People’s retirement savings are a convenient source of revenue for governments that don’t want to reduce spending or make privatizations. As most pension schemes in Europe are organised by the state, European ministers of finance have a facilitated access to the savings accumulated there, and it is only logical that they try to get a hold of this money for their own ends. In recent weeks I have noted five such attempts: Three situations concern private personal savings; two others refer to national funds.
The most striking example is Hungary, where last month the government made the citizens an offer they could not refuse. They could either remit their individual retirement savings to the state, or lose the right to the basic state pension (but still have an obligation to pay contributions for it). In this extortionate way, the government wants to gain control over $14bn of individual retirement savings.
The Bulgarian government has come up with a similar idea. $300m of private early retirement savings was supposed to be transferred to the state pension scheme. The government gave way after trade unions protested and finally only about 20% of the original plans were implemented.
The article describes 3 other countries that are grabbing more individual retirement contributions.
This is exactly where the Democrats would take us.
Senate Republicans on Saturday voted against President Obama’s plan to extend the Bush tax cuts to only the middle class in a pair of votes Democrats are seizing to paint the GOP as guardians of the rich.
The Senate voted 53-36 to extend all expiring tax cuts on individuals with incomes of less than $200,000 a year and married couples making less than $250,000 — seven shy of the required 60 to advance.
Now keep in mind that “the rich” are the very people who own the small businesses that create most of the jobs. That is why constant slamming of the rich with taxes and health care mandates has raised the unemployment rate to 9.8% and kept it above 9% for 19 months – a record never before seen in the history of the country. When Obama says “the wealthiest 2%”, you need to hear “9.8% unemployment”. The wealthy are the ones who create the jobs. Bash the wealthy, and you get fewer jobs.
Obama says:
President Obama said he was “very disappointed” in the Senate’s verdict.
“Those provisions should have passed,” he said.”It makes no sense to to hold tax cuts for the middle class hostage to permanent tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans especially when those high-income tax cuts would cost an additional $700 billion that we don’t have and would add to our deficit.”
“But with so much at stake, today’s votes cannot be the end of the discussion,” he said. “It’s absolutely essential to hardworking middle class families and to the economy to make sure their taxes don’t go up on Jan. 1.”
But the truth is:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately slammed the political maneuvering by Democrats after the votes.
“According to the strange the logic of Democratic leaders in Congress, the best way to show middle class Americans that they care about creating jobs is to slam some of America’s top job creators with a massive tax hike,” he said on the Senate floor.
“Today’s vote was an affront to the millions of Americans who are struggling to find work and a clear signal that Democrats in Congress still haven’t got the message from the November elections,” he said.
Obama is anti-middle class because he is anti-small-business, and small businesses hire the middle class.
Democrats don’t understand how jobs are created
In fact, the unemployment rate has been steadily rising since the Democrats took control of the spending process by winning the House and Senate in January 2007. The left side of this graph begins when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid took control of the House and Senate in January 2007.
Democrats took control of the economy in 2007
The chart doesn’t lie. When the Democrats control the budget, spending and unemployment rise a lot. When the Republicans controlled the House and Senate, the unemployment rate was 4.5%. These numbers do not lie. When they told you that more spending (the “recovery plan”) to their favored special interest groups will create private sector jobs, they lied. The numbers show that they lied.
People like Michele Bachmann actually OWN SMALL BUSINESSES and they HIRE AMERICAN WORKERS. People like Michele Bachmann should be in charge of the economy. Not people like Obama. Obama had a rich grandmother who paid for all his schooling at expensive private schools. He had his life handed to him on a silver platter. Michele Bachmann grew up poor.
WINTERY KNIGHT 