Greased by lobbying and campaign cash, tax breaks for retirement savings are one thing Congress agrees on. But they also blow out the deficit and add to income inequality.
Five months before Congress faced a near-catastrophic standoff over the debt ceiling, with Republicans demanding restrictions to food and Medicaid programs to rein in spending, a bill that raised the cost of private retirement savings accounts to $282 billion per year was quietly signed into law.
In this era of deeply divided politics, the 2022 bill known as Secure 2.0 was hailed as a bipartisan success — a victory for average Americans. It had sailed through the House by a whopping 414-5 vote. It followed four other major bills passed between 1996 and 2019 that dramatically expanded taxpayer savings – all equally lauded as bipartisan victories.
But that rare issue that brought a divided Washington together also increased wealth disparities and the federal deficit. And the victory was most strongly applauded by the burgeoning financial services industry, for whom tax-advantaged retirement savings has transformed a $7 trillion retirement market in 1995 to a $38.4 trillion behemoth in 2023.
With what money?
If you’re absolutely scraping by, where you can’t even spare a few bucks a week on something like this, then yeah, maybe you just can’t do it. But if you can spare even a tiny amount, then it’s wise to do that small amount starting as early in life as possible.
The money your earn for working.
Yes, all the underpaid people having to choose between food and rent just need to not spend money on either so they can invest it.
Yes, great insight!
You don’t need anyone to invest the money for you. You can get a free account, with free trades, and then just buy index funds.
Even 5 dollars a day can put you close to millionaire over a 40 years.
I love that you assume people who can’t afford both rent and food have 5 bucks a day just laying around.
I responded specifically to the claim that you need to hire a bot to do it for you. I made no assumptions about anything.
While I feel for people who really can’t save anything because their situation is so dire. But that’s not true for plenty of people and this idea that it’s too expensive to save is just an excuse to never do so.
No, you replied to my post about people who can’t afford both rent and food, whoch was preceeded by comments about how everyone has a job with a 401k whiach was proceeded by a comment about not having any extra money to invest after loving expenses.
Surr, most people should invest, but we were originally talking about how not everyone can do that and nobody listened because they assumed everyone has easy access to retirement investment options through their jobs and extra money to do so.
Go back and read the actual posts.
I responded to you obnoxiously claiming that you have to pay something (in your case, a bot) to do it for you.
I explicitly started my post with “you don’t have to most someone to do it” to make it clear what my argument is about.
I’m sorry it wasn’t clear. I’ll try to do better in the future. Could you give me a pointer?
Provide the quote where I said that.