Where? pray tell.....

 

Democrats in charge of the Legislative and Executive branches of the US government will lead to increases in the tax rates for anyone of medium to high net worth (unless you have political pull to get your own tax breaks).
If the tax rate for people with a net worth above zero goes up in the future (in order to support those needy folks whose net worth is below zero, of course) and that increase is such that the tax rate on YOUR taxable IRA distributions (because you have assets, and the government needs them to increase their power base) is, say, 95%, but they can't get their greedy fingers on the Roth part because I already paid on the tax on that, then I win. Not saying this WILL happen, just that I diversify just in case. I don't consider it a "fascination" with Roths, just a tool in the box.
Been drinkin', forgive the syntax. YMMV, etc.

 

Oh no! You just threw a REALLY BIG NUMBER at me. Should I be scared?

Let me make an analogy.....

What if I told you that my neighbor has a ONE MILLION DOLLAR mortgage on his home. Holy crap! A one million dollar mortgage? That's a huge number for a mortgage, isn't it? That's pretty scary. Well, maybe, sort of.

What if I told you that my neighbor is a union janitor and his wife is a stay at home mom? Their household income is $35,000/year. That one million dollar mortgage is pretty scary. In fact, it just got a lot scarier.

But what if I told you my neighbor is an executive at a Fortune 500 Company and he makes $500,000 per year? Now that $5,000-ish/month mortgage payment on that one million dollar mortgage note doesn't seem like such a big deal, does it?

The point is that you can't look at the raw debt of the US government in isolation. 17T, actually, 17.3T is a big number, but we also have a huge economy that can afford to pay this debt (so far). Yes, we're running deficits. Yes, those deficits can't last forever. But that doesn't mean this problem won't be fixed in the future. And, believe it or not, as a % of GDP, we've been in deeper debt than we are now- about 60 years ago. I wonder if your grandfather was pinning messages of gloom and doom on the bulletin boards of yesteryear?

 

GLEX

I would submit there is a huge difference between today's debt and deficits than the ones from WW II and post-WW II era. The debt incurred during the war "bought" us, and the world, 60 years of peace and stability that produced the economy you credit. The current situation is just subsidizing some good and a lot of bad behavior. It is mostly transfer payments. The actual government projects that benefit the "general welfare"--infrastructure, defense, ATC, judiciary, etc are actually being slowly starved of financing as transfer payments like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security take ever larger shares of the government budget.

GF

 

I don't know if there's a difference between today's debts and yesterday's. The point is that we have had big debts in the past compared to the size of our economy, yet we're still here today. We don't have to go out and buy bullets and bomb shelters because the US is about to collapse due to its debt.

However, I do believe that running continuous deficits (all else being equal) can't go on. I don't care if they're a R or a D, they're going to have to come up with some sort of solution to fix the problem before interest payments start crowding out EVERYTHING.

Winston Churchill once said of America, "The Americans will always do the right thing… after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives." I think we're still in the process of exhausting all the alternatives, politically. Hopefully after this process is done, we'll do the right thing. Maybe I'm naïve. We'll see. For now, I'm not scared yet.

 

No argument from me on any of that, including the sarcasm. But would it be the end of our country? I don't know. Certainly won't help but, again, I think our country and its structure have shown great resilience over hundreds of years. We may bend but I doubt we'll break. In any case, I agree with you on "the most intelligent woman on the planet" and truly hope we don't as a country have to suffer further setback.

 

My grandfather paid his bills when they came in. The rest of your analogy is typical "progressive" spin. If only "rich" people would pay just a little more... we would get out of this. Of course anybody with a JOB will be considered rich before long....

I have no kids and no debt, so why should I care about your kids' future? Obviously you don't.......

 

Actually, there is nothing to keep them from changing the rules on ROTH to tax any income earned above the monies contributed to the fund. The power of Owebama's pen and phone ya know.....

 

If you consider transferring wealth from those of us that have any to those that don't 'the right thing' then you will be happy and satisfied.

You are.You should be.

 

Not that I disagree with your point, but you should really get your facts correct...there is no such thing as an "Obama Phone". In fact, if you want to tie this to a specific president we should call it the "Reagan Phone".

snopes.com: Free 'ObamaPhones' for Welfare Recipients

Unless, of course, Snopes, The Atlantic, Businessweek, and WSMV-TV can not be trusted and are all biased liberal media.