Be Careful What You Wish For!

The Old Woman and The Snake

A Parable

An old woman was walking down the road when she saw a gang of thugs beating a poisonous snake. She rescued the snake and carried it back to her home, where she nursed it back to health. They became friends and lived together for many months. One day they were going into town, and the old woman picked him up and the snake bit her. Repeatedly. “O God, ” she screamed, “I am dying! Why! I was your friend. I saved your life! I trusted you! Why did you bite me?”
The snake looked up at her and said, “Lady, you knew I was a snake when you first picked me up.”

The scariest thing about a President Obama, supported by an ultra-liberal Democratic majority in both the House and Senate, is that they will feel unfettered in their attempts to take care of you, so you won't have to. After all, who could possibly be better than the government in making the decisions that affect your lives?

Barack Obama has already indicated that he intends to increase taxes. While he says that these tax increases will only be on families (not individuals) making over $250,000 per year (and that in itself is not wholly uncommon, for married college-educated adults in their peak earning years), but we've shown before how Obama's numbers don't add up and how his plan is nothing more than redistribution of wealth to those who pay no taxes whatsoever. Further, we've shown how a Nobel-prize winning economist stated that rolling back the Bush tax cuts will sink the global economy into a recession. Now that we're apparently in one, rolling back those taxes would have an even greater effect by deepening the recession.

Obama also proposes eliminating the cap on Social Security taxes, increasing taxes by about 6.6% for anyone over a specified amount. Unfortunately, more and more Americans no longer trust that Social Security will be there when they retire, as there has been little to no effort to reform how the funds are managed and the Trust fund not longer exists -- its just another pot of money for the government to spend as they see fit. So when Obama offers up more tax increases, without any proposals how to reform Social Security (other than "I'll work with Congress"), we see Obama as nothing more than a typical politician full of empty promises.

John McCain, on the other hand, has proposed keeping tax cuts in place, reducing or freezing government spending, and reforming Social Security by allowing contributors to put a small fraction of their money into the market so they can get a higher return on their contributions. Of the two, who do you think has the better record as a reformer?

Now, in even scarier news, Congress is eyeballing eliminating tax breaks for contributions to 401(k) accounts, saying that 401(k)'s are too subject to volatility in the stock market, and they haven't gotten as much out of the $80B investment as they had hoped. One must challenge the intelligence of Congress in even CONSIDERING radically altering tax policy based on a couple of bad months in the stock market. Even Warren Buffet says this is a great time to be buying stocks, and he's right!

What Congress fails to realize is that a lot of people contribute to their 401(k)s because of the employer matching. Higher-income employers provide matching funds to employee plans so they can qualify for tax benefits for their own defined contribution plans. If that tax deferral goes away, the employers will have no reason to continue 401(k) matching, which will result in REDUCED retirement savings, as some employees may choose not to make 401(k) contributions without the matching. So what do we have? Fewer and fewer people saving for their own retirement, and more dependent on the government in their twilight years.

In addition, Congress is considering requiring contributions to a "Guaranteed Retirement Plan", where all workers must contribute 5% of their earnings to a government plan (no one's said if this is in addition to, or in lieu of Social Security), to which the government will add $600 per year! WOW! That's $50 per month, plus a guaranteed 3% per annum return! Incidentally, the stock market AVERAGES about a 7% return historically. What's the difference? If you invest $10,000 in the government plan, at the end of 40 years, you would have $22,000. Working in the market, the same investment (at a 7% return) would result in $150,000.

It's also important to note that the Social Security trust fund as it exists today was supposed to be inviolate, but Democrats in Congress decided they wanted to tap the funds for their own purposes. Who is to say that they wouldn't do the same with these "Guaranteed Retirement Plans?"

What Senator Obama and and the Democratic Congress fail to understand is that a large number of Americans do not trust their government with their retirement. We understand that when we GIVE the power to the government to take care of us, we RELINQUISH the power over our own lives. Because when we allocate to the government the power to GIVE, we also allocate the power to TAKE AWAY.

This writer, for one, wants the government to stay out of my life -- I want to retain the power to decide what is best for me and my family, to determine my own fate, and to think and decide and act for myself. In this way, I retain my freedom. For everytime I abdicate my responsiblities to the government, I am also giving up my own freedom. Giving it up to the government is giving it up to those whose agendas are not necessarily mine, but agendas oriented to retaining their own power and privilege.

So be careful about what you wish for, and vote intelligently on November 4th.