The steal your 401k queen, Ghilarducci, is at it again.

[charliebrown]

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily...3Rpb25z;_ylv=3

"Saving for retirement has become especially hard for many Americans who are struggling to pay everyday expenses. That's why Ghilarducci wants to reform Americans' approach to retirement. She advocates instituting mandatory retirement accounts for all Americans. These would be professionally managed with a guaranteed rate return and annuity payment. This mandated account would be a supplement — not a replacement — to Social Security and other private retirement accounts."

And if it is so hard to save, how is mandating savings going to work? I guess discretionary companies better duck and cover as joe consumer will
not be able to buy their starbucks, cable TV and i gadget because another x % are deducted from their check before they see it. And maybe
those just barely scratching by on their mortgage payments are going to have to go into foreclosure.

And how is a professionally managed account going to work? All those really smart people who said 2008 would never happen, buy and hold, etc etc. Is it going to be a 60/40 stock bond portfolio that will get killed when interest rates go up? When the stock market treads water for another decade, and that guaranteed annuity has to start paying who is going to make up the difference? The treasury? So now I am relying on a bunch of half-wits for my SS check, medicare and my retirement account, they have useright where the want us now don't they????

And what about issues of gvt buying stocks and bonds. Will the gvt lean on Exxon, AT&T, IBM, JP Morgan etc with necessary regulation when it will blow up the retirement trust??

[don]

Re: The steal your 401k queen, Ghilarducci, is at it again.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily...3Rpb25z;_ylv=3

"Saving for retirement has become especially hard for many Americans who are struggling to pay everyday expenses. That's why Ghilarducci wants to reform Americans' approach to retirement. She advocates instituting mandatory retirement accounts for all Americans. These would be professionally managed with a guaranteed rate return and annuity payment. This mandated account would be a supplement — not a replacement — to Social Security and other private retirement accounts."

And if it is so hard to save, how is mandating savings going to work? I guess discretionary companies better duck and cover as joe consumer will
not be able to buy their starbucks, cable TV and i gadget because another x % are deducted from their check before they see it. And maybe
those just barely scratching by on their mortgage payments are going to have to go into foreclosure.

And how is a professionally managed account going to work? All those really smart people who said 2008 would never happen, buy and hold, etc etc. Is it going to be a 60/40 stock bond portfolio that will get killed when interest rates go up? When the stock market treads water for another decade, and that guaranteed annuity has to start paying who is going to make up the difference? The treasury? So now I am relying on a bunch of half-wits for my SS check, medicare and my retirement account, they have useright where the want us now don't they????

And what about issues of gvt buying stocks and bonds. Will the gvt lean on Exxon, AT&T, IBM, JP Morgan etc with necessary regulation when it will blow up the retirement trust??

FIRE BS up the yin yang . . .

[Milton Kuo]

Re: The steal your 401k queen, Ghilarducci, is at it again.

"Saving for retirement has become especially hard for many Americans who are struggling to pay everyday expenses. That's why Ghilarducci wants to reform Americans' approach to retirement. She advocates instituting mandatory retirement accounts for all Americans. These would be professionally managed with a guaranteed rate return and annuity payment. This mandated account would be a supplement — not a replacement — to Social Security and other private retirement accounts."

jk recently posted an article attributed to Ghilarducci and there was one passage in it that made me furious:

Seventy-five percent of Americans nearing retirement age in 2010 had less than $30,000 in their retirement accounts.

Assuming that an average American works 40 years before retiring, the aforementioned seventy-five percent could not even be bothered to save roughly $700 per year for every year they worked? These are the Baby Boomers who arguably had it better than any generation in American history. Ghilarducci is calling for a giveaway to a generation of grasshoppers (locusts) who fiddled away their springs and summers.

When the stock market treads water for another decade, and that guaranteed annuity has to start paying who is going to make up the difference?

I've been meaning to follow up on this since you first brought Ghilarducci to our attention. She has mentioned that the funding of this Guaranteed Retirement Account program would not incur new debt but would be funded by eliminating the tax deferral benefits of 401Ks and IRAs. At the time, I didn't quite understand why it was so important to state where funding for the GRA would come from until I thought about it further. While I'm not 100% certain, I believe it's because a GRA, if enacted, would result in a situation where the first generation's recipients get benefits without ever having to pay in to the system.

Lousy investment return and general malfeasance risks aside, having subsequent generations pay for previous generations almost guarantees that the program will ultimately go bust as it's a pyramid scheme, just like Social Security.

[gwynedd1]

Re: The steal your 401k queen, Ghilarducci, is at it again.

FIRE BS up the yin yang . . .

All the way to the top of the yin yang....

[flintlock]

Re: The steal your 401k queen, Ghilarducci, is at it again.

In the future, the retirement funds of those "more fortunate" will be raided to pay for these type programs. Count on it. The USA is on an unsustainable path and when other options are exhausted, ya think they are just going to turn us into soylent green? This is a serious problem. The nanny state has trained people not to be self-reliant, and to not fear failure. They wont take kindly to this new normal. And they will all have a vote. President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho will win by a landslide.

[dcarrigg]

Re: The steal your 401k queen, Ghilarducci, is at it again.

In the future, the retirement funds of those "more fortunate" will be raided to pay for these type programs. Count on it. The USA is on an unsustainable path and when other options are exhausted, ya think they are just going to turn us into soylent green? This is a serious problem. The nanny state has trained people not to be self-reliant, and to not fear failure. They wont take kindly to this new normal. And they will all have a vote. President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho will win by a landslide.

You like money too? We should hang out.