Pirate's Cove

For a change, someone, in this case, Laura Bassett, at the Huffington Post makes a good point: Dwindling Retirement Savings ‘Undiscussed Explosive Bomb’ Of Recession. After the obligatory story of one man’s problems, we get

Stephens’ predicament is an increasingly common one. Aside from stagnant wages, soaring unemployment and plummeting home values, the major tragedy of this recession is the havoc it has wreaked on the retirement incomes of millions of Americans who have planned and saved their entire lives, only to watch that money drain out of their accounts much sooner than they anticipated.

Retirement statistics are grim. The percentage of American workers who said they have less than $10,000 in savings grew to 43 percent in 2010, according to a recent survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Nearly a quarter of the workforce said they have postponed their planned retirement in the past year and a CareerBuilder.com survey reports that 61 percent of workers say they are now living paycheck to paycheck, as compared to 43 percent in 2007.

Gee, what happened in 2007? If you said “Democrats regained the House and Senate, and have controlled the federal purse strings and actual monetary policy since,” you win a double shot of Tequila.

Of course, in Liberal World, as supplied by Crooks and Liars, this is all the fault of those greedy corporations, and it means we have to expand Social Security (which is pretty much insolvent.)

Of course, we could jack up the tax rates. In Liberal World, surely that would help people build their nest eggs, right? Or at least all those super duper awesome incredible and trustworthy elected officials who are monstrously responsible with the money they take at the barrel of a jail cell could be put in charge of protecting our retirement money even more! The Washington Post is making the case for doing away with taxes, with a lying bit of fluff that William Jacobson see right through.