Important Takeaways:
- Economists from the left and right call for 401(K) tax benefits to be AXED to help fund Social Security benefits
- Tax benefits on 401(K)s should be axed in favor of higher Social Security payments, says a report co-written by a former aide to President Clinton.
- Alicia Munnell, who served as an assistant Treasury secretary from 1993 to 1995, claims retirement pots with tax breaks disproportionately benefit the wealthy.
- She made the claim in the report co-authored by right-leaning economist Andrew Biggs – where they say such benefits have done little to incentivize workers to save more anyway.
- Cutting the perks on 401(K)s and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA) could save the Government almost $200 billion, they argue – and that windfall would be better used plugging shortfalls in Social Security payments.
- The paper – ‘The case for using subsidies for retirement plans to fix social security’ – has attracted a widespread backlash with one retirement expert labelling it a ‘preposterous idea’ since being published last month.
- One user wrote: ‘If you take away the tax benefit, who the hell is going to save to a 401(K) anymore? This would get people to save less and rely on the government more.’
Read the original article by clicking here.
Revelations 13:16-18 “Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.”
Important Takeaways:
- Here’s who misses checks if the U.S. hits the debt brink in June
- Its latest dire projection — delivered hours before President Joe Biden and congressional leaders meet at the White House — follows Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s warning last week that the nation could run out of money as soon as June 1, dramatically shortening the timeline for lawmakers to lift the borrowing cap even as the two parties remain deeply at odds over how.
- While it’s far from certain how, exactly, the Treasury Department would handle a default — including whether it would prioritize certain payments or delay paying the government’s bills — the think tank noted that about $50 billion in Social Security benefits are set to go out in the first half of June, in addition to more than $20 billion in payments to Medicaid providers, $6 billion in federal salaries, $12 billion in veterans benefits and $1 billion in SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps.
- The distress signals from government and outside forecasters have done nothing to jumpstart talks between the White House, which is insisting on a “clean” debt limit increase, and Republicans, who are demanding spending cuts in exchange for lifting the borrowing cap. The Biden administration has refused to negotiate, vowing to keep government funding on a separate track.
- A number of Republicans aren’t feeling the pressure either, viewing Yellen’s early June projection as nothing more than a political ploy aimed at squeezing the GOP to swallow a clean debt hike. Akabas said Yellen’s warning is consistent with how the Bipartisan Policy Center is analyzing the situation, however, noting that “no risk is too small a risk to flag.”
- Pressure from the markets is what may ultimately force action, Zandi said.
- “I don’t think lawmakers will act until they’re pushed to act by the stock market and the bond market saying, ‘If you guys don’t, this is what’s going to happen’,” Zandi said. “There’s going to be a lot of red on the screen, a lot of 401Ks are going to be diminished and there’s going to be a lot of angry people.”
Read the original article by clicking here.
Rev 6:6 NAS “And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine.”
Important Takeaways:
- Stock market’s fall has wiped out $3 trillion in retirement savings this year
- This year’s stock slump is the most severe market downturn since March of 2020, when COVID-19 erupted
- The selloff has erased nearly $3 trillion from U.S. retirement accounts, according to Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. By her calculations, 401(k) plan participants have lost about $1.4 trillion from their accounts since the end of 2021. People with IRAs — most of which are 401(k) rollovers — have lost $2 trillion this year.
- “Anybody who has to retire when the market is down is in a bad position,” Munnell said
Read the original article by clicking here.
