"You can't fix stupid" is the name of one of Ron White's comedy shows. It's a saying that has really hit home and I hear it more and more these days. Hilary Clinton seems to think you can fix stupid. I'm not calling people who don't save for retirement stupid - for instance, had Chris Farley started saving for his retirement at 21, then he wasted good money that could have been spent on more coke and whores. I don't want to preach, this lesson in Slantedomics isn't about how or why you should be saving for retirement..... The lesson here is that she's trying to give a whale a Tic-Tac for bad breath and she wants people that have earned and saved over their lifetimes to pay for it. If you don't want to read the article, I'll give you just the facts. She thinks Americans aren't saving enough for retirement. I agree. But, I am saving enough for retirement, so I'm not too concerned that Billy & Betty down the street who go on $10,000 vacations and lease $50,000 cars are not. In fact, doesn't the government already have a plan that I pay for called Social Security that deals with this? Anyway - she wants the first $1000 that couples save for retirement to qualify them for a $1000 tax credit. My problem here is that it's not for all couples - just those couples making less than $60k a year. In case your family is in the six-figure domain, you get a $500 tax credit for your first $1000 in savings. If you make more than $100k a year, fend for yourself. There are so many thing wrong with this idea on so many levels that I can't even even list them all. First, it's going to cost $25 billion per year to implement. That's fine for her because she's going to repeal some of the death tax cuts that Bush correctly made to pay for it. Beautiful. So, somebody that accumulated wealth should now pay for someone to get $1000 tax credit? You know what, I might agree with this more if the $1000 was simply added to their existing 401(k) plan, but they get it as a tax credit! If you're truly concerned about them saving for retirement, why not MAKE them put it away for retirement? How about the statement shows $2000 once you put the first $1000 in? Why let them spend it on a Play Station? She says it's time for Americans to accumulate wealth again. Honey, wealth is not found in $1000 tax credits. In the words of Chris Rock....."Shaq isn't wealthy, Shaq is rich. The guy that signs Shaq's paychecks - he's wealthy." Word. Let me tell you something, how many new people are going to start saving for retirement just to get the $1000 tax break? I'm guessing that most of the people who will get this tax break already invest. Let's face it, if you're mid-career and haven't started saving already, you need to pile money away to reach 60-80% of your income through interest when you retire. The plan really is like shooting a spitwad at a Stealth Bomber. It sucks all the way around. It's an equal opportunity sucker. The plan itself sucks, the way it's paid for sucks, and the logic behind it sucks. It's feel good legislation in my opinion. The buzz that comes off of it for the clueless is "Hilary Clinton wants us to retire wealthy and she's going to help us and she's going to rob the uber rich to pay for it....yah!" In the end, it amounts to nothing and adds 11 pages to the already overburdened tax code. There are far too many "if's" in the tax code now. "If you did this and if you earn between this and this and if you if'd your iffer than you can get this but only if you ........". It's maddening. Flat tax me baby. I know I'll pay more with a flat tax than with the current tax code, but I don't care. I'll also do my taxes in 2 minutes. What did you earn? X. please pay X * 17%. Done. No credits. No farm questions. No gambling losses. No divorced kids deciding where they lived for most of the year. No daycare receipts. No medical receipts. No donation sheets. No church vouchers. No hybrid cars. No nothing. After all my deductions last year my effective tax rate was shocking based on where it started. I almost felt bad, until I remembered that a lot of my money is used for socialist programs that usually don't do any good anyway. If my tax dollars went to good, common sense programs, then maybe I'd be singing a different tune. I'm the farthest thing from a socialist or a communist, but if we were going to feed every kid in America - well, that's good. But if we're going to build a kabillion dollar bridge in Alaska to an island where 700 people live - that's bad. Make it so every kid has recess in school - good. Make it so retired Senators have golden parachute for life - bad. See how this works? Children and America's future = good. Greed and political favors = bad. What was my original point again? Oh yeah, Hilary sucks. And it bothers me to think that the best thing they can come up with to make people want to vote for her is a stinking lowly $1000 tax credit after you invest $1000 for retirement. B-O-R-I-N-G. She done needs a new think tank.
2 comments:
You are correct again, sir.
Hillary sucks. She sucked at her health care program during Bill's first term and she still sucks. Her ideas suck.
In fact, she even sucks at sucking! For we all know that if she was actually any good at sucking, we'd never have heard of Monica Lewinsky!
I completely agree with you on this one (and let me say that bro and I do not often agree on politics...)
I don't hate Hillary. I'm not sure I like her, but she doesn't bother me much. In fact, there are many days when I think she may in fact be smarter than Bill. But this one doesn't make sense. It's too little too late. A lousy $500 credit for the first $1000 saved just isn't going to add up to anything substantial for retirement for someone who isn't already saving. IF the $500 were going into the retirement account, it would make more sense, but it still isn't enough to solve the problem that most Americans are negative savers - we spend far more than we make, and we don't think enough about how we can sustain even a fraction of the grossly-overlived lifestyle in our future.
She did propose an interesting idea a few weeks ago, but her camp quickly took it off the table because she was getting slammed for its expense. I think it was a lump sum payment of $5k for each baby born in the US to grow into a college fund. Interesting idea, but can we put that $5k per new child into guaranteeing a good public education the the kid first and then we'll worry about funding college? Of course, I put a nice lump sum into a fund when my daughter was born 8 years ago, and it's worth a whopping few hundred dollars more now than it was then...!
I read somewhere once that if you could just plop $10k into an account each time a child is born, there would be a substantial retirement account there when the person turns 60 or 65 or something like that. Again, interesting, but where do you come up with that? It's probably cheaper in the long run than funding social security (which you could phase out), but where do you get the start-up investment?
Gotta love politics...both parties agree that schools should be better, healthcare needs reformed, we don't save enough, etc. But the big differences are in how to fund the projects.
Gasp...could I be tipping to the right?
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