FOD 2013.04.08

As a soon-to-be-retiree I noted with interest a provision in obama's pending budget. In his plan he proposes a limit on how much money individuals can hold in IRAs and other retirement accounts. Of course, he dresses it up as restrictions that will only affect 'wealthy' people, and that will impose 'fairness' on the system.

President Obama’s budget, to be released next week, will limit how much wealthy individuals – like Mitt Romney – can keep in IRAs and other retirement accounts.

I'm not sure why Romney was included, other than to further demonize so-called 'wealthy' people.

The proposal would save around $9 billion over a decade, a senior administration official said, while also bringing more fairness to the tax code.

Again, I'm not sure how capping IRAs will makes things 'fair' - unless, as I fear, this is the first step in a process that will continue to lower the amount of money we can have in our retirement accounts. The next step will be to confiscate funds over a certain ceiling.

Don't think that could happen? Recall recent events in Cyprus, where the government took money not just from retirement accounts, but from regular bank accounts as well.

Now, with that in mind, read the next paragraph.

The senior administration official said that wealthy taxpayers can currently “accumulate many millions of dollars in these accounts, substantially more than is needed to fund reasonable levels of retirement saving.”

So now obama and the progressives want to determine what "reasonable levels of retirement saving” are.

Limiting magazine capacity. Limiting retirement savings. Limiting privacy, free speech, and just about every other right we used to have.

When does it end?