Terry Mitchell

The Retirement Equity Act?



Posted: Monday, August 21, 2006

by Terry Mitchell
http://commenterry.blogs.com

As I and many others are socking away as much money as we can into our 401(k) and/or IRA accounts while some are spending their income as fast as they can and putting away little or nothing for retirement, I have this little nagging worry. Although there's no such bill in the works right now, I can't help but believe that, by the time I am about ready to retire, Congress will pass some kind of "retirement equity" legislation. This is especially likely if Congress is controlled by liberal Democrats at that time.

The potential bill I'm concerned about would tax people who have more than x amount in retirement assets and distribute the funds to those with less than y amount in retirement assets. Now, there's nothing wrong with helping those who are less fortunate and are lacking many of the necessities of life. In fact, that's the Christian thing to do. However, it's not government's job to redistribute wealth, i.e., confiscate money from some of its citizens and give it to others. Charity is the responsibility of individuals and private organizations.

Remember Aesop's fable about the ant and the grasshopper? As we all remember, the ant stored up supplies during the warm weather and had plenty when winter came. The grasshopper, on the other hand, lived a carefree life and played and goofed off during the warm weather and did not bother to store up anything. Therefore, he had nothing when winter came.

Well, had this story been written by liberal Democrats, the ending would have been somewhat different. They would have made excuses for the grasshopper's failure to store up anything for the winter. The excuses would have included a lack of opportunity and his natural orientation to play most of the time. Then they would have added a good fairy (and we all know how much Democrats like fairies) who magically takes some of the ant's stored up supplies and redirects them to the grasshopper.


Terry Mitchell is a software engineer, freelance writer, amateur political analyst, and blogger from Virginia, USA. He posts a least one article a day to his blog - http://commenterry.blogs.com - on subjects such as current events, politics, technology, society and culture, religion, health and well-being, self improvement, personal finance, trivia, and sports. He is also the owner of a new privacy-enhanced search engine - http://www.SearchMost.com.

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