And now the other shoe drops.
Benefit changes have the political virtue of appearing to be a free lunch, in the sense that the tax and wage base may remain unchanged, but the final product is diminished in scale and scope.
Like a frog being slowly boiled in increasingly heated water…
…the hope is that the public will […]
What could be worse than knowing that your taxes will go up and your future benefits will go down?
Not knowing. And not preparing in advance.
I am indebted to these sources for the summary findings that follow: the AARP Public Policy Institute, the Urban Institute, and the American Academy of Actuaries.
(In case you wondered, […]
There may be a solution to the dizzying array of retirement accounts we now face.
It will likely be forced on the political hierarchy by events that threaten to spiral out of control. We know that “reforms” will be applied to the entitlement programs…not because Congress has finally found the courage to do so…but because demography […]
So, would you like to know how the average person deals with extreme complexity?
Easy…they just tune out.
I spent the weekend shopping for a starter house in Dallas with one of my adultlets…there are just under six months remaining to qualify for the first time buyer’s rebate credit, so we are dealing with a time certain […]
Did you catch the recent announcement about President and Mrs. Obama funding a section 529 college savings plan for their two daughters?
I was glad to see that they took advantage of this program…and am somewhat mystified that others who can afford to do so usually ignore this heavily tax advantaged tool.
In fact, the President also […]
The question about the VAT (Value Added Tax) is not if…but when.
This is a no brainer. Indirect taxation is always an easier mode of plunder for governments…going back four hundred years at least.
Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), legendary finance minister to Louis XIV, famously said..
“The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to […]
The VAT (Value Added Tax), when it comes, will be an easy sell to a diminished and demoralized debtor nation desperate for solvency.
Like the income tax, or social security and medicare payroll taxes, it will first emerge as a mere sliver of its potential…hardly a blip on our consciousness.
As an exercise in nostalgia and masochism, […]
I just finished reading David Brook’s May 15 column in the New York Times “Obama spending theory rests on cuts in health costs“…and it confirmed my worst fears.
I don’t fault the President for trying to reform health care, but I am dismayed by his boundless naivete. Or cynicism. I can’t tell the difference anymore.
None of […]
