Guest Post by Mara Zebest
In a FREE America… in a constitutional America… there are no limits to what you can achieve.
The American Dream—American Exceptionalism—is drenched in freedom. Our constitution guarantees freedom. It does not guarantee equality. This may be difficult for the Liberal Left to understand, but we are not all equal. The constituion only recognizes equal opportunity to pursue our G-d given talents in finding happiness and pursuing our dreams. An opportunity to pursue happiness is not to be mistaken for a guarantee of happiness. What we do with our talents is completely up to us, and this is where “equality” ceases to play a role, and personal responsibility is key: Some may choose to waste their lives, while others work hard to contribute and make something of their lives. Where is the “equality” in those two choices?
Obama will ‘Prohibit’ Americans from saving more than $3 million in a retirement account. Who gave Obama the authority to limit our freedom as Americans in what we can dream to achieve? Additionally antithetical to the constitution is the idea that Obama can “dictate” or “compel” all Americans to have a retirement account. Is the purpose of everyone having an account part of Obama’s plan to allow for easier confiscation of those bank accounts… to seize 80% of the citizen’s earnings as they did in Cyprus when the economy collapses?
CNSnews reports the following:
President Barack Obama’s proposed budget would simultaneously compel Americans to enroll in a tax-deferred retirement account and “prohibit” them from saving more than $3 million in such accounts.
That sum, Obama’s budget argues, is all that is “needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.”
Under current law, American who save money in tax-deferred retirement accounts are taxed on the money in such accounts when they withdraw it–and are charged an additional tax penalty if they withdraw it before retirement age.
Obama’s plan to simultaneously compel enrollment in a retirement account and prohibit Americans from saving more than what he believes is a “reasonable” amount in such an account is published in part of his budget that deals with what the president calls “rebalancing the tax code.”
Although the budget would “automatically” enroll Americans in a retirement account—even if they did not want to enroll—it would allow them to “opt out” of actually making contributions to that account.
“About half of American workers have no workplace retirement plan,” says Obama’s budget. “Yet fewer than 1 out of 10 workers who are eligible to make tax-favored contributions to an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) actually do so, while nearly 9 out of 10 workers automatically enrolled in a 401(k) plan continue to make contributions. The Budget would automatically enroll workers without employer-based retirement plans in IRAs through payroll deposit contributions at their workplace. The contributions would be voluntary—employees would be free to opt out—and matched by the Saver’s Tax Credit for eligible families.”
However, President Obama would not allow Americans to opt out of his prohibition on retirement-account savings that exceed the “reasonable level” of $3 million.
The second bullet point in Obama’s plan to “rebalance the tax code” is entitled: “Prohibit Individuals from Accumulating Over $3 Million in Tax-Preferred Retirement Accounts.”
“Individual Retirement Accounts and other tax-preferred savings vehicles are intended to help middle class families save for retirement,” says the Obama’s budget—which does not define exactly what a “middle class family” is, nor explain why someone who does not have a family is not intended to be helped by these type of accounts.
“But under current rules, some wealthy individuals are able to accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving,” the budget continues, without explaining who exactly a “wealthy individual” would be, or how a “wealthy individual” would differs from a “wealthy family.”
“The Budget would limit an individual’s total balance across tax-preferred accounts to an amount sufficient to finance an annuity of not more than $205,000 per year in retirement, or about $3 million for someone retiring in 2013,” says the budget.
The budget says that if this part of Obama’s plan is enacted, the Treasury will tax away about $9 billion from American savers over the next ten years.
Read more here.
The only “equality” that Obama-style Marxism will produce is the “equality of misery.” We already see that in the job numbers and a debt that consumes 78.2% of GDP (which translates to the entire wealth of the nation’s producing citizens).
