Archive for October, 2008
Elimination of 401(k) Plans?
Would Obama, Dems Kill 401(k) Plans?
House Democrats recently invited Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School of Social Research, to testify before a subcommittee on her idea to eliminate the preferential tax treatment of the popular retirement plans. In place of 401(k) plans, she would have workers transfer their dough into government-created ‘guaranteed retirement accounts’ for every worker. The government would deposit $600 (inflation indexed) every year into the GRAs. Each worker would also have to save 5 percent of pay into the accounts, to which the government would pay a measly 3 percent return.
Really? This is your big plan? I thought savings were bad and consumption was good? Apparently forced savings is the way to go. While we’re at it, can we pass laws that force the Dow Jones Index to go up every year? Maybe ban the selling of stocks altogether, or at least limit it?
Just in case you were wondering…
…Mr. Saturn does indeed make an appearance in Mother 3. This alone should make you want to play it!
Music Dump
Here’s a bunch of new stuff I discovered through friends/Pandora.com or just have been kicking up old stuff since it’s been awhile:
Search the City - Punk/Indie/Emo
Rufio - Pop-Punk/Hardcore (“Set it Off” performed live)
Saosin - Screamo/Rock/Psychedelic (as per their Myspace, anyway)
Silverstein - Emo/Hardcore/Screamo (“Sound of the Sun”)
The Messiah.
Sorry, readers - after carefully considering the options, I have made the decision to support the young, light-skinned black front running candidate. He has charisma, handles pressure well, and does well with the general public.
Oh, and by the way, have you seen his slider?
There is justice. Go Rays.
MOTHER 3 (Earthbound’s Sequel)
MOTHER 3 was translated by a bunch of nerds when it became apparent that Nintendo didn’t want to translate it to English despite cult-like followings of the SNES game Earthbound. In 2006 the project to translate the entire ROM began, and culminated in the release of the full version of the Game Boy Advance ROM of MOTHER 3.
You can read more about it here.
I am pretty happy that I randomly woke up at 2:30 AM now, as it gives me plenty to do before college football comes on! Between this, DoTA, and TF2, I should have no problems filling the time with video games.
A Summation About What Must Happen
‘There is no magic bullet to make the recession easy or painless. A gigantic amount of capital has been squandered in the boom on these malinvestments, and they must be liquidated. Companies that are revealed to be unprofitable must be allowed to go bankrupt, so that the resources they are wasting can be reallocated into productive, profitable businesses. Workers who are wasting their labor producing unprofitable goods and services must lose those jobs so that they can find jobs in profitable lines of production, or accept lower wages such that their current job is again profitable. Consumers must readjust to the newly revealed economic reality; they must consume less and save more.’ -An Anoymous Austrian Economist [emphasis mine]
Some Humor
Since I’m bored at work and flooding my blog with posts, I figured I’d post this humorous excerpt about American politics that I ran across while doing some reading about economics:
In 1958, Senator Stuart Symington accused the RAND Corporation of defeatism for studying how the United States might strategically surrender to an enemy power. This led to the passage of a prohibition on the spending of tax dollars on the study of defeat or surrender of any kind.
Awesome.
