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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (95676)	10/20/2012 12:34:37 AM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 217544

Certainly worthy of consideration. Going to check if I can still convert tax protected stuff, incur tax, then convert to Roth IRAs, which are tax free. A big tax hit at first, but may well be the way to go as higher taxes are inevitable. Coulda woulda shoulda done it long ago.

To: TobagoJack who wrote (95676)	10/20/2012 8:04:46 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217544

Paying the state or not paying the state. Consider HK state. You pay and do not complain because it is visible the benefits: School system to educate youth. Rules to make the populace behave and tha apparatus to come with it. Clean streets, transit system to allow people to ove and all the rets of it. Build (and then maintain) the bridges, tunnels, airport and all that civil, mechanical electrical works that allows for modern day life. That is perfectly visible for you in a state the scale of HK. And you pay the costs without even being it a point of contention. Consider some other state they need exaclty the same artifacts, infrastructures and legal systems that HK have. But they are not HK. Consider the United States. It required a lot of capital to be invested in infrastructure. The American tax payer paid for that. Once a great part of the infrastructures were built and were up and running, the US generated started generating even more tax revenues. That gigantic tax revenue generated after the WWII when the US accounted for 45% of world's GDP. And note that the US infrastrcuture was already built. Not only that: The US was the world's reserve currency post WWII. That means whatever the US wanted to build they printed the USD and the world purchase that USD with the promise to redeem them to gold at the fixed price set by Bretton Woods agreement. The US start spending and spending and spending. Cold War, Space Race, Social programs of the 60's and thousands of civil servants, paying for good behaviour of allieds and for a defense establishment of gigantic proportions.

To: TobagoJack who wrote (95676)	10/20/2012 8:19:16 AM
From: elmatador	4 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217544

What happens when the means to pay for the state's cost runs out? Ask the US administration. It came to a point when the US no longer had the means to support its post WW II life style. Nixon reneges the gold standard. The printing to finance Vietnam war caused inflation. Oil prices quadrupled. Stagflation ensued. Late 70s as the time for the US readjust its life style to a much lower level of economic activity and taxes revenues. It was time to graciously go USSR way and retreat. Nope. They did not. Reagan came to awake the US from its torpor with "It is morning in America chant". Navy of 600 ships, Star War programs. How was this financed you may be asking by now. It started fleecing the rest fop the US itself and the rest of the world to support its life style. The American capitalist knowing the economy was no longer was feasible (pensions, reward for employees, taxes to support the social programs -the auto industry was poster child of that) they started cashing in on every company that could be tore apart and sold, and reneged on obligations. Mitt Romney's Bain Capital was doing exactly that. Consultancy companies (Boston Capital Group, McKinsey) exploded gathering the best brains to perform the machinations of extracting value of America's economic infrastructure for the benefit of a few. The money started flowing from workers pockets to capitalists pockets and that has been the case for the past 3 decades. What happened when finance starts being the king? That is next.