There are no property rights in the United States…at least, none that the State deigns to honor.
Do you remember Teresa Ghilarducci? I do. Any American who has a 401(k), an IRA, or some equivalent should know about her and her chief ambition:
Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts — including 401(k)s and IRAs — and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration.
Triggered by the financial crisis the past two months, the hearings reportedly were meant to stem losses incurred by many workers and retirees whose 401(k) and IRA balances have been shrinking rapidly.
The testimony of Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, in hearings Oct. 7 drew the most attention and criticism. Testifying for the House Committee on Education and Labor, Ghilarducci proposed that the government eliminate tax breaks for 401(k) and similar retirement accounts, such as IRAs, and confiscate workers’ retirement plan accounts and convert them to universal Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs) managed by the Social Security Administration….
The current retirement system, Ghilarducci said, “exacerbates income and wealth inequalities” because tax breaks for voluntary retirement accounts are “skewed to the wealthy because it is easier for them to save, and because they receive bigger tax breaks when they do.”…
All workers would have 5 percent of their annual pay deducted from their paychecks and deposited to the GRA. They would still be paying Social Security and Medicare taxes, as would the employers. The GRA contribution would be shared equally by the worker and the employee. Employers no longer would be able to write off their contributions. Any capital gains would be taxable year-on-year.
Socialists are forever talking about “inequality” (or in their more recent argot, “inequity”) because it affords them a pretext for seizing our money and property in pursuit of their agenda. It’s well established historically that “inequality” increases under socialism, but they’d rather we didn’t notice that. At any rate, they constantly seek rationales under which to “redistribute” what we’ve earned and saved. We must all be equally poor – except for our loving rulers, of course. Anything else would be “unfair!”