sort to pay for that part of the budget. We are so fucked.
Raise the retirement age and eligability for Medicare for everyone under 55, ramping it up over a decade to four or five years less than average life expectancy. Allow 1/3 to 2/5 of FICA payments to be invested privately to help with increasing the amount of SS available. Finally, have means testing for SS and Medicare.
You want to know my plan to end the deficit? http://www.machupicchu-inca.com/inca-mita.html Is that too socialist?
The budget is $3.5T. Maybe they could cut it 10% ($350B) by simply hiring 10% fewer people in all the departments and selling off 10% of the buildings the govt. owns and runs.
Don't get me started on trimming the fat... from my experience working around government, I could cut so many jobs and worthless programs. I would love to do away with Portland's city council, run for Mayor and walk around with pink slips and a ledger. I would get this city whipped into shape so fast, the Dems wouldn't be able to stop me fast enough!
The reason I say we're fucked is that the budget is $3.5T and the deficit is $1.5T (ok, exaggeration, but close enough to make the math easy to follow). $350B cut isn't enough, and we need to get to $2T to balance the budget. That's impossible if the obligations for the entitlements are $2T + $1.
The defense budget was $680 billion. I'm sure we could make a cut there, right? The next highest-spending country on defense was China at $98.8 billion. The US could cut their defense budget by $580 billion and still be #1 in defense spending. So there's a nice chunk of cash to help balance the budget.
I think defense expenditures have to be part of the discussion, but comparing the US to China isn't apples to apples. I'm guessing they pay less for their personnel than do well. Also, it's cheaper to rip off US and Russian designs than create them yourself. The roles are different; the Chinese are focused on being a regional power, while we're interested in force projection around the globe. Finally, they don't really care about casualities, so creating safer submarines or tanks is a second priority for them.
I'd be in favor of cutting defense, but I don't see it going under $400B or so. The Chinese simply have 4x the fit for duty people than we do, if not more. Or is the military yet another thing we should be 2nd rate at? Or maybe outsource those 2.7M jobs to the Chinese, too? The elephant in the room is the interest on the debt. At sub 1% interest rates, we're running huge structural deficits. If people stop buying them until the rates come up to 5%, we're paying well over $1T just in interest to the rich. You know, the people you hate.
The Chinese don't have a Navy or an Air Force even close to the level of ours. That's probably where the majority of the cost is going. Those ships are ex-pen-sive.
You'd be surprised at how many submarines (for instance) China has/is making. And probably at the quality of the newer ones.
But since our defense budget is 6x, ours are still better. right? I wanted to make "right?" into a tiny little font, but I don't seem to have the power to do that. barfo
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/jul/16/20040716-123134-8152r/ http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2006/03/Chinas-Submarine-Challenge http://www.strategypage.com/military_photos/military_photos_200471823.aspx http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2007/07/new_chinese_ballistic_missile.php
