Democrats: Give Us Your 401K

Don’t worry folks, your 401K’s will be fine. Just let democrats and the government take care of it for you.

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House Democrats recently invited Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School of Social Research, to testify before a subcommittee on her idea to eliminate the preferential tax treatment of the popular retirement plans. In place of 401(k) plans, she would have workers transfer their dough into government-created "guaranteed retirement accounts" for every worker. The government would deposit $600 (inflation indexed) every year into the GRAs. Each worker would also have to save 5 percent of pay into the accounts, to which the government would pay a measly 3 percent return.

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Wait a second. The government taking part of your retirement money and investing it in private companies, have I not heard this before?

I will be willing to bet two things:

1. The government will not willingly give up it's controlling interest in the company, which makes the US government slowly gain control of a private business and the private sector of our economy. We have seen how well semi Government controlled companies have done for us lately (Fannie/Freddie anyone).

2. Who gets the choice of what companies the government will buy into? Do you really think that politics will be left at the door?

I wonder how close this Democrat Congressional bill will be to Bush's one that got shot down three years ago.

If my studies are correct, this idea and Bush's idea sounds a little like FDR's original Social Security Retirement bill in which Government invested of a portion of your retire taxes/money. It was shot down then for fears of Government's interference in private business; it needs to be shot down again.

The US Government is already way too far into taking over private businesses with what Bush is hoping will be temporary. But when a Democrat gets placed in that office, there will be no one to stop the government from permanently controlling the industry and finance of this country.

I am afraid that Socialism is here to stay people.

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I am afraid that Socialism is here to stay people.

Sad to say, I agree with you. I feel for my children and grand children most of all. "Grandpa, tell me about the time you could go where you wanted to when you wanted to - we like to hear those fairy tales".

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Quoting Dr Guy,

comment 2

hmm... why would it be a fairy tale? I d say the two most important traits the founding fathers gave us is industriousness, and VIOLENCE. I m pretty sure many Americans still have both traits.

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Unless US law is radically different to how it works here (and as a general rule it's not), I wouldn't have thought a democrat government could bind it's successors into keeping a particular piece of legislation, meaning that presumably if they introduced a bunch of stuff that was seen as a disaster, the republicans could then get voted in and repeal/remove it. Obviously they could make it politically difficult, and introduce costs to dissuade a future government from removing it, but that's about all I could see happening, hence I can't help but feel there's a slight overreaction to the likely state of the US in the future if Obama gets into power.

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