Showing posts with label Ownership Society Institute. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ownership Society Institute. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
If you really believe in America, read this
The Ownership Society Institute (OSI) has been claiming that its Rise Up America (RUA) plan to reform the US Government, kick-start the economy, immediately eliminate over $100 trillion in unfunded US debt and deliver the American Dream of financial independence to every American is the route the political parties should be taking rather than the present slash and burn Republican plan to cut benefits, services and safety nets or the totally irrational spending spree the Democrats are planning to pursue right into Federal as well as state, county and city bankruptcy.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Rise Up America plan it is based on a simple tax shelter device used by the wealthy that has allowed the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to amass $50 billion fortunes without so much as paying one dime in income tax. The device is simple – the appreciation in the value of their stock is not taxed currently – or ever if they don’t sell shares and pay the 15% capital gains tax. RUA by privatizing the entire 15.3% of annual payroll tax and allowing it to be placed in an unreachable investment account and invested in the stock market for every taxpayer’s working life will enable every American to become a millionaire at retirement. See tables here. The appreciation in their stock over the years will enable them to escape the current taxation of their gains.
From the chart below one would have to be delusional or fatally partisan not to believe that this is the moment for the people to jump on the RUA bandwagon and institute the RUA plan at every level of government. The expectations for stock market returns after inflation will be over 11% which if it holds would mean the average American family ($50,000 annual income at today’s price levels) would generate a $14, 200,000 nest egg after his or her 40-year working life. Now this sounds too good to be true but that is what the calculator tells us. Remember in 2006 Warren Buffet made $833 million each and every month for the entire year as that was the result of his accumulating stock the appreciation on which he paid no tax. RUA merely adopts that shelter to make the poor rich and the rich ever so much richer.
Dick McDonald, General Manager
Ownership Society Institute
April 6, 2011
For those of you unfamiliar with the Rise Up America plan it is based on a simple tax shelter device used by the wealthy that has allowed the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to amass $50 billion fortunes without so much as paying one dime in income tax. The device is simple – the appreciation in the value of their stock is not taxed currently – or ever if they don’t sell shares and pay the 15% capital gains tax. RUA by privatizing the entire 15.3% of annual payroll tax and allowing it to be placed in an unreachable investment account and invested in the stock market for every taxpayer’s working life will enable every American to become a millionaire at retirement. See tables here. The appreciation in their stock over the years will enable them to escape the current taxation of their gains.
From the chart below one would have to be delusional or fatally partisan not to believe that this is the moment for the people to jump on the RUA bandwagon and institute the RUA plan at every level of government. The expectations for stock market returns after inflation will be over 11% which if it holds would mean the average American family ($50,000 annual income at today’s price levels) would generate a $14, 200,000 nest egg after his or her 40-year working life. Now this sounds too good to be true but that is what the calculator tells us. Remember in 2006 Warren Buffet made $833 million each and every month for the entire year as that was the result of his accumulating stock the appreciation on which he paid no tax. RUA merely adopts that shelter to make the poor rich and the rich ever so much richer.
Dick McDonald, General Manager
Ownership Society Institute
April 6, 2011
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Social Security Goes into the Red in 2010 not 2018
by Dick McDonald - Ownership Society Institute
In 2010 the Congressional Budget Office has projected a $92 billion surplus of payroll tax receipts over Social Security benefits paid. That figure includes $120 billion in “non-cash” receipts of fictional interest paid on fictional US Bonds – a bookkeeping trick like Enron used to cover up Congress’s theft of over $4 trillion of excess payroll tax receipts it has been appropriating from Social Security since the early 80’s. See here.
http://finance.yahoo.com/focus-retirement/article/108747/next-in-line-for-a-bailout-social-security?mod=fidelity-readytoretire
That means that by September, 2010 the US Government will need a $28 billion cash infusion just to meet its Social Security obligations. So much for the age-old denial that Social Security isn’t broke. That it has unfulfilled promises of over $14 trillion in future benefits in excess of projected receipts. Similarly Medicare is in the tank for $93 trillion. The jig is up and the Democrats and RINOs have no where to go on this issue.
The real benefit to be gleaned from this is that Americans will seriously try to solve this problem by any means other than raising taxes and/or cutting benefits. Believe me Americans will insist on it. The baby boomers will demand their full benefits as they come on stream in the next 15 years and the kids will resort to violence if they are unfairly taxed because it will take 2 kids to support one retiree
President Obama has challenged the Republicans to come up with some ideas to solve the dilemma and the best they came up so far is Paul Ryan’s proposal to raise the retirement age to 70 years (benefit cut of major import), cut the Medicare benefits (benefit cut of major import) and allow a small portion of a worker’s payroll taxes be invested in a personal investment retirement account (step in the right direction).
The real tragedy is that current benefits don’t begin to cover retirement costs and trying to save these entitlements is merely rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. What Americans want and will insist on is a re do of the funding of retirement costs so that more than the solvency of the government entitlement programs is achieved. Bush limited his Social Security reform to solving the solvency issue – Ryan appears to have limited his approach to solvency as well. There should be no limitations placed on what Americans can do in solving this issue.
We at the Ownership Society Institute (OSI) recommend these entitlement programs be scrapped with the proviso that the government guarantee that all benefits under them will be honored and form the floor under which no future benefits can ever fall.
In place of these programs we institute personal investment accounts we like to call “USAs” – Universal Savings Accounts. That into these accounts the entire 15.3% of payroll taxes presently sent to Congress will be redirected and immediately invested in the stock market for the 40-year working life of every taxpayer. The details of OSI’s plan are outlined here. It is called the Rise Up America plan.
In addition to solving the solvency issue RUA does the following:
· Generate the biggest tax cut in history
· Reduce the size of government by half
· Alleviate poverty and economically emancipate lower class citizens
· Infuse enormous sums directly into the economy and accelerate growth
· Eliminate the need for government pensions and Medicare
· Pay off $110 trillion of unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities
· Give back to Americans the money that they earn
· Increase the economic opportunities of all Americans
· Avoids Bankruptcies of cities, counties and states from pension liabilities
· Makes everyone a shareholder and responsible for oversight
· Reduces crimes especially those triggered by poverty
There a hundreds of other benefits of privatizing the entitlements but let’s leave it to a simple example.
The average American household makes over $50,000 a year and pays more than $7,500 in payroll taxes. Under RUA those taxes are placed into a USA and immediately invested in the stock market for 40 years. The $300,000 (40 years times $7,500 a year) grows into a $4,004,000 nest egg because of the magic of compounding. Just the annual income off that nest egg will generate a $33,000 a month retirement check – more than enough to support an affluent lifestyle.
RUA uses the principle of small government and takes away from government the responsibility to fund entitlements. It relies on the words of Alfred Einstein as everyone should. “The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.”
All those concerns about such a sea change in the way the government does what its citizens will want is explained at www.riseupamerica.us including how to simultaneously fund the transition, place $1.3 trillion into the stock market annually, pay benefits under the old programs and miraculously enough increase the value of the US dollar. See here.
In 2010 the Congressional Budget Office has projected a $92 billion surplus of payroll tax receipts over Social Security benefits paid. That figure includes $120 billion in “non-cash” receipts of fictional interest paid on fictional US Bonds – a bookkeeping trick like Enron used to cover up Congress’s theft of over $4 trillion of excess payroll tax receipts it has been appropriating from Social Security since the early 80’s. See here.
http://finance.yahoo.com/focus-retirement/article/108747/next-in-line-for-a-bailout-social-security?mod=fidelity-readytoretire
That means that by September, 2010 the US Government will need a $28 billion cash infusion just to meet its Social Security obligations. So much for the age-old denial that Social Security isn’t broke. That it has unfulfilled promises of over $14 trillion in future benefits in excess of projected receipts. Similarly Medicare is in the tank for $93 trillion. The jig is up and the Democrats and RINOs have no where to go on this issue.
The real benefit to be gleaned from this is that Americans will seriously try to solve this problem by any means other than raising taxes and/or cutting benefits. Believe me Americans will insist on it. The baby boomers will demand their full benefits as they come on stream in the next 15 years and the kids will resort to violence if they are unfairly taxed because it will take 2 kids to support one retiree
President Obama has challenged the Republicans to come up with some ideas to solve the dilemma and the best they came up so far is Paul Ryan’s proposal to raise the retirement age to 70 years (benefit cut of major import), cut the Medicare benefits (benefit cut of major import) and allow a small portion of a worker’s payroll taxes be invested in a personal investment retirement account (step in the right direction).
The real tragedy is that current benefits don’t begin to cover retirement costs and trying to save these entitlements is merely rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. What Americans want and will insist on is a re do of the funding of retirement costs so that more than the solvency of the government entitlement programs is achieved. Bush limited his Social Security reform to solving the solvency issue – Ryan appears to have limited his approach to solvency as well. There should be no limitations placed on what Americans can do in solving this issue.
We at the Ownership Society Institute (OSI) recommend these entitlement programs be scrapped with the proviso that the government guarantee that all benefits under them will be honored and form the floor under which no future benefits can ever fall.
In place of these programs we institute personal investment accounts we like to call “USAs” – Universal Savings Accounts. That into these accounts the entire 15.3% of payroll taxes presently sent to Congress will be redirected and immediately invested in the stock market for the 40-year working life of every taxpayer. The details of OSI’s plan are outlined here. It is called the Rise Up America plan.
In addition to solving the solvency issue RUA does the following:
· Generate the biggest tax cut in history
· Reduce the size of government by half
· Alleviate poverty and economically emancipate lower class citizens
· Infuse enormous sums directly into the economy and accelerate growth
· Eliminate the need for government pensions and Medicare
· Pay off $110 trillion of unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities
· Give back to Americans the money that they earn
· Increase the economic opportunities of all Americans
· Avoids Bankruptcies of cities, counties and states from pension liabilities
· Makes everyone a shareholder and responsible for oversight
· Reduces crimes especially those triggered by poverty
There a hundreds of other benefits of privatizing the entitlements but let’s leave it to a simple example.
The average American household makes over $50,000 a year and pays more than $7,500 in payroll taxes. Under RUA those taxes are placed into a USA and immediately invested in the stock market for 40 years. The $300,000 (40 years times $7,500 a year) grows into a $4,004,000 nest egg because of the magic of compounding. Just the annual income off that nest egg will generate a $33,000 a month retirement check – more than enough to support an affluent lifestyle.
RUA uses the principle of small government and takes away from government the responsibility to fund entitlements. It relies on the words of Alfred Einstein as everyone should. “The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.”
All those concerns about such a sea change in the way the government does what its citizens will want is explained at www.riseupamerica.us including how to simultaneously fund the transition, place $1.3 trillion into the stock market annually, pay benefits under the old programs and miraculously enough increase the value of the US dollar. See here.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Let’s Finish Off Socialism
Dick McDonald, Ownership Society Institute
www.riseupamerica.us
Over 200 million Americans marched in spirit along with the 20 million Tea Party participants today all over America. They marched today against socialism, the President, the Administration, the media, academe, ACORN thugs, SEIU goons and a Democrat-controlled Congress that has been passing anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-free market laws and regulations that Americans violently oppose.
Americans have never tolerated anyone much less a President of the country that calls them names and says he is going to change America to his idea of what it should be. That is not what America is all about. The people say what will be.
Over the last several months Americans have come to realize their Great November Mistake. They elected a man who plans to take property from the productive and redistribute it to the unproductive in concert with principles of Karl Marx and the communists except in cases where his financial supporters are concerned – he is mainlining taxpayer’s hard earned money and property directly to them in a corrupt and criminal way.
President Obama, their old lawyer, allocated ACORN, a criminal conspiracy that is up on voter fraud in over ten states, over $8 billion of stimulus money because they helped elect him. Well this week 20 year old Hannah Giles ripped that $8 billion from the hands of those criminals by playing a prostitute and pulling off the greatest sting operation in American history. ACORN was immediately dropped by the Census Bureau and if any Federal funds ever go to ACORN again the people will punish Obama and his party unmercifully at the polls in 2010. They may even try to impeach him if he tries to pull that stunt again.
The President made a speech on Wednesday where he told so many lies Congressman Joe Wilson lost it and shouted out that the President lies. Magically the loophole that would allow aliens to get free health care under the proposed bill the Congressman was referring to was immediately closed by amendment the next day.
If nothing else the Democrats are on the run. The American people will not tolerate having their freedom, liberty and most importantly their property confiscated by radical Marxists socialist communist leftists. It just isn’t going to happen any more. They have had enough of even the semi-socialist nonsense.
The question we at the Institute pose now is why not rid ourselves of socialism and socialist practices once and for all. Let’s strike while the iron is hot. Republicans, Democrats and Independents who are opposed to socialism should adopt the Institute’s Rise Up America plan and return the control of the government back to the people along with half of the taxes we presently pay.
The plan while destroying socialism will simultaneously revive the stock market and the economy, extinguish the $59 trillion in entitlement debt, deliver the American Dream of financial independence to ordinary Americans and trigger the greatest period of wealth creation the planet has every known.
The people need a banner to fly under. The tea parties lack a unifying cause to champion. I suggest the Rise Up America plan and the “USA” the Universal Savings Account where the future millions of all Americans will be accumulated.
If activist Hannah Giles can save us $8 billion just posing as a prostitute and Joe Wilson can save us literally hundreds of billions in health care costs by publically calling the President a liar then why do we shrink from taking down socialism, communism and other collectivist practices. It only seems like the rational thing to do at this moment in history.
Think of all the people we will rid ourselves of in Congress – Reid, Pelosi, Waxman, Dodd, Frank, Durbin, Conyers, Sharpton, Watson, Waters and 200 other losers.
Why not attack and take them down now? If not now, when?
Please go to our site and help out!
www.riseupamerica.us
www.riseupamerica.us
Over 200 million Americans marched in spirit along with the 20 million Tea Party participants today all over America. They marched today against socialism, the President, the Administration, the media, academe, ACORN thugs, SEIU goons and a Democrat-controlled Congress that has been passing anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-free market laws and regulations that Americans violently oppose.
Americans have never tolerated anyone much less a President of the country that calls them names and says he is going to change America to his idea of what it should be. That is not what America is all about. The people say what will be.
Over the last several months Americans have come to realize their Great November Mistake. They elected a man who plans to take property from the productive and redistribute it to the unproductive in concert with principles of Karl Marx and the communists except in cases where his financial supporters are concerned – he is mainlining taxpayer’s hard earned money and property directly to them in a corrupt and criminal way.
President Obama, their old lawyer, allocated ACORN, a criminal conspiracy that is up on voter fraud in over ten states, over $8 billion of stimulus money because they helped elect him. Well this week 20 year old Hannah Giles ripped that $8 billion from the hands of those criminals by playing a prostitute and pulling off the greatest sting operation in American history. ACORN was immediately dropped by the Census Bureau and if any Federal funds ever go to ACORN again the people will punish Obama and his party unmercifully at the polls in 2010. They may even try to impeach him if he tries to pull that stunt again.
The President made a speech on Wednesday where he told so many lies Congressman Joe Wilson lost it and shouted out that the President lies. Magically the loophole that would allow aliens to get free health care under the proposed bill the Congressman was referring to was immediately closed by amendment the next day.
If nothing else the Democrats are on the run. The American people will not tolerate having their freedom, liberty and most importantly their property confiscated by radical Marxists socialist communist leftists. It just isn’t going to happen any more. They have had enough of even the semi-socialist nonsense.
The question we at the Institute pose now is why not rid ourselves of socialism and socialist practices once and for all. Let’s strike while the iron is hot. Republicans, Democrats and Independents who are opposed to socialism should adopt the Institute’s Rise Up America plan and return the control of the government back to the people along with half of the taxes we presently pay.
The plan while destroying socialism will simultaneously revive the stock market and the economy, extinguish the $59 trillion in entitlement debt, deliver the American Dream of financial independence to ordinary Americans and trigger the greatest period of wealth creation the planet has every known.
The people need a banner to fly under. The tea parties lack a unifying cause to champion. I suggest the Rise Up America plan and the “USA” the Universal Savings Account where the future millions of all Americans will be accumulated.
If activist Hannah Giles can save us $8 billion just posing as a prostitute and Joe Wilson can save us literally hundreds of billions in health care costs by publically calling the President a liar then why do we shrink from taking down socialism, communism and other collectivist practices. It only seems like the rational thing to do at this moment in history.
Think of all the people we will rid ourselves of in Congress – Reid, Pelosi, Waxman, Dodd, Frank, Durbin, Conyers, Sharpton, Watson, Waters and 200 other losers.
Why not attack and take them down now? If not now, when?
Please go to our site and help out!
www.riseupamerica.us
Friday, September 11, 2009
Driving Down the Depression Road
by Dick McDonald
Ownership Society Institute
The Wall Street Journal article posted today, The Keynesians Were Wrong Again, confirms the painful reality that Barack Obama is trying to solve our severe recession with outdated and discredited fiscal policies that led to the severity of the Great Depression of the 1930’s.
More importantly the writer alerts us to the fact that until our government passes incentives for job-creating investment we will likely be headed for continued negative growth and possibly a depression.
When government takes money from taxpayers and borrows from their grandchildren to spend today to create temporary demand it always fails to create growth or jobs. Obama is making the same mistake FDR made to prolong the Great Depression. He is also tripling the mistakes Jimmy Carter made.
Our economy languished until Ronald Reagan passed the Kemp-Roth bill in the early 1980’s that was the incentive the economy needed to free capital to be used for job creating investment. Marginal income tax rates were dropped from 70% to 28% and that triggered the greatest 25-year period of prosperity any country has ever experienced.
Today America can experience an even greater and more dynamic period of prosperity if it can reverse the direction of the Obama Administration and pass incentives for job-creating investment. That would entail defeating the Obama Administration’s many spending proposals and passing a massive tax cut that freed capital for job-creating investment.
This time around cutting income taxes is not necessary. Fifty (50%) of the people don’t pay any and the rich pay only 15% on capital investments. Therefore the pool of capital that could be tapped is payroll taxes. The government taxes 15.3% of a worker’s lifetime income in return for no nest egg whatsoever. They deliver a paltry monthly retirement check one-twentieth (1/2oth) of what would have gotten if the taxpayer had been able to invest those taxes in the market during his working life.
Dumping over $100 billion a month of payroll taxes into the stock market would be the incentive the market needs to recapture the market losses in 401(k)s and create new jobs, prosperity and growth. It also would be the wealth creating policy that delivers the American Dream of financial to ordinary citizens. See here for how we can do this.
Defeating the current spending proposals will not solve our financial crisis. We still have find capital to invest in job-creating enterprises. The quickest and most accessible source is the pool of payroll taxes waiting to be employed.
Ownership Society Institute
The Wall Street Journal article posted today, The Keynesians Were Wrong Again, confirms the painful reality that Barack Obama is trying to solve our severe recession with outdated and discredited fiscal policies that led to the severity of the Great Depression of the 1930’s.
More importantly the writer alerts us to the fact that until our government passes incentives for job-creating investment we will likely be headed for continued negative growth and possibly a depression.
When government takes money from taxpayers and borrows from their grandchildren to spend today to create temporary demand it always fails to create growth or jobs. Obama is making the same mistake FDR made to prolong the Great Depression. He is also tripling the mistakes Jimmy Carter made.
Our economy languished until Ronald Reagan passed the Kemp-Roth bill in the early 1980’s that was the incentive the economy needed to free capital to be used for job creating investment. Marginal income tax rates were dropped from 70% to 28% and that triggered the greatest 25-year period of prosperity any country has ever experienced.
Today America can experience an even greater and more dynamic period of prosperity if it can reverse the direction of the Obama Administration and pass incentives for job-creating investment. That would entail defeating the Obama Administration’s many spending proposals and passing a massive tax cut that freed capital for job-creating investment.
This time around cutting income taxes is not necessary. Fifty (50%) of the people don’t pay any and the rich pay only 15% on capital investments. Therefore the pool of capital that could be tapped is payroll taxes. The government taxes 15.3% of a worker’s lifetime income in return for no nest egg whatsoever. They deliver a paltry monthly retirement check one-twentieth (1/2oth) of what would have gotten if the taxpayer had been able to invest those taxes in the market during his working life.
Dumping over $100 billion a month of payroll taxes into the stock market would be the incentive the market needs to recapture the market losses in 401(k)s and create new jobs, prosperity and growth. It also would be the wealth creating policy that delivers the American Dream of financial to ordinary citizens. See here for how we can do this.
Defeating the current spending proposals will not solve our financial crisis. We still have find capital to invest in job-creating enterprises. The quickest and most accessible source is the pool of payroll taxes waiting to be employed.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Democrats Bleeding Taxpayer’s Dry
A Republican Solution
by Dick McDonald, Ownership Society Institute
The $780 Stimulus Bill was rushed through Congress so fast no Senator or Representative ever read the bill. President Obama assured us that it was the economic stimulus that would keep unemployment under 8%. Now that unemployment has raced past 9.4% just a few months later the Democrat-controlled media is still refusing to tell the American public the truth about Obama’s gross mismanagement of this stimulus package. To date only 15% of the funds have been spent and only 1% on the job-creating shovel-ready job-creating infrastructure projects. To say President Obama is an incompetent is to insult incompetents everywhere.
So where has the 14% gone? You guessed it – to pay the salaries and pensions of state, county and city employees. In other words to keep government employees and their unions “paid off” instead of laid off like the private sector has had to do. No wonder no jobs have been created – this Marxist-in-Chief is creating a depression he thinks he will solve like FDR. The only problem is FDR had a 14% unemployment rate on December 7th, 1941. He never solved the depression – World War II did.
The City of LA, like all of California, is bleeding from over-spending by Democrats. Recently they “solved” a current departmental wage crisis by giving early retirement – at 55 years of age – to over 222 government workers at 90% of their last year’s salary. As those salaries averaged $100,000 a year the 30-year cost to taxpayers will be $2,700,000 plus COLA for each one of the 222 workers. This is where the Democrats have driven the economy – into paralysis by their mobs of inside-the-government workers padding their own paychecks and retirement out of your dwindling wealth.
And the American public hasn’t got a clue. The Democrat-controlled media no longer investigates – it merely is a propaganda machine – blindly driving us straight into a wall.
Now do you get it. This is where your stimulus tax dollars are going. Not to stimulate the private sector economy where the people are but to the government employees and their unions. The stimulus is not creating jobs as Obama promised – it is feather-bedding government employees. It is similar to what Democrats did in allowing unions to blackmail the auto companies into bankruptcy by underwriting $150,000 a-year manufacturing jobs. Obama, the Congress and the state assemblies are stealing from the taxpayers to fill their own purse.
This is not a free country anymore. It bears no resemblance to the country our Founder’s created. It is a totalitarian regime of Democrat elites unmercifully taxing ordinary Americans to fill the pockets of their ruling class of government employees. Using the lie that they are for social justice, Democrats are pushing ordinary Americans – especially the “little guy” they claim to represent further and further into poverty and despair.
The Republicans are bleating that all of this is unfair but no one is really listening to them because the Bush regime ran up big budget deficits and created income disparity that dramatically illustrated the distance between the ordinary citizen and his American Dream. Of course Republicans are banking on Obama’s failure so they can take over Congress again in 2010 and return the country to it normal semi-socialist state which will still leave ordinary Americans penniless and the country with a $60 trillion unfunded entitlement debt.
There is a “solution” to this madness. We will have to take the Republicans to the woodshed and whip them to within an inch of their life so they will consider doing something for the “little guy.” Patriotic Democrats embarrassed by 70 years of unfulfilled promises to the poor should all come on board.
Every American deserves to keep and invest his own money in the fabulous American economy and over a lifetime generate a million-dollar nest egg with which to retire affluently. He shouldn’t have to be highly educated just reasonably industrious and stable during his lifetime. The Founders would have endorsed that philosophy.
We at the Ownership Society Institute have developed such a plan. It involves the creation of a national pension plan in which governments (Federal, state, etc) will no longer have to impose those entitlement taxes (Social Security, Medicare, Disability and the many state and local taxes) on the people and industry will no longer have to provide their employees with supplemental old-age medical or retirement plans. Each individual taxpayer will retain ownership of his “payroll taxes” and automatically invest those funds over their working life into the economy to grow into sizeable nest eggs with which to retire.
The plan is called the Rise Up America(RUA) plan and as an added bonus it will immediately turn our potential depression into the roaring free-market economy. It will do this by infusing monthly over $125 billion of “new” investment capital (those payroll taxes) into the market to grow it algorithmically. Besides being the biggest tax cut in history it will cut the national budget in half and immediately retire over $50 trillion in unfunded entitlement debt. The old Social Security, Disability and Medicare benefits will never be reduced again but will remain as the floor under which no future RUA benefits can ever fall.
Think about the relief our government and industrial complex will experience when they no longer have to finance pensions and old-age medical cost. Think about the taxes we won’t have to pay to the Federal, state and city governments. With the guarantee of sizeable nest egg everyone needn’t demand such exorbitant salaries during their lifetime to fund their own retirement.
The states of California and New York are presently hemorrhaging. RUA is the tonic that will remedy that hangover.
RUA has devised many ways to transition from our existing programs to RUA’s plan. All methods will result in the increase of national wealth in such a great amount that the value of the US dollar will naturally increase. The infusion of such great sums of investment capital into the market will also substantially increase “economic activity” to such an extent that income tax receipts should double within four years allowing excess tax receipts to cover legacy entitlement costs with amounts left over to reduce the national debt.
Of course RUA needs national exposure. We plan to finance that campaign by contributions by patriotic Americans willing to go back to our Founder’s principles to revitalize the country. We need everyone’s help to spread the word and need everyone’s help to fund our publicity campaign to inform all Americans that investing 15.3% of their working life income for a no nest egg whatsoever is a grossly unfair Ponzi scheme that has be stopped. RUA is the plan to stop it. RUA substantially increases retirement benefits – 20 to 40 times more than current Social Security checks and a massive decrease in taxes taken by our government. It will also make our country a more stable and vibrant wealth creating machine.
If you are a patriotic American worried by the direction our country and its economy is headed and want to do something about it contact Dick McDonald at 818-998-6800 for instructions how you can help.
To more fully understand the scope and workings of the Rise Up America plan go to www.riseupamerica.us. You and your patriotic friends can contribute there and get a copy of free e-book that is the blueprint of what we hope will be the most significant economic change in the 21st Century.
by Dick McDonald, Ownership Society Institute
The $780 Stimulus Bill was rushed through Congress so fast no Senator or Representative ever read the bill. President Obama assured us that it was the economic stimulus that would keep unemployment under 8%. Now that unemployment has raced past 9.4% just a few months later the Democrat-controlled media is still refusing to tell the American public the truth about Obama’s gross mismanagement of this stimulus package. To date only 15% of the funds have been spent and only 1% on the job-creating shovel-ready job-creating infrastructure projects. To say President Obama is an incompetent is to insult incompetents everywhere.
So where has the 14% gone? You guessed it – to pay the salaries and pensions of state, county and city employees. In other words to keep government employees and their unions “paid off” instead of laid off like the private sector has had to do. No wonder no jobs have been created – this Marxist-in-Chief is creating a depression he thinks he will solve like FDR. The only problem is FDR had a 14% unemployment rate on December 7th, 1941. He never solved the depression – World War II did.
The City of LA, like all of California, is bleeding from over-spending by Democrats. Recently they “solved” a current departmental wage crisis by giving early retirement – at 55 years of age – to over 222 government workers at 90% of their last year’s salary. As those salaries averaged $100,000 a year the 30-year cost to taxpayers will be $2,700,000 plus COLA for each one of the 222 workers. This is where the Democrats have driven the economy – into paralysis by their mobs of inside-the-government workers padding their own paychecks and retirement out of your dwindling wealth.
And the American public hasn’t got a clue. The Democrat-controlled media no longer investigates – it merely is a propaganda machine – blindly driving us straight into a wall.
Now do you get it. This is where your stimulus tax dollars are going. Not to stimulate the private sector economy where the people are but to the government employees and their unions. The stimulus is not creating jobs as Obama promised – it is feather-bedding government employees. It is similar to what Democrats did in allowing unions to blackmail the auto companies into bankruptcy by underwriting $150,000 a-year manufacturing jobs. Obama, the Congress and the state assemblies are stealing from the taxpayers to fill their own purse.
This is not a free country anymore. It bears no resemblance to the country our Founder’s created. It is a totalitarian regime of Democrat elites unmercifully taxing ordinary Americans to fill the pockets of their ruling class of government employees. Using the lie that they are for social justice, Democrats are pushing ordinary Americans – especially the “little guy” they claim to represent further and further into poverty and despair.
The Republicans are bleating that all of this is unfair but no one is really listening to them because the Bush regime ran up big budget deficits and created income disparity that dramatically illustrated the distance between the ordinary citizen and his American Dream. Of course Republicans are banking on Obama’s failure so they can take over Congress again in 2010 and return the country to it normal semi-socialist state which will still leave ordinary Americans penniless and the country with a $60 trillion unfunded entitlement debt.
There is a “solution” to this madness. We will have to take the Republicans to the woodshed and whip them to within an inch of their life so they will consider doing something for the “little guy.” Patriotic Democrats embarrassed by 70 years of unfulfilled promises to the poor should all come on board.
Every American deserves to keep and invest his own money in the fabulous American economy and over a lifetime generate a million-dollar nest egg with which to retire affluently. He shouldn’t have to be highly educated just reasonably industrious and stable during his lifetime. The Founders would have endorsed that philosophy.
We at the Ownership Society Institute have developed such a plan. It involves the creation of a national pension plan in which governments (Federal, state, etc) will no longer have to impose those entitlement taxes (Social Security, Medicare, Disability and the many state and local taxes) on the people and industry will no longer have to provide their employees with supplemental old-age medical or retirement plans. Each individual taxpayer will retain ownership of his “payroll taxes” and automatically invest those funds over their working life into the economy to grow into sizeable nest eggs with which to retire.
The plan is called the Rise Up America(RUA) plan and as an added bonus it will immediately turn our potential depression into the roaring free-market economy. It will do this by infusing monthly over $125 billion of “new” investment capital (those payroll taxes) into the market to grow it algorithmically. Besides being the biggest tax cut in history it will cut the national budget in half and immediately retire over $50 trillion in unfunded entitlement debt. The old Social Security, Disability and Medicare benefits will never be reduced again but will remain as the floor under which no future RUA benefits can ever fall.
Think about the relief our government and industrial complex will experience when they no longer have to finance pensions and old-age medical cost. Think about the taxes we won’t have to pay to the Federal, state and city governments. With the guarantee of sizeable nest egg everyone needn’t demand such exorbitant salaries during their lifetime to fund their own retirement.
The states of California and New York are presently hemorrhaging. RUA is the tonic that will remedy that hangover.
RUA has devised many ways to transition from our existing programs to RUA’s plan. All methods will result in the increase of national wealth in such a great amount that the value of the US dollar will naturally increase. The infusion of such great sums of investment capital into the market will also substantially increase “economic activity” to such an extent that income tax receipts should double within four years allowing excess tax receipts to cover legacy entitlement costs with amounts left over to reduce the national debt.
Of course RUA needs national exposure. We plan to finance that campaign by contributions by patriotic Americans willing to go back to our Founder’s principles to revitalize the country. We need everyone’s help to spread the word and need everyone’s help to fund our publicity campaign to inform all Americans that investing 15.3% of their working life income for a no nest egg whatsoever is a grossly unfair Ponzi scheme that has be stopped. RUA is the plan to stop it. RUA substantially increases retirement benefits – 20 to 40 times more than current Social Security checks and a massive decrease in taxes taken by our government. It will also make our country a more stable and vibrant wealth creating machine.
If you are a patriotic American worried by the direction our country and its economy is headed and want to do something about it contact Dick McDonald at 818-998-6800 for instructions how you can help.
To more fully understand the scope and workings of the Rise Up America plan go to www.riseupamerica.us. You and your patriotic friends can contribute there and get a copy of free e-book that is the blueprint of what we hope will be the most significant economic change in the 21st Century.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Rise Up America: A plan to Restore Fiscal Conservatism
Ownership Society Institute
May, 2008
For the past year ordinary Americans have made two things crystal clear:
First they want economic change. They want their politicians to do something about either reducing the price of gas, food, services and other products or increasing their income and wealth - or both.
Second they want politicians to start working for the people. They are fed up with hearing promises from Washington that are never kept and continuous excuses f why they aren’t.
Note: these concerns have been successfully tested by Barack Obama during his nominating campaign.
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This short booklet outlines a plan ordinary Americans and their politicians need to hear, promote and adopt. The plan will make ordinary Americans richer without asking them to invest a dime of their own money nor change any aspect of their present employment or activities. The plan has been designed to enable Americans - even those without high school educations - to achieve the American Dream of financial independence so long as they remain stable and industrious during their working life.
The plan is called the Rise Up America (RUA) plan and has been designed to be a force for unity enabling all Americans to pull in the same direction. Rather than having segments of the population competing and warring with each other, the plan will unify the efforts of all Americans.
Pass this booklet on to your friends to start the ball rolling to restructure our government and streamline our private sector to work for the people rather than against them. Make sure your political representatives are aware of RUA and are promising to enact legislation to put the Plan into effect
Core Premise
The Rise Up America plan is based on one core premise and that is that Americans can do a better job than their government in managing their money. This booklet will be devoted to illustrating how major government entitlement programs including Social Security and Medicare fail to meet the intended or perceived purposes they were enacted to fulfill and in fact severely limit the growth of the American economy.
Current Social Security, Disability and Medicare Programs
Today Americans pay 15.3% of their annual income up to $102,000 (2008) in payroll taxes to the Federal government in return for a monthly Social Security check and medical coverage at retirement as well as disability coverage for all ages.
Those workers who are employees have 7.65% of their income withheld for payroll taxes and employers match that amount and send the entire 15.3% to the government. Self-employed individuals pay the entire 15.3% at the same time their income taxes are due.
The government does not save the money in a fund for the employee’s future retirement but immediately spends it to pay benefits to currently disabled and retired Americans. Many Americans have been led to believe these monies are saved in the Social Security Fund. They are not.
Payroll taxes are withheld (or paid) on all earnings no matter how old an individual is. Those who attain the retirement age of 67 however, are entitled to a monthly retirement check from Social Security and coverage for their medical needs under Medicare.
Even though Americans pay 15.3% of their lifetime income in payroll taxes, they are not entitled to a nest egg. Unlike a savings account where an amount is accumulated for the saver, there is no accumulation of an individual’s investment in Social Security and Medicare. If a taxpayer dies before retirement all payroll taxes paid by them throughout their life are lost and any government obligation to them extinguished.
Assume a long-haul truck driver made $60,000 a year for his 50-year working life dies at 67 years of age. The $450,000 he paid in payroll taxes over the years is forfeited to the government and the government has no obligation to pay his heirs anything. This is unlike the result he could have achieved if he had invested this amount in an interest-bearing savings account or in an account where his money was invested in stocks or bonds and it compounded over the years.
Social Security is perceived by the public to be a retirement pension. Congressmen will quickly correct that misperception describing it rather as a “safety net” – specifically a benefit not designed as a retirement pension. Its reason for existence is to enable retired people to have enough money to avoid starvation. The average Social Security check is just over $1,000 a month.
Both the Social Security and Medicare programs are tragically under funded. The government accounting office fixed the unfunded liability at $45 trillion as of September 30, 2007. As the funding of these programs is on a pay-as-you-go basis both programs are technically bankrupt. To date politicians have failed to correct the problem suggesting however that the only solutions are to either raise taxes or cut benefits. The Rise Up America plan to be discussed below has been designed to substantially “increase” those benefits while simultaneously generating the largest tax cut in US history.
Proposed Solution – Rise Up America Plan
The Rise Up America plan is a comprehensive solution to many problems faced by America and its people as well as a blueprint to literally explode the growth of the American economy. This booklet will touch on some of the major problems that Rise up solves or will assist in solving. It will illustrate how the American economy is severely limited by existing government policies and practices.
The first problem it solves is changing the misguided method of financing Social Security, Disability and Medicare entitlements. Instead of legislatively assisting Americans in saving for their own retirement government has misled them into perceiving that Social Security’s “safety net” is a retirement pension.
The Rise Up America plan proposes to return the responsibility for funding the retirement and old-age medical needs back to the individual retirees. In other words, the Plan proposes to take the responsibility for funding retirement away from the government and place that responsibility directly on the shoulders of individual Americans.
In order to do that, the Plan must make every American wealthy enough to cover those costs. That includes the poor and lower-income Americans who presently can’t save enough to retire on. In addition the Plan must pay off all obligations under the old plans until all the participants die. As a part of the Plan to transition to Rise Up, the payment of those legacy obligations will be grandfathered and guaranteed by the government.
The Plan increases the monthly retirement check from ten to twenty times more than it is today and allows the individual to build a multimillion dollar nest egg to finance their retirement and pass that wealth on to succeeding generations.
To enable the poor and lower-income Americans to participate along with wealthier Americans, Rise Up will divert the 15% presently paid in payroll taxes directly into a personal investment account owned by the taxpayer and held by an independent entity operating solely as a trust. The funds will be held in the trust until retirement. As explained below a sizeable nest egg will be accumulated for all taxpayers.
The reason poor and lower-income Americans have been unable to save for retirement is they never have enough left over after paying their expenses to save for their retirement. Under Rise Up their payroll taxes accumulate in their own account which is invested at their direction into several different stock-indexed funds which for the last thirty years have been growing at over 10% per year. E.g. the S&P 500 stock index has been growing at 12.8% over the last 30 years.
The average American household earned over $48,000 a year in 2006 according to the US Census Bureau.. Assuming that in 2008 that figure has approached $50,000 let’s take a look at how the 15% withheld weekly and invested in indexed stock funds would do over a 40 year working life.
The $7,500 of annual withholding (15% on $50,000) if invested weekly for 40 years and earning 10% a year would generate a nest egg of $4,004,000. If the taxpayer earns the same 10 % in his 41st year (the first year of retirement) he will have earned $400,400 that year which when paid out in installments amounts to a monthly retirement check of $33,000 - 12 times a year.
Under Social Security the taxpayer is not entitled to a nest egg. His investment of $300,000 ($7,500 x 40 years) in payroll taxes is lost to him. His scheduled Social Security “safety net” amounts to $1,345 a month according the Social Security Administration’s Quick Guide calculator or 1/24th of the amount he would get under the Plan.
Why Rise Up America is So Powerful
There is no mystery why the Rise Up America plan generates such enormous nest eggs and monthly checks. It is based on compounding. Thought of simply when you put a dollar in the bank each year for 40 years and the bank pays you 10% interest every year on the ending balance of the previous year you would accumulate an account of $442. Now had you not received interest on the account you would only have $40 at the end of 40 years.
The reason you end up with so much more is that the account compounds over the years because the 10% is earned not only on the $1 contributed every year but also on the accumulated interest*. See the table below to see how large a nest egg you would accumulate at your income level.
http://hstrial-rmcdonald1.homestead.com/indextablenesteggsvarious.xls
Footnote
For example, in the 39th year the account has $401 in it. The 10% interest it earns in the 40th year is $40 (10% on the ending balance of the 39th year). When the $1 contributed is added to the $401 beginning balance and the $40 earned is added the account totals $442 at the end of 40 years.
Rate of Return
The average citizen has a difficult time believing the enormous sums that can be accumulated under long-term investment plans like Rise Up. Their experience is generally limited to the small percentages they get from the bank in interest. As far as a rate of return on stock (the increase in yearly value plus dividends) few have ever invested in stocks and many who have had bad short-term experiences in picking individual stocks. Many Americans are therefore frightened by the swings in the market having no experience with the long-term growth in the business sector of the economy and the stock market in particular.
When taken in 40-year intervals, the last 25 40-year periods have averaged an annual rate of return of 12. 5% on the S&P 500 stock index. Another study indicates the rate of return experienced when just the last 30 years have been analyzed is 12.8%. To be conservative we have used a 10% rate of return in this booklet.
It is important to note that either the 12.5% or the 12.8% rate include a 3% inflation factor. Therefore the real growth in the account would be 9.5% and 9.8% respectfully. It is also important to note that the return on US Bonds in 40-year increments is only 4.1 %. That also includes a 3% inflation factor thereby netting only a 1.1% real growth in the value of bonds. So it is important to remember that a safe investment in US Bonds is really not that safe – stocks return 9 times more in real growth than bonds over extended investment cycles.
Rise Up is a Proven Plan
A number of countries, several counties in Texas and the United States government have implemented personal accounts similar to what Rise Up proposes. Those plans have been unqualified successes and prove that Rise Up works in practice.
In each plan the participant accumulates a nest egg by investing amounts withheld from his earnings. He invests in indexed stocks that not only create a retirement nest egg but generates a substantial monthly retirement check.
These plans have proven over the years that personal accounts invested in broad-based indexed stock funds are not risky, the plans are very inexpensive to operate and the growth through compounding the most successful method of financing retirement.
An Example of Personal Accounts in Practice
The government’s Thrift Savings plan, is only a very small version of the Rise Up America plan. As of the July, 2007 it only had accumulated $227 billion for 3.77 million government employees after almost 20 years of operations. Rise Up contemplates investing $1.3 trillion into personal accounts in its very first year of operations.
Of the many funds a participant can chose to invest in the government forced many in the early years to choose money market funds which paid small annual rates of return. The government also allowed participants to transfer their investments between stock and bond funds which reduced their returns because individuals can seldom make good investment decisions.
Thrift Saving’s one pure US stock fund based on the S&P 500 (which recently changed to include the Wilshire 4,500) had a rate of return of 35.49% in 1999 which was followed by three years of losses totaling 42.95% (15.77% in 2000, 9.04% in 2001, 18.14% in 2002). However in 2003 alone the rate of return jumped to 42.92% followed by three years of 18.03%, 10.45% and 15.30 in 2006 totaling 43.78%. Therefore, the fund had a 9.9% average annual rate of return in the 8 years including the disastrous market crash of 2000 to 2002.
We note this example as the rationale behind long-term investing. When the market falls the investor does not lose the number of shares he owns so when the market goes up his recovery is rapid like the above 42.92% increase in 2003. In addition during the fall the investor is able to add shares at reduced prices which also enjoy the rapid 42.92% recovery.
The government matches up to 5% of the participant’s salary in the Thrift Savings plan which is a substantial departure from Social Security in which ordinary Americans provide 100% of the funding. This government plan has been operated for less than 1/10th of 1% of its income since 1990 proving that Rise Up will be very inexpensive to operate.
Transition to Rise Up America Plan
It is important to understand how our monetary system works in order to fully understand how we can simultaneously divert $1.3 trillion in payroll tax receipts into the personal investment accounts, pay $1.1 trillion in benefits that were previously funded out of that $1.3 trillion and at the same time increase the value of the US Dollar internationally. It is not difficult to understand. Just take a minute to see how easy it is.
When one talks about money on a national scale we either refer to “fiscal” policies or “monetary” policies. They are not difficult to understand. Fiscal policies you recognize when Congress tries to balance the national budget. If we “fiscally” spend more than we get in we create a “deficit” which is added annually to our national debt - if we run a surplus that reduces our national debt.
Monetary policy involves the printing of money and the uses to which that money is put. “Printing” money is just a catchy phrase to encompass a number of ways the Federal Reserve Board - who controls our money supply – actually spends our money. If they print more money that dilutes its value but only if it is spent covering the mistakes our government makes or other expense items. It can “print” money by dropping interest rates to 1% like it has the last several years. That has cost us trillions because that was a pure expenditure of money that added nothing to the net worth of the country – in fact it dropped the value of the US Dollar by 40% to 50%.
Now for Rise Up’s magic transition. $1.3 trillion in what used to be payroll taxes is placed in personal investment accounts and invested “fiscally” in the stock market. The entire value of stocks in the hands of Americans is only $23 trillion right now so by adding $1.3 trillion a year of new capital will dramatically increase economic activity, increase government’s “income tax” receipts and create an economic environment where ordinary Americans can become wealthy stock investors. By investing such sums over the years will “compound” the net worth of America to over a quadrillion dollars in 40 years. See
http://hstrial-rmcdonald1.homestead.com/indextable40yearsofpersonalaccounts.xls
Now comes a part that will be difficult to believe but easy to understand – just where will we get the money to pay existing Social Security participants and all those qualifying in future years that don’t have sufficiently large enough personal accounts to fund their own retirement and medical needs?
The answer - we “print” the money – and dilute the value of our money supply by $1.1 trillion the very first year. This is a “monetary” solution and does not involve Congress and the budget process.
We don’t pay interest on the money we print therefore future interest costs are not relevant. As the existing participants and those nearing retirement will need the minimum guaranteed by Social Security and Medicare we can print that money on a dollar for dollar basis. Amounts due these ever-decreasing number of participants will automatically extinguish themselves as participants die or their personal account grows big enough to support their retirement.
An international currency trader looking at a government that is investing in its economy will drive up the price of the dollar. Under Rise Up the economy is annually adding “and” compounding $1.3 trillion in new capital and extinguishing ever-decreasing older obligations at no interest cost and on a dollar for dollar basis. Currency traders are going to buy into this extremely positive economic move that will explode the net worth of America and Americans; Rise Up will make the US dollar more valuable and exceedingly more stable than their previous policy of only printing money to pay for mistakes and expenses. Printing money to support the national investment in personal accounts that grows and compounds will allow America to not so “magically” but realistically and prudently transition to personal accounts.
Additionally, the explosive economic growth will cause Federal income tax receipts to mushroom which can be used to pay off some of the old Social Security and Medicare obligations.
Benefits – to the American Economy
America has experienced an average 3% economic growth per year for over 80 years. That growth has been impeded by policies of high taxation on the rich until 1982 and on the poor and middle-class right up to the present. Rise Up eliminates “payroll” taxes and returns that money to the people who in turn invest it in the economy and enable the poor and middle-class to enjoy the benefits of capitalism with their own pool of capital – personal accounts. By aggressively pursuing the Rise Up model the country could see rates of growth up to 10% per year and a substantial increase in the country’s net worth.
Unity of Purpose
Today just slightly over 50% of the population own stocks. Many have been led to believe big business is a threat to liberty and justice. As a result many anti-business regulations, red tape, law suits and adverse publicity has reduced the profitability of American businesses. Under Rise Up 100% of the population will be shareholders with an abiding self-interest in seeing to it their personal accounts grow. The Rise Up America plan will have them all pulling in the same direction – bringing the responsibility for profitability down to the lowest level in the company where it is most efficient.
Benefits to the Government
The government has failed to fund the future benefits of its entitlement programs. The Government Accounting Office claims politicians have run up unfunded obligations to participants of over $45 trillion as of September 30, 2007. The Rise Up America plan will extinguish the entire $45 trillion on the date of its enactment.
Benefits of One Plan
Today there are millions of participants in millions of retirement and old-age medical plans in government and in the private sector. The cost of administering and funding these plans has been costly, time-consuming and inefficient. Just the administration of Social Security takes over 60,000 employees at the Social Security Administration. Billions can be saved switching to one personal account administered by one trust for all Americans.
Benefits to the American Worker
Rise Up will deliver to all Americans a personal account that will compound and grow into million-dollar nest eggs during their working life. Even a minimum wage work who earns only $7.50 a hour for 40 years will end up with a $1.2 million nest egg and a $10,000 a month retirement check. The enactment of Rise Up will enable ordinary Americans to achieve the American Dream without having to be highly educated or socially connected. All he or she needs to do is be stable and industrious and the Dream is theirs.
Political Benefits
There can be no argument that all political parties want to improve the living standards of the poor and middle-class. Every party wants to fulfill their promise to lift Americans out of poverty and improve the economy. The enactment of Rise Up will accomplish both major objectives.
Benefit – The National Budget
This year the national budget is over $3.1 trillion. By enacting Rise Up the mandatory entitlements for Social Security and Medicare will be eliminated bringing the budget down below $2 trillion. The annual increase in mandatory non-discretionary spending for entitlements that soaks up so much of the growth of the economy will be eliminated and the budget reduced.
Benefit – Tax Cuts
By enacting Rise Up, Americans will be getting the largest tax cut in US history - $1.3 trillion in the first year alone. By relieving government of the responsibility of providing a “safety net” and medical coverage relieves the people of paying taxes to support those programs. This will especially benefit the young who will be relieved of the responsibility of funding entitlements.
Benefits to Business
Many businesses provide pensions and some provide old-age medical benefits to supplement the insufficient “safety net” and other benefits supplied to retirees by government. These costs are added to the price of their products and if they have global competition the cost of these supplemental plans have made our businesses less competitive. Rise Up will relieve business of tens of billions to fund these supplemental plans. Enacting Rise Up will make the companies more profitable and their products more competitive.
Benefits in Labor Disputes and Strikes
Unions have long been getting pensions and old-age medical benefits for their members. By adopting Rise Up unions will get better benefits for their workers and eliminate the need to strike and perpetually negotiate with businesses for better retirement benefits.
Benefit to Women
One of the great insecurities in a woman’s life occurs when she opts to raise a family rather than continuing her education and adding to her working skills. Under Rise Up married spouses share their personal accounts from the date they marry. In that fashion a wife who opts to stay home, raise a family and never work a day in her life, can still retire a millionaire at 67. One –half of her husband’s withholding is placed in her own personal account and invested to grow into a sizeable nest egg and monthly retirement check.
Family Creation and Demographic Benefits
Falling birth rates are presenting demographic concerns throughout the world. Certain ethnic populations are predicted to be instinct in a century. Rise Up should go a long way in changing that dynamic - by enabling women to have financial security and four or more kids as well.
Benefits to the Individual
The ever-increasing reliance and dependence on the government to solve problems has reduced the self-reliance and the can-do spirit of many Americans. By giving them property, some for the first time in their life, should generate an internal need to protect that property– their personal account. The wealth that property represents should empower people to be more independent, responsible and less likely to rely on government.
Crime and Punishment
So much of crime is driven by poverty. By eradicating poverty, many of the financial crimes will not be committed. Under Rise Up a criminal’s “personal account’ is charged for the cost of his incarceration which will be a deterrent to recidivists and first timers as well. The possibility of losing his million-dollar nest egg should be a motivation to many to avoid committing crimes in the first place.
Benefits to Academe
Many educators, in fact many famous old universities, have been accused of indoctrinating students with anti-capitalist socialist doctrine and collectivist dogma. It could be said that academe had no alternatives. Their goal was to level the economic playing field and as capitalism was not solving poverty they embraced and promoted utopian constructs like socialism. As capitalism under Rise Up actually eliminates the working poor, capitalism should replace socialism as the doctrine embraced by academe.
World Opinion
In the last several years many have claimed America is headed downhill, an empire experiencing the decay that destroyed prior “empires.” Astute observers see few signs of that decay. With the enactment and implementation of Rise Up, America will be the first nation on Earth to eradicate poverty. As most of the world’s population suffers endemic poverty the sea change in America economic fortunes should put to rest any doubts about the fact that America is the “shining city on the hill”.
Consequences of Inaction
If a plan like Rise Up is not enacted it can be predicted with a reasonable degree of certainty that those with a progressive-socialist agenda will continue to tax the rich and redistribute to the poor. That will in turn reduce the capital needed to run the country and build new businesses and hire new employees. Such an eventuality will seriously impact the explosive growth that would occur under Rise Up and deny America all the benefits listed above.
As Western Europe has seen the serious economic error of its cradle-to-grave dependencies it has recently elected conservative capitalist-supporting leaders to reverse their country’s course and move closer to the free market capitalist model of the USA. The USA on the other hand appears to be headed into the cradle-to-grave model that Europeans are finally rejecting. Failing to enact Rise Up legislation would insure a big government dependency would emerge in the next few years.
The Opposition to Bush’s Personal Account Plan
When President Bush spent the first 5 months of 2005 promoting personal accounts he failed to sell a plan that would do only 3% of what Rise Up can do. The opposition to personal accounts held 6,000 Town Hall meetings to defeat his proposal and special interests like the NEA and AARP spent tens of millions in advertising to defeat it.
Bush concentrated almost exclusively on solving the solvency problem – the $45 trillion debt Congress has not funded. People couldn’t have cared less about the government’s problem. Until it impacts their pocketbook they don’t pay attention and Bush’s opposition told them it was not a problem until 2042 and they bought it.
The President did not submit a plan but asked Congress to work on it. Republicans in Congress came up with 2% 4% and 6% plans and proposed keeping both the old system and the new smaller system running simultaneously. This totally confused the issue and made those proposals easy targets for the opposition to attack.
After several months of promotion it was proposed that the annual contribution to personal accounts would be capped at $1,000. This made the proposal totally unattractive to the people as they couldn’t see them getting rich like they would under Rise up.
The frontal attacks on Bush’s plan were it was too risky, Wall Street would get rich charging fees, it cost too much to administer, Bush was out to destroy Social Security and cut benefits to the elderly. Not one of those charges were true but the media, the advertising, the Town Hall Meetings and the ineptitude of Bush to present an aggressive Rise Up type plan doomed his effort.
People will be moved to improve their own well being and the Country’s economic strength. They just need to be presented with a viable plan. Rise Up America is such a plan.
Opposition to Rise Up America
It is hard to believe that a plan that would make the poor wealthy and America richer would have serious opposition. We hope it doesn’t but we anticipate substantial opposition from various political groups and special interests. It is believed that the opposition will come from those whose interest in say the poor and middle-class is not about improving their well being but in securing their vote to retain political power. Hopefully, they can see their way clear to let Rise Up be enacted from a purely moral and religious standpoint.
Initially it is anticipated that the same objections from the same parties will be made against Rise Up as were made against President Bush’s efforts. Of course the argument against Rise Up is more difficult this time around as it is a comprehensive plan improving too many aspects of modern life to be ignored or dismissed like the small footprint the President tried to make.
Rise Up’s Constituencies
Every man and women in America should be a constituent of the Rise Up America plan. It makes the people and the country wealthier, more efficient, more stable more industrious and less contentious. Certain groups will benefit by reducing or eliminating problems they are currently facing. They include:
American Manufacturers
They will benefit by eliminating the need to provide retirement plans for their workers; eliminate the need to negotiate with unions on retirement benefits; eliminate the cost of retirement from product cost thus becoming more competitive in the global; market.
Churches, NGOs and Religions
As the basic tenet of all religions is the care and nurture of the less fortunate, Rise Up should be a godsend to them as it allows capitalism to solve the riddle of endemic poverty in the United States. Churches, religions and especially NGOs can carry that message worldwide so that it is promoted and implemented globally.
World Leaders
The world suffers from catastrophic food shortages and poverty. Leaders the world over are looking for ways to increase the economic and social well being of their citizens. Rise Up presents them with a model to copy to self-finance their own progress.
Women
As women are more than half of the population of the planet, economically emancipating them in America might encourage their elevation in status and stature throughout the world.
Others
There are so many other constituencies like teachers, union members, impoverished minorities and the like there is no reason to belabor the point here. The Rise Up America plan can be the issue so many of these constituencies find as an indispensable tool to accomplishing their particular goals.
Current Political Climate
Polling during the primary election season of 2008 and three losses of “safe” Republican Congressional seats has proven that the American people are deeply disturbed about the economy and they are placing that blame on the Bush Administration.
It would be convenient to blame the War in Iraq but polls show the overwhelming majority of American people do not want to lose that war. As the country has not even experienced one quarter in which the Gross National Product dropped below the previous quarter, the possibility that a recession of two consecutive quarters of falling GDP cannot be the reason right now that 82% of the people think the country is headed in the wrong direction.
It is our belief that neither party is offering the people what they want. We believe they want is a better of standard of living and the ability to achieve the American Dream. Neither political party is offering policies that will materially affect the fortunes of ordinary Americans nor deliver a better standard of living. In fact it is projected that the younger generation will not achieve the financial success of their parents because of “income disparity.”
The proposition that the Trickle Down theory is failing to include ordinary working Americans has been widely accepted by the voters. The rich have profited greatly from 25 tears of “trickle down” whereas the wages of ordinary American’s have suffered a $1,000 drop in purchasing power over the last 7 years of the Bush Administration.
Promoting and enacting the Rise Up America plan will inform the American people that their government is looking after them, returning trillions of their own money to invest in the economy and create million-dollar nest eggs. It is what the American taxpayer-voter wants it is the deep significant change they are crying out for.
What Can You Do About It
We have formed a think tank called the “Ownership Society Institute” to lead the charge under the Rise Up America flag to get a grass roots movement going to lobby our representatives at every level to create the enabling Rise Up Theory of Economics legislation outlined here.
We anticipate that we will need a lot of volunteers and a major funding effort to affect the outcome of the 2008 election. In this era of instant celebrity and fame over the new internet communication channels like YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, IPod and cell phones we plan to mount a serious attack to inform the public that they are missing out on million-dollar nest eggs. Without spending a dime or changing anything in their life they can accumulate enough to retire affluently and will enormous sums to their kids.
You can assist us by becoming a member of our Institute and helping us fund our plan to promote Rise Up. Our primary legislative target is to inform politicians of our comprehensive plan so they can use the principles to win their election campaigns the same time they are instructing the public on the benefits.
As it is the Congress that must embrace Rise Up and enact the laws we will concentrate on the Congressional races. We hope to win our many constituencies over to Rise Up so they will support candidates promising to enact Rise Up legislation and pool their lobbying efforts to effect this change. They include the ordinary American, the poor, manufacturers, union members, women, churches and synagogues, non-governmental organizations (NGO), Wall Street, charitable organizations, etc.
The money we raise will go to produce documentaries focused on the general application of Rise Up as well as specific targets like women’s groups, manufacturers, etc. that will benefit from specific portions of the Rise Up law. It will also go to creating materials like pamphlets, and DVDs for political candidates to use in disseminating their message.
The money will also go for creating a presence in every state to specifically promote Rise Up. A new master website needs to be built to handle the effort. The more successful we are the greater need for logistics to coordinate the operation’s many-faceted effort.
You can participate by helping us fund this effort – an effort to make every American a millionaire using his own money to do it. If you believe in free market capitalism there can be no better way to support its victory over creeping socialism than the wealth and success Rise Up will deliver. If you are a politician there will be no greater service you can perform for the people (and the Congressional Budget Office) than lifting $45 trillion of unfunded debt off their shoulders.
Manufacturers will improve their bottom line and become more competitive without having to supplement retirement for their workers. They are a significant beneficiary of Rise Up as are women, union workers, teachers, tradesmen.
To become a member of the Institute go to our temporary website www.riseupamerica.us and contribute by credit card or write a check to the Ownership Society Institute and mail it to our office at 9662 Jumilla Avenue, Chatsworth, CA 91311-5610.
The Ownership Society Institute is a California Charitable Trust # CT0136416 which qualifies for charitable status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
OWNERSHIP SOCIETY INSTITUTE
By:_Dick McDonald
Richard A. McDonald
Managing Trustee
May, 2008
- Make the poor rich
- Make America wealthier
- Extinguish $45 trillion in unfunded debt
- Reduce the Budget by $1.3 trillion
- Deliver the largest tax cut in history
- Make 100% of Americans capitalists
- Increase the value of the US dollar
- Make American products competitive
- Reduce management-labor difficulties
- Cut our national debt from $9 to $5 trillion
- Economically emancipate women
- Increase retirement bnefits
For the past year ordinary Americans have made two things crystal clear:
First they want economic change. They want their politicians to do something about either reducing the price of gas, food, services and other products or increasing their income and wealth - or both.
Second they want politicians to start working for the people. They are fed up with hearing promises from Washington that are never kept and continuous excuses f why they aren’t.
Note: these concerns have been successfully tested by Barack Obama during his nominating campaign.
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This short booklet outlines a plan ordinary Americans and their politicians need to hear, promote and adopt. The plan will make ordinary Americans richer without asking them to invest a dime of their own money nor change any aspect of their present employment or activities. The plan has been designed to enable Americans - even those without high school educations - to achieve the American Dream of financial independence so long as they remain stable and industrious during their working life.
The plan is called the Rise Up America (RUA) plan and has been designed to be a force for unity enabling all Americans to pull in the same direction. Rather than having segments of the population competing and warring with each other, the plan will unify the efforts of all Americans.
Pass this booklet on to your friends to start the ball rolling to restructure our government and streamline our private sector to work for the people rather than against them. Make sure your political representatives are aware of RUA and are promising to enact legislation to put the Plan into effect
Core Premise
The Rise Up America plan is based on one core premise and that is that Americans can do a better job than their government in managing their money. This booklet will be devoted to illustrating how major government entitlement programs including Social Security and Medicare fail to meet the intended or perceived purposes they were enacted to fulfill and in fact severely limit the growth of the American economy.
Current Social Security, Disability and Medicare Programs
Today Americans pay 15.3% of their annual income up to $102,000 (2008) in payroll taxes to the Federal government in return for a monthly Social Security check and medical coverage at retirement as well as disability coverage for all ages.
Those workers who are employees have 7.65% of their income withheld for payroll taxes and employers match that amount and send the entire 15.3% to the government. Self-employed individuals pay the entire 15.3% at the same time their income taxes are due.
The government does not save the money in a fund for the employee’s future retirement but immediately spends it to pay benefits to currently disabled and retired Americans. Many Americans have been led to believe these monies are saved in the Social Security Fund. They are not.
Payroll taxes are withheld (or paid) on all earnings no matter how old an individual is. Those who attain the retirement age of 67 however, are entitled to a monthly retirement check from Social Security and coverage for their medical needs under Medicare.
Even though Americans pay 15.3% of their lifetime income in payroll taxes, they are not entitled to a nest egg. Unlike a savings account where an amount is accumulated for the saver, there is no accumulation of an individual’s investment in Social Security and Medicare. If a taxpayer dies before retirement all payroll taxes paid by them throughout their life are lost and any government obligation to them extinguished.
Assume a long-haul truck driver made $60,000 a year for his 50-year working life dies at 67 years of age. The $450,000 he paid in payroll taxes over the years is forfeited to the government and the government has no obligation to pay his heirs anything. This is unlike the result he could have achieved if he had invested this amount in an interest-bearing savings account or in an account where his money was invested in stocks or bonds and it compounded over the years.
Social Security is perceived by the public to be a retirement pension. Congressmen will quickly correct that misperception describing it rather as a “safety net” – specifically a benefit not designed as a retirement pension. Its reason for existence is to enable retired people to have enough money to avoid starvation. The average Social Security check is just over $1,000 a month.
Both the Social Security and Medicare programs are tragically under funded. The government accounting office fixed the unfunded liability at $45 trillion as of September 30, 2007. As the funding of these programs is on a pay-as-you-go basis both programs are technically bankrupt. To date politicians have failed to correct the problem suggesting however that the only solutions are to either raise taxes or cut benefits. The Rise Up America plan to be discussed below has been designed to substantially “increase” those benefits while simultaneously generating the largest tax cut in US history.
Proposed Solution – Rise Up America Plan
The Rise Up America plan is a comprehensive solution to many problems faced by America and its people as well as a blueprint to literally explode the growth of the American economy. This booklet will touch on some of the major problems that Rise up solves or will assist in solving. It will illustrate how the American economy is severely limited by existing government policies and practices.
The first problem it solves is changing the misguided method of financing Social Security, Disability and Medicare entitlements. Instead of legislatively assisting Americans in saving for their own retirement government has misled them into perceiving that Social Security’s “safety net” is a retirement pension.
The Rise Up America plan proposes to return the responsibility for funding the retirement and old-age medical needs back to the individual retirees. In other words, the Plan proposes to take the responsibility for funding retirement away from the government and place that responsibility directly on the shoulders of individual Americans.
In order to do that, the Plan must make every American wealthy enough to cover those costs. That includes the poor and lower-income Americans who presently can’t save enough to retire on. In addition the Plan must pay off all obligations under the old plans until all the participants die. As a part of the Plan to transition to Rise Up, the payment of those legacy obligations will be grandfathered and guaranteed by the government.
The Plan increases the monthly retirement check from ten to twenty times more than it is today and allows the individual to build a multimillion dollar nest egg to finance their retirement and pass that wealth on to succeeding generations.
To enable the poor and lower-income Americans to participate along with wealthier Americans, Rise Up will divert the 15% presently paid in payroll taxes directly into a personal investment account owned by the taxpayer and held by an independent entity operating solely as a trust. The funds will be held in the trust until retirement. As explained below a sizeable nest egg will be accumulated for all taxpayers.
The reason poor and lower-income Americans have been unable to save for retirement is they never have enough left over after paying their expenses to save for their retirement. Under Rise Up their payroll taxes accumulate in their own account which is invested at their direction into several different stock-indexed funds which for the last thirty years have been growing at over 10% per year. E.g. the S&P 500 stock index has been growing at 12.8% over the last 30 years.
The average American household earned over $48,000 a year in 2006 according to the US Census Bureau.. Assuming that in 2008 that figure has approached $50,000 let’s take a look at how the 15% withheld weekly and invested in indexed stock funds would do over a 40 year working life.
The $7,500 of annual withholding (15% on $50,000) if invested weekly for 40 years and earning 10% a year would generate a nest egg of $4,004,000. If the taxpayer earns the same 10 % in his 41st year (the first year of retirement) he will have earned $400,400 that year which when paid out in installments amounts to a monthly retirement check of $33,000 - 12 times a year.
Under Social Security the taxpayer is not entitled to a nest egg. His investment of $300,000 ($7,500 x 40 years) in payroll taxes is lost to him. His scheduled Social Security “safety net” amounts to $1,345 a month according the Social Security Administration’s Quick Guide calculator or 1/24th of the amount he would get under the Plan.
Why Rise Up America is So Powerful
There is no mystery why the Rise Up America plan generates such enormous nest eggs and monthly checks. It is based on compounding. Thought of simply when you put a dollar in the bank each year for 40 years and the bank pays you 10% interest every year on the ending balance of the previous year you would accumulate an account of $442. Now had you not received interest on the account you would only have $40 at the end of 40 years.
The reason you end up with so much more is that the account compounds over the years because the 10% is earned not only on the $1 contributed every year but also on the accumulated interest*. See the table below to see how large a nest egg you would accumulate at your income level.
http://hstrial-rmcdonald1.homestead.com/indextablenesteggsvarious.xls
Footnote
For example, in the 39th year the account has $401 in it. The 10% interest it earns in the 40th year is $40 (10% on the ending balance of the 39th year). When the $1 contributed is added to the $401 beginning balance and the $40 earned is added the account totals $442 at the end of 40 years.
Rate of Return
The average citizen has a difficult time believing the enormous sums that can be accumulated under long-term investment plans like Rise Up. Their experience is generally limited to the small percentages they get from the bank in interest. As far as a rate of return on stock (the increase in yearly value plus dividends) few have ever invested in stocks and many who have had bad short-term experiences in picking individual stocks. Many Americans are therefore frightened by the swings in the market having no experience with the long-term growth in the business sector of the economy and the stock market in particular.
When taken in 40-year intervals, the last 25 40-year periods have averaged an annual rate of return of 12. 5% on the S&P 500 stock index. Another study indicates the rate of return experienced when just the last 30 years have been analyzed is 12.8%. To be conservative we have used a 10% rate of return in this booklet.
It is important to note that either the 12.5% or the 12.8% rate include a 3% inflation factor. Therefore the real growth in the account would be 9.5% and 9.8% respectfully. It is also important to note that the return on US Bonds in 40-year increments is only 4.1 %. That also includes a 3% inflation factor thereby netting only a 1.1% real growth in the value of bonds. So it is important to remember that a safe investment in US Bonds is really not that safe – stocks return 9 times more in real growth than bonds over extended investment cycles.
Rise Up is a Proven Plan
A number of countries, several counties in Texas and the United States government have implemented personal accounts similar to what Rise Up proposes. Those plans have been unqualified successes and prove that Rise Up works in practice.
In each plan the participant accumulates a nest egg by investing amounts withheld from his earnings. He invests in indexed stocks that not only create a retirement nest egg but generates a substantial monthly retirement check.
These plans have proven over the years that personal accounts invested in broad-based indexed stock funds are not risky, the plans are very inexpensive to operate and the growth through compounding the most successful method of financing retirement.
An Example of Personal Accounts in Practice
The government’s Thrift Savings plan, is only a very small version of the Rise Up America plan. As of the July, 2007 it only had accumulated $227 billion for 3.77 million government employees after almost 20 years of operations. Rise Up contemplates investing $1.3 trillion into personal accounts in its very first year of operations.
Of the many funds a participant can chose to invest in the government forced many in the early years to choose money market funds which paid small annual rates of return. The government also allowed participants to transfer their investments between stock and bond funds which reduced their returns because individuals can seldom make good investment decisions.
Thrift Saving’s one pure US stock fund based on the S&P 500 (which recently changed to include the Wilshire 4,500) had a rate of return of 35.49% in 1999 which was followed by three years of losses totaling 42.95% (15.77% in 2000, 9.04% in 2001, 18.14% in 2002). However in 2003 alone the rate of return jumped to 42.92% followed by three years of 18.03%, 10.45% and 15.30 in 2006 totaling 43.78%. Therefore, the fund had a 9.9% average annual rate of return in the 8 years including the disastrous market crash of 2000 to 2002.
We note this example as the rationale behind long-term investing. When the market falls the investor does not lose the number of shares he owns so when the market goes up his recovery is rapid like the above 42.92% increase in 2003. In addition during the fall the investor is able to add shares at reduced prices which also enjoy the rapid 42.92% recovery.
The government matches up to 5% of the participant’s salary in the Thrift Savings plan which is a substantial departure from Social Security in which ordinary Americans provide 100% of the funding. This government plan has been operated for less than 1/10th of 1% of its income since 1990 proving that Rise Up will be very inexpensive to operate.
Transition to Rise Up America Plan
It is important to understand how our monetary system works in order to fully understand how we can simultaneously divert $1.3 trillion in payroll tax receipts into the personal investment accounts, pay $1.1 trillion in benefits that were previously funded out of that $1.3 trillion and at the same time increase the value of the US Dollar internationally. It is not difficult to understand. Just take a minute to see how easy it is.
When one talks about money on a national scale we either refer to “fiscal” policies or “monetary” policies. They are not difficult to understand. Fiscal policies you recognize when Congress tries to balance the national budget. If we “fiscally” spend more than we get in we create a “deficit” which is added annually to our national debt - if we run a surplus that reduces our national debt.
Monetary policy involves the printing of money and the uses to which that money is put. “Printing” money is just a catchy phrase to encompass a number of ways the Federal Reserve Board - who controls our money supply – actually spends our money. If they print more money that dilutes its value but only if it is spent covering the mistakes our government makes or other expense items. It can “print” money by dropping interest rates to 1% like it has the last several years. That has cost us trillions because that was a pure expenditure of money that added nothing to the net worth of the country – in fact it dropped the value of the US Dollar by 40% to 50%.
Now for Rise Up’s magic transition. $1.3 trillion in what used to be payroll taxes is placed in personal investment accounts and invested “fiscally” in the stock market. The entire value of stocks in the hands of Americans is only $23 trillion right now so by adding $1.3 trillion a year of new capital will dramatically increase economic activity, increase government’s “income tax” receipts and create an economic environment where ordinary Americans can become wealthy stock investors. By investing such sums over the years will “compound” the net worth of America to over a quadrillion dollars in 40 years. See
http://hstrial-rmcdonald1.homestead.com/indextable40yearsofpersonalaccounts.xls
Now comes a part that will be difficult to believe but easy to understand – just where will we get the money to pay existing Social Security participants and all those qualifying in future years that don’t have sufficiently large enough personal accounts to fund their own retirement and medical needs?
The answer - we “print” the money – and dilute the value of our money supply by $1.1 trillion the very first year. This is a “monetary” solution and does not involve Congress and the budget process.
We don’t pay interest on the money we print therefore future interest costs are not relevant. As the existing participants and those nearing retirement will need the minimum guaranteed by Social Security and Medicare we can print that money on a dollar for dollar basis. Amounts due these ever-decreasing number of participants will automatically extinguish themselves as participants die or their personal account grows big enough to support their retirement.
An international currency trader looking at a government that is investing in its economy will drive up the price of the dollar. Under Rise Up the economy is annually adding “and” compounding $1.3 trillion in new capital and extinguishing ever-decreasing older obligations at no interest cost and on a dollar for dollar basis. Currency traders are going to buy into this extremely positive economic move that will explode the net worth of America and Americans; Rise Up will make the US dollar more valuable and exceedingly more stable than their previous policy of only printing money to pay for mistakes and expenses. Printing money to support the national investment in personal accounts that grows and compounds will allow America to not so “magically” but realistically and prudently transition to personal accounts.
Additionally, the explosive economic growth will cause Federal income tax receipts to mushroom which can be used to pay off some of the old Social Security and Medicare obligations.
Benefits – to the American Economy
America has experienced an average 3% economic growth per year for over 80 years. That growth has been impeded by policies of high taxation on the rich until 1982 and on the poor and middle-class right up to the present. Rise Up eliminates “payroll” taxes and returns that money to the people who in turn invest it in the economy and enable the poor and middle-class to enjoy the benefits of capitalism with their own pool of capital – personal accounts. By aggressively pursuing the Rise Up model the country could see rates of growth up to 10% per year and a substantial increase in the country’s net worth.
Unity of Purpose
Today just slightly over 50% of the population own stocks. Many have been led to believe big business is a threat to liberty and justice. As a result many anti-business regulations, red tape, law suits and adverse publicity has reduced the profitability of American businesses. Under Rise Up 100% of the population will be shareholders with an abiding self-interest in seeing to it their personal accounts grow. The Rise Up America plan will have them all pulling in the same direction – bringing the responsibility for profitability down to the lowest level in the company where it is most efficient.
Benefits to the Government
The government has failed to fund the future benefits of its entitlement programs. The Government Accounting Office claims politicians have run up unfunded obligations to participants of over $45 trillion as of September 30, 2007. The Rise Up America plan will extinguish the entire $45 trillion on the date of its enactment.
Benefits of One Plan
Today there are millions of participants in millions of retirement and old-age medical plans in government and in the private sector. The cost of administering and funding these plans has been costly, time-consuming and inefficient. Just the administration of Social Security takes over 60,000 employees at the Social Security Administration. Billions can be saved switching to one personal account administered by one trust for all Americans.
Benefits to the American Worker
Rise Up will deliver to all Americans a personal account that will compound and grow into million-dollar nest eggs during their working life. Even a minimum wage work who earns only $7.50 a hour for 40 years will end up with a $1.2 million nest egg and a $10,000 a month retirement check. The enactment of Rise Up will enable ordinary Americans to achieve the American Dream without having to be highly educated or socially connected. All he or she needs to do is be stable and industrious and the Dream is theirs.
Political Benefits
There can be no argument that all political parties want to improve the living standards of the poor and middle-class. Every party wants to fulfill their promise to lift Americans out of poverty and improve the economy. The enactment of Rise Up will accomplish both major objectives.
Benefit – The National Budget
This year the national budget is over $3.1 trillion. By enacting Rise Up the mandatory entitlements for Social Security and Medicare will be eliminated bringing the budget down below $2 trillion. The annual increase in mandatory non-discretionary spending for entitlements that soaks up so much of the growth of the economy will be eliminated and the budget reduced.
Benefit – Tax Cuts
By enacting Rise Up, Americans will be getting the largest tax cut in US history - $1.3 trillion in the first year alone. By relieving government of the responsibility of providing a “safety net” and medical coverage relieves the people of paying taxes to support those programs. This will especially benefit the young who will be relieved of the responsibility of funding entitlements.
Benefits to Business
Many businesses provide pensions and some provide old-age medical benefits to supplement the insufficient “safety net” and other benefits supplied to retirees by government. These costs are added to the price of their products and if they have global competition the cost of these supplemental plans have made our businesses less competitive. Rise Up will relieve business of tens of billions to fund these supplemental plans. Enacting Rise Up will make the companies more profitable and their products more competitive.
Benefits in Labor Disputes and Strikes
Unions have long been getting pensions and old-age medical benefits for their members. By adopting Rise Up unions will get better benefits for their workers and eliminate the need to strike and perpetually negotiate with businesses for better retirement benefits.
Benefit to Women
One of the great insecurities in a woman’s life occurs when she opts to raise a family rather than continuing her education and adding to her working skills. Under Rise Up married spouses share their personal accounts from the date they marry. In that fashion a wife who opts to stay home, raise a family and never work a day in her life, can still retire a millionaire at 67. One –half of her husband’s withholding is placed in her own personal account and invested to grow into a sizeable nest egg and monthly retirement check.
Family Creation and Demographic Benefits
Falling birth rates are presenting demographic concerns throughout the world. Certain ethnic populations are predicted to be instinct in a century. Rise Up should go a long way in changing that dynamic - by enabling women to have financial security and four or more kids as well.
Benefits to the Individual
The ever-increasing reliance and dependence on the government to solve problems has reduced the self-reliance and the can-do spirit of many Americans. By giving them property, some for the first time in their life, should generate an internal need to protect that property– their personal account. The wealth that property represents should empower people to be more independent, responsible and less likely to rely on government.
Crime and Punishment
So much of crime is driven by poverty. By eradicating poverty, many of the financial crimes will not be committed. Under Rise Up a criminal’s “personal account’ is charged for the cost of his incarceration which will be a deterrent to recidivists and first timers as well. The possibility of losing his million-dollar nest egg should be a motivation to many to avoid committing crimes in the first place.
Benefits to Academe
Many educators, in fact many famous old universities, have been accused of indoctrinating students with anti-capitalist socialist doctrine and collectivist dogma. It could be said that academe had no alternatives. Their goal was to level the economic playing field and as capitalism was not solving poverty they embraced and promoted utopian constructs like socialism. As capitalism under Rise Up actually eliminates the working poor, capitalism should replace socialism as the doctrine embraced by academe.
World Opinion
In the last several years many have claimed America is headed downhill, an empire experiencing the decay that destroyed prior “empires.” Astute observers see few signs of that decay. With the enactment and implementation of Rise Up, America will be the first nation on Earth to eradicate poverty. As most of the world’s population suffers endemic poverty the sea change in America economic fortunes should put to rest any doubts about the fact that America is the “shining city on the hill”.
Consequences of Inaction
If a plan like Rise Up is not enacted it can be predicted with a reasonable degree of certainty that those with a progressive-socialist agenda will continue to tax the rich and redistribute to the poor. That will in turn reduce the capital needed to run the country and build new businesses and hire new employees. Such an eventuality will seriously impact the explosive growth that would occur under Rise Up and deny America all the benefits listed above.
As Western Europe has seen the serious economic error of its cradle-to-grave dependencies it has recently elected conservative capitalist-supporting leaders to reverse their country’s course and move closer to the free market capitalist model of the USA. The USA on the other hand appears to be headed into the cradle-to-grave model that Europeans are finally rejecting. Failing to enact Rise Up legislation would insure a big government dependency would emerge in the next few years.
The Opposition to Bush’s Personal Account Plan
When President Bush spent the first 5 months of 2005 promoting personal accounts he failed to sell a plan that would do only 3% of what Rise Up can do. The opposition to personal accounts held 6,000 Town Hall meetings to defeat his proposal and special interests like the NEA and AARP spent tens of millions in advertising to defeat it.
Bush concentrated almost exclusively on solving the solvency problem – the $45 trillion debt Congress has not funded. People couldn’t have cared less about the government’s problem. Until it impacts their pocketbook they don’t pay attention and Bush’s opposition told them it was not a problem until 2042 and they bought it.
The President did not submit a plan but asked Congress to work on it. Republicans in Congress came up with 2% 4% and 6% plans and proposed keeping both the old system and the new smaller system running simultaneously. This totally confused the issue and made those proposals easy targets for the opposition to attack.
After several months of promotion it was proposed that the annual contribution to personal accounts would be capped at $1,000. This made the proposal totally unattractive to the people as they couldn’t see them getting rich like they would under Rise up.
The frontal attacks on Bush’s plan were it was too risky, Wall Street would get rich charging fees, it cost too much to administer, Bush was out to destroy Social Security and cut benefits to the elderly. Not one of those charges were true but the media, the advertising, the Town Hall Meetings and the ineptitude of Bush to present an aggressive Rise Up type plan doomed his effort.
People will be moved to improve their own well being and the Country’s economic strength. They just need to be presented with a viable plan. Rise Up America is such a plan.
Opposition to Rise Up America
It is hard to believe that a plan that would make the poor wealthy and America richer would have serious opposition. We hope it doesn’t but we anticipate substantial opposition from various political groups and special interests. It is believed that the opposition will come from those whose interest in say the poor and middle-class is not about improving their well being but in securing their vote to retain political power. Hopefully, they can see their way clear to let Rise Up be enacted from a purely moral and religious standpoint.
Initially it is anticipated that the same objections from the same parties will be made against Rise Up as were made against President Bush’s efforts. Of course the argument against Rise Up is more difficult this time around as it is a comprehensive plan improving too many aspects of modern life to be ignored or dismissed like the small footprint the President tried to make.
Rise Up’s Constituencies
Every man and women in America should be a constituent of the Rise Up America plan. It makes the people and the country wealthier, more efficient, more stable more industrious and less contentious. Certain groups will benefit by reducing or eliminating problems they are currently facing. They include:
American Manufacturers
They will benefit by eliminating the need to provide retirement plans for their workers; eliminate the need to negotiate with unions on retirement benefits; eliminate the cost of retirement from product cost thus becoming more competitive in the global; market.
Churches, NGOs and Religions
As the basic tenet of all religions is the care and nurture of the less fortunate, Rise Up should be a godsend to them as it allows capitalism to solve the riddle of endemic poverty in the United States. Churches, religions and especially NGOs can carry that message worldwide so that it is promoted and implemented globally.
World Leaders
The world suffers from catastrophic food shortages and poverty. Leaders the world over are looking for ways to increase the economic and social well being of their citizens. Rise Up presents them with a model to copy to self-finance their own progress.
Women
As women are more than half of the population of the planet, economically emancipating them in America might encourage their elevation in status and stature throughout the world.
Others
There are so many other constituencies like teachers, union members, impoverished minorities and the like there is no reason to belabor the point here. The Rise Up America plan can be the issue so many of these constituencies find as an indispensable tool to accomplishing their particular goals.
Current Political Climate
Polling during the primary election season of 2008 and three losses of “safe” Republican Congressional seats has proven that the American people are deeply disturbed about the economy and they are placing that blame on the Bush Administration.
It would be convenient to blame the War in Iraq but polls show the overwhelming majority of American people do not want to lose that war. As the country has not even experienced one quarter in which the Gross National Product dropped below the previous quarter, the possibility that a recession of two consecutive quarters of falling GDP cannot be the reason right now that 82% of the people think the country is headed in the wrong direction.
It is our belief that neither party is offering the people what they want. We believe they want is a better of standard of living and the ability to achieve the American Dream. Neither political party is offering policies that will materially affect the fortunes of ordinary Americans nor deliver a better standard of living. In fact it is projected that the younger generation will not achieve the financial success of their parents because of “income disparity.”
The proposition that the Trickle Down theory is failing to include ordinary working Americans has been widely accepted by the voters. The rich have profited greatly from 25 tears of “trickle down” whereas the wages of ordinary American’s have suffered a $1,000 drop in purchasing power over the last 7 years of the Bush Administration.
Promoting and enacting the Rise Up America plan will inform the American people that their government is looking after them, returning trillions of their own money to invest in the economy and create million-dollar nest eggs. It is what the American taxpayer-voter wants it is the deep significant change they are crying out for.
What Can You Do About It
We have formed a think tank called the “Ownership Society Institute” to lead the charge under the Rise Up America flag to get a grass roots movement going to lobby our representatives at every level to create the enabling Rise Up Theory of Economics legislation outlined here.
We anticipate that we will need a lot of volunteers and a major funding effort to affect the outcome of the 2008 election. In this era of instant celebrity and fame over the new internet communication channels like YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, IPod and cell phones we plan to mount a serious attack to inform the public that they are missing out on million-dollar nest eggs. Without spending a dime or changing anything in their life they can accumulate enough to retire affluently and will enormous sums to their kids.
You can assist us by becoming a member of our Institute and helping us fund our plan to promote Rise Up. Our primary legislative target is to inform politicians of our comprehensive plan so they can use the principles to win their election campaigns the same time they are instructing the public on the benefits.
As it is the Congress that must embrace Rise Up and enact the laws we will concentrate on the Congressional races. We hope to win our many constituencies over to Rise Up so they will support candidates promising to enact Rise Up legislation and pool their lobbying efforts to effect this change. They include the ordinary American, the poor, manufacturers, union members, women, churches and synagogues, non-governmental organizations (NGO), Wall Street, charitable organizations, etc.
The money we raise will go to produce documentaries focused on the general application of Rise Up as well as specific targets like women’s groups, manufacturers, etc. that will benefit from specific portions of the Rise Up law. It will also go to creating materials like pamphlets, and DVDs for political candidates to use in disseminating their message.
The money will also go for creating a presence in every state to specifically promote Rise Up. A new master website needs to be built to handle the effort. The more successful we are the greater need for logistics to coordinate the operation’s many-faceted effort.
You can participate by helping us fund this effort – an effort to make every American a millionaire using his own money to do it. If you believe in free market capitalism there can be no better way to support its victory over creeping socialism than the wealth and success Rise Up will deliver. If you are a politician there will be no greater service you can perform for the people (and the Congressional Budget Office) than lifting $45 trillion of unfunded debt off their shoulders.
Manufacturers will improve their bottom line and become more competitive without having to supplement retirement for their workers. They are a significant beneficiary of Rise Up as are women, union workers, teachers, tradesmen.
To become a member of the Institute go to our temporary website www.riseupamerica.us and contribute by credit card or write a check to the Ownership Society Institute and mail it to our office at 9662 Jumilla Avenue, Chatsworth, CA 91311-5610.
The Ownership Society Institute is a California Charitable Trust # CT0136416 which qualifies for charitable status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
OWNERSHIP SOCIETY INSTITUTE
By:_Dick McDonald
Richard A. McDonald
Managing Trustee
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
The Magic Transition
by Dick McDonald
www.riseupamerica.us
When I tell people that the Rise Up America plan has a way to simultaneously (1) place $1.3 trillion in payroll taxes annually collected by the government into personal accounts owned by the tax payer and immediately invested in the stock market to ignite the creation of new businesses and jobs, (2) pay $1.1 trillion in Social Security and Medicare benefits to participants, and (3) magically increase the value of the US Dollar heretofore crippled by the overuse of the printing press, I get looks that can best be described as “Are You Nuts?”
So I best explain.
OK, let’s start with a fictitious country where we pretend it is worth $400. That is all its cash, bonds, stock, real estate, its ports, airports, roads, bridges, corporations, businesses – in fact all tangible and intangible assets owned by the private sector and the public (government) sector total $400.
Now let’s assume the people make $14 a year but after $3 in taxes they spend every dime leaving no money to invest in the economy. So the government decides because it is a capitalist economy to print $1 dollar every year for the next 40 years and give that dollar to the people and let them invest it in the stock market.
Because the way capitalism works the people would get a return investing in the stock market for 40 years. For the last 30 years the S&P 500 stock index had an average annual return of 12.8% so let’s assume the return the people of our fictitious country got was 10% annually. Under those circumstances the $1 invested for 40 years compounds into $443 at the end of 40 years.
Now let’s compare the results. Every year for forty the government printed $1 dollar for a total of $40 dollars. The investment by the people of those $40 dollars increased the assets of the country by $443. So we can conclude that there was a small devaluation of the dollar - $40 over 40 years – whereas there was an immense increase in the country’s net worth of $443, Quite a bargain wouldn’t you say?
Investing is the trick –The simple truth this example illustrates is that investing money increases value of a country even if you invest money you print. A country who’s net worth increases has a currency worth owning from an international a trader’s standpoint.
Consuming is at fault –The reason the value of our dollar has fallen regularly ever since we went off the gold standard in the 1930’s is that we insist on printing money to pay for our mistakes. The most recent example was our use of the printing press to enable the banks to lend money to home buyers at 1% which has resulted in a 40% fall in the value of the dollar. It has been a costly mistake the government supported. We needed help out of a recession but we didn’t need to leave the door to the vault wide open.
The magic transition – Now it is as simple as this. We take $1.3 trillion in payroll tax receipts, put them in the taxpayer’s personal accounts, invest them in the stock market and start the compounding miracle of $443 for a $40 investment.
Simultaneously we print $1.1 trillion in new money and pay retirement benefits. As the recipients will be dieing off during that 40 year period and others will be self-funding their needs from the income off their personal accounts we will never print the entire $40.
Increase in the value of the dollar – Establishing an economic policy wherein investment in the country is the tool used to create wealth can only convince international traders into bidding up the price of the US Dollar.
It is just as simple as that.
A Historical Clue –It has been the international socialist movement that has encouraged consumption and the confiscation of property from the productive elements of society. Unfortunately the free market capitalists have failed to fully support the investment principle and have too long tolerated the inflationary effects devaluations have fomented because socialists always spend more than they have.
It is time America wakes up to the fact that socialism is a failed economic philosophy and adopts Rise Up America’s plan to vault the USA into the 21st Century.
www.riseupamerica.us
When I tell people that the Rise Up America plan has a way to simultaneously (1) place $1.3 trillion in payroll taxes annually collected by the government into personal accounts owned by the tax payer and immediately invested in the stock market to ignite the creation of new businesses and jobs, (2) pay $1.1 trillion in Social Security and Medicare benefits to participants, and (3) magically increase the value of the US Dollar heretofore crippled by the overuse of the printing press, I get looks that can best be described as “Are You Nuts?”
So I best explain.
OK, let’s start with a fictitious country where we pretend it is worth $400. That is all its cash, bonds, stock, real estate, its ports, airports, roads, bridges, corporations, businesses – in fact all tangible and intangible assets owned by the private sector and the public (government) sector total $400.
Now let’s assume the people make $14 a year but after $3 in taxes they spend every dime leaving no money to invest in the economy. So the government decides because it is a capitalist economy to print $1 dollar every year for the next 40 years and give that dollar to the people and let them invest it in the stock market.
Because the way capitalism works the people would get a return investing in the stock market for 40 years. For the last 30 years the S&P 500 stock index had an average annual return of 12.8% so let’s assume the return the people of our fictitious country got was 10% annually. Under those circumstances the $1 invested for 40 years compounds into $443 at the end of 40 years.
Now let’s compare the results. Every year for forty the government printed $1 dollar for a total of $40 dollars. The investment by the people of those $40 dollars increased the assets of the country by $443. So we can conclude that there was a small devaluation of the dollar - $40 over 40 years – whereas there was an immense increase in the country’s net worth of $443, Quite a bargain wouldn’t you say?
Investing is the trick –The simple truth this example illustrates is that investing money increases value of a country even if you invest money you print. A country who’s net worth increases has a currency worth owning from an international a trader’s standpoint.
Consuming is at fault –The reason the value of our dollar has fallen regularly ever since we went off the gold standard in the 1930’s is that we insist on printing money to pay for our mistakes. The most recent example was our use of the printing press to enable the banks to lend money to home buyers at 1% which has resulted in a 40% fall in the value of the dollar. It has been a costly mistake the government supported. We needed help out of a recession but we didn’t need to leave the door to the vault wide open.
The magic transition – Now it is as simple as this. We take $1.3 trillion in payroll tax receipts, put them in the taxpayer’s personal accounts, invest them in the stock market and start the compounding miracle of $443 for a $40 investment.
Simultaneously we print $1.1 trillion in new money and pay retirement benefits. As the recipients will be dieing off during that 40 year period and others will be self-funding their needs from the income off their personal accounts we will never print the entire $40.
Increase in the value of the dollar – Establishing an economic policy wherein investment in the country is the tool used to create wealth can only convince international traders into bidding up the price of the US Dollar.
It is just as simple as that.
A Historical Clue –It has been the international socialist movement that has encouraged consumption and the confiscation of property from the productive elements of society. Unfortunately the free market capitalists have failed to fully support the investment principle and have too long tolerated the inflationary effects devaluations have fomented because socialists always spend more than they have.
It is time America wakes up to the fact that socialism is a failed economic philosophy and adopts Rise Up America’s plan to vault the USA into the 21st Century.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
How to get rich
Break Socialism’s Back
Start A Capitalist Revolution www.riseupamerica.us
Teach Your Teachers A Lesson
One way to destroy socialism is to take away the perception that socialism can deliver the “common good”. Academics may embrace it theoretically but in practice socialism has never has nor will it ever deliver the “common good.” Therefore why don’t practical people attack it at its weakest point – the entitlement fallacy. Entitlements have never made the poor rich. They have just put a band aid on socialism’s perpetuation of poverty. Man needs to replace entitlements with a plan that makes the poor rich – rich enough to make their own way in this world - and there is a way capitalism can do just that.
If so, America’s youth needs to start a capitalist revolution to reverse the creeping socialism that plagues the free world
The Rise Up America plan employs capitalism and lets that economic miracle eradicate poverty from the American experience. It does so by not asking Americans for tax dollars to redistribute to the poor - nor does it ask the poor to invest that which they don’t have. It merely diverts those monies presently taken by the government in the form of payroll taxes and places those monies in a personal investment account owned by each individual taxpayer who immediately invests those funds in America’s capital markets.
Leaving those funds in the personal investment account to compound into millions throughout his or her working life allows a retiree to afford an affluent retirement, the best medical care on the planet, a million-dollar nest egg to will to the kids and freedom from a dependence on government. The millions in their personal accounts deliver the American Dream of financial independence that socialism promises but capitalism delivers
We hope to arm the American youth with the Rise Up Theory of Economics with which to fight this battle and instruct their revolution.
The Rise Up Theory of Economics does for the poor and middle class what the "Trickle Down" Theory did for the rich - it makes them wealthy. It is a simple concept, It redirects the 15.3% presently paid by individuals (and in the case of employees, their employers too) in the form of payroll taxes into a personally-owned investment account that will grow into millions over the citizen's working life. The funds are invested in safe indexed stock funds that have historically been growing at an average rate of over 10% for the last 30 years. See the schedules, tables and graphs at www.riseupamerica.us to verify the millions an ordinary American can accumulate during their working life and the history of the rates of return on indexed stock funds.
This is not a Republican or a Democrat plan but an American plan. A plan that transcends politics and immediately creates an American economy annually infused with over $1.3 trillion of new capital with which to grow at a more rapid rate than at any time in its history.
Adopting Rise Up will not only make America and Americans wealthier it will reduce the size of government by half; generate the biggest tax cut in history; pay off all unfunded entitlement liabilities; economically emancipate women and minorities;; reduce crime, poverty and gangs; eliminate the need for government pensions and Medicare; eliminate the need for business to fund retirement needs and a myriad of other benefits – see the Mission Statement at www.riseupamerica.us.
Under the Rise Up plan, the government will guarantees to pay all benefits presently payable to retirees and welfare recipients under existing programs. The amounts so payable will be forever frozen at existing levels and the government will guarantee they won’t be altered.
The Rise Up plan also includes a unique method to finance the transition from existing programs like Social Security and Medicare to personal investment accounts. An exciting feature of that method will be the manner in which it will increase the value of the US dollar internationally.
All organizations and individuals interested in improving the American experience are invited to endorse and promote the Rise Up America plan. Please contact Dick McDonald, Managing Director of the Ownership Society Institute* at 818-998-6800 or e-mail him at dickmcdonald73@att.net for further details.
It is important that the youth if America “rise up” and take charge of its future. The path to further stagnation through socialism must be reversed. Taxing the rich is a failed prescription – un taxing the poor and middle-class is the prescription to free Americans and enable all of them to reach the American Dream – painlessly. Take that to your teacher and see if he or she supports making the poor rich or if he or she is in favor of keeping the poor permanently poor?
* OWNERSHIP SOCIETY INSTITUTE
The Ownership Society Institute is a new think tank dedicated to increasing the wealth and property of all Americans and the reduction of taxes imposed on them. It sponsors ideas and plans that reduce the size of the Federal and state governments while at the same time increasing the efficiency of their constitutionally mandated responsibilities. It sponsors the enactment of the Rise Up Theory of Economics and the elevation of the power of the individual over the power of the state. It opposes the weaknesses that the state imposes by making its citizens rely too heavily on government to so lve their problems and fund their failures. See www.ownershipsocietyinstitute.com
Start A Capitalist Revolution www.riseupamerica.us
Teach Your Teachers A Lesson
One way to destroy socialism is to take away the perception that socialism can deliver the “common good”. Academics may embrace it theoretically but in practice socialism has never has nor will it ever deliver the “common good.” Therefore why don’t practical people attack it at its weakest point – the entitlement fallacy. Entitlements have never made the poor rich. They have just put a band aid on socialism’s perpetuation of poverty. Man needs to replace entitlements with a plan that makes the poor rich – rich enough to make their own way in this world - and there is a way capitalism can do just that.
If so, America’s youth needs to start a capitalist revolution to reverse the creeping socialism that plagues the free world
The Rise Up America plan employs capitalism and lets that economic miracle eradicate poverty from the American experience. It does so by not asking Americans for tax dollars to redistribute to the poor - nor does it ask the poor to invest that which they don’t have. It merely diverts those monies presently taken by the government in the form of payroll taxes and places those monies in a personal investment account owned by each individual taxpayer who immediately invests those funds in America’s capital markets.
Leaving those funds in the personal investment account to compound into millions throughout his or her working life allows a retiree to afford an affluent retirement, the best medical care on the planet, a million-dollar nest egg to will to the kids and freedom from a dependence on government. The millions in their personal accounts deliver the American Dream of financial independence that socialism promises but capitalism delivers
We hope to arm the American youth with the Rise Up Theory of Economics with which to fight this battle and instruct their revolution.
The Rise Up Theory of Economics does for the poor and middle class what the "Trickle Down" Theory did for the rich - it makes them wealthy. It is a simple concept, It redirects the 15.3% presently paid by individuals (and in the case of employees, their employers too) in the form of payroll taxes into a personally-owned investment account that will grow into millions over the citizen's working life. The funds are invested in safe indexed stock funds that have historically been growing at an average rate of over 10% for the last 30 years. See the schedules, tables and graphs at www.riseupamerica.us to verify the millions an ordinary American can accumulate during their working life and the history of the rates of return on indexed stock funds.
This is not a Republican or a Democrat plan but an American plan. A plan that transcends politics and immediately creates an American economy annually infused with over $1.3 trillion of new capital with which to grow at a more rapid rate than at any time in its history.
Adopting Rise Up will not only make America and Americans wealthier it will reduce the size of government by half; generate the biggest tax cut in history; pay off all unfunded entitlement liabilities; economically emancipate women and minorities;; reduce crime, poverty and gangs; eliminate the need for government pensions and Medicare; eliminate the need for business to fund retirement needs and a myriad of other benefits – see the Mission Statement at www.riseupamerica.us.
Under the Rise Up plan, the government will guarantees to pay all benefits presently payable to retirees and welfare recipients under existing programs. The amounts so payable will be forever frozen at existing levels and the government will guarantee they won’t be altered.
The Rise Up plan also includes a unique method to finance the transition from existing programs like Social Security and Medicare to personal investment accounts. An exciting feature of that method will be the manner in which it will increase the value of the US dollar internationally.
All organizations and individuals interested in improving the American experience are invited to endorse and promote the Rise Up America plan. Please contact Dick McDonald, Managing Director of the Ownership Society Institute* at 818-998-6800 or e-mail him at dickmcdonald73@att.net for further details.
It is important that the youth if America “rise up” and take charge of its future. The path to further stagnation through socialism must be reversed. Taxing the rich is a failed prescription – un taxing the poor and middle-class is the prescription to free Americans and enable all of them to reach the American Dream – painlessly. Take that to your teacher and see if he or she supports making the poor rich or if he or she is in favor of keeping the poor permanently poor?
* OWNERSHIP SOCIETY INSTITUTE
The Ownership Society Institute is a new think tank dedicated to increasing the wealth and property of all Americans and the reduction of taxes imposed on them. It sponsors ideas and plans that reduce the size of the Federal and state governments while at the same time increasing the efficiency of their constitutionally mandated responsibilities. It sponsors the enactment of the Rise Up Theory of Economics and the elevation of the power of the individual over the power of the state. It opposes the weaknesses that the state imposes by making its citizens rely too heavily on government to so lve their problems and fund their failures. See www.ownershipsocietyinstitute.com
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