Give Away. Make Up For It With Volume.

It’s getting harder for Democrat candidates to come up with more free stuff than the next guy.  How can we bribe voters without free stuff?
Amy Klobuchar wants to give free savings accounts/pension plans, funded by employers and off-set by tax credits, handled by the Senate’s hand-picked fund managers to invest in stocks and bonds.
But she hasn’t fully considered why employees aren’t saving money.  They don’t make enough?  Everybody can always set aside a tiny fraction of their income.  The trick is finding the motivation to do it.  Churches solicit tithes with promises of salvation.  Amy wants tax credits with promises of mutual funds.  Not nearly as enticing.  I’d rather buy the extra fru-fru coffee. 
When somebody else subsidizes the consequences of your decisions to insulate you from harm, you have less incentive to make good choices.  In some circles, that’s known as moral hazard.  In Amy’s, it’s a campaign promise.
Joe Doakes

The more dependent they make society on “the authorities” for basic life decisions, the more control they have.

8 thoughts on “Give Away. Make Up For It With Volume.

  1. The plan requires $0.50/hour worked… aren’t there roughly 2000 hours in a regular working year? $1000 per year for retirement? Emergency savings? And then just wait for the rules – and bureaucracy – that would have to be put in place to make sure people didn’t blow their fund on bonbons and beer.

    And remember, these are the so-called moderate Democrats.

  2. I can think of nothing better than to have my retirement fund managed by some appointed, economically illiterate Democrat gubmint worker. With country being about $30 trillion in debt, with no plan to fix it, why wouldn’t anybody want that? What could possibly go wrong?

  3. think of it as just like SS; there’s a Lockbox the money will go into a government managed, government protected Lockbox.
    Indeed What could possibly go wrong?

  4. … waittaminute, Mac, if they put it all in a lockbox, how does it get invested? I think the money will spent buying votes for Democrats (aka on spending programs), like, say, unemployment insurance.

    “Unemployment insurance, the economists tell us, return $2 for every $1 that is put out there for unemployment insurance,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on the House floor.

    “It injects demand into the economy, it creates jobs to help reduce the deficit,” Pelosi said.

    That’s a 100% return, man. Who say’s government doesn’t work for us all?

  5. The scariest thing about this is the thought of government-appointed hedge fund managers filling out the proxy forms for trillions of dollars of investments and screwing up corporate governance something fierce. Anyone supporting Klobuchar’s idea needs to be asked a simple question; do you trust your political opponents, people who might not just disagree with you, but also might hate you, to do this?

    Never mind the prospect of government running yet another bankrupt Ponzi scheme. Yikes.

  6. do you trust your political opponents, people who might not just disagree with you, but also might hate you, to do this?

    bb, I think your point is moot. It is my understanding that the Democrats don’t intend to give up power, legally or otherwise, after this next election gives them the trifecta they need.

  7. JDM; yes, but it’s technically a power they do not yet completely possess–though we might infer that the mutual fund manager class is close to in their pocket in some regards.

  8. “the mutual fund manager class is close to in their pocket in some regards…
    remember who ripped off the country for billions in 2007/2008 and was deemed “too big to fail” talk about lack of moral hazard! Of course Wall Street loves the Democrat party – who else is willing to pick up the pieces and guarantee their million $ bonuses when they fail?

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