Investment Politics Books

Investment Politics Articles

Summary: Social Security benefits are grossly inadequate yet we continue to tax all forms of retirement benefits. Politicians ignore the simple solutions to these problems and no one seems to care about Social Security reform. It's just too big an issue to be so shockingly ignored, but the last politician with any courage--- well, I can't remember who that was either.

Summary: 90% of all Americans are investors and, as such, there are issues that we need to hear about from the man who would be king. None of our could-be leaders are addressing the issues that would allow us to achieve our financial goals. This is my short list for the presidential candidates. Where they stand on these issues will certainly influence our economic future. Which of these is most important?

Summary: The majority of Americans would agree that investing, retirement planning, and estate preservation would be easier to manage if the Internal Revenue Code was comprehensible. A landslide of American voters would elect any candidate championing IRC replacement surgery. One wealthy political party wants us to hate anyone with indoor plumbing while the other (wealthier) one spends most of its time trying to protect its diminishing turf and powerful cronies. All levels of government view businesses small and large as their own all-purpose Reserve Accounts...

Summary: The most obvious explanation is politics, but we're running out of time for finger pointing, and Social Security is solvable in a surprisingly painless manner. It will require a whole new approach that uses old ideas and institutions in ways that most of us have pretty much given up on. As hopeless as the Bush Administration's Nicotine Patch for Social Security would have been, it pointed in the right direction. Now don't hit DELETE when I refer to "privatization", or when I mention one of my own most hated financial products, the "annuity".  Both are needed to permanently fix the Social Security mess, to get it away from people who are neither managers nor investment specialists, and to make the whole system work more economically.