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Comment by alx__ | Hacker News Reader

So the fed doesn't want to be to harsh and risk destabilizing the economy? Then by doing this, encourages companies to engage in shitty behavior. Which could then destabilize the economy when they implode.

Capitalism™: Shut up, it tastes good!?

[Yeah I'm being reductive, just annoyed to watch all this and feel helpless that nothing changes]

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Right, but when large "needed" industries fail and destabilize things, they just get bailed out. In the end, it all works out for the investor class.

The investor class is anyone with a 401k

Most people with a 401k derive a small portion of their income from it.

If >60% of your income comes from your day job, you're not part of the investor class, you're part of the working class.

I swear the broad adoption of 401k programs is one of the biggest crimes against the working class.

So much risk for the owner of the money and tons of upside for all the supply chain servicing them.

The idea of people investing their retirement seems like a good one, but yes I'm afraid it winds up just being a scam. The worst part appears to be that the monetary authorities now can't allow recessions, because that would destroy people's ability to retire. So, you get a bloated economy where creative destruction isn't allowed to occur.

What risk? The 401k is for retirement planning, you're looking at 20+ years horizon, the risk on a global index fund is inexistant at that time scale

Why do you think this?

You're not technically wrong, but I think a reasonable reading of my comment could see the implication that I was speaking of the individuals who are actively investing and derive their primary income from it.

If some schmuck pulling 50K a year with a passive 1% contribution to his 401K thinks he's the same as Warren Buffet or the guys at Bain, I can't stop him.

Nothing capitalistic about this. Super complex taxes are a problem created by the Government.

Get rid of the income tax and switch to a simple sales tax and most returns would be eliminated

Most people don't have super complex taxes, there's no reason the IRS can't just send them an itemized bill every April, that you can either attest to the correctness of, and pay, or contest by doing a full filing.

Progressive income taxes aren't what make tax filing a pain.

It should be quarterly and a bill, not a refund.

On the contrary, regulatory capture and similar issues are a necessary consequence of capitalist accumulation.

The opposite of a free market is having a government decide winners and losers. A reason why many like low regulations. Reduces governments ability to screw things up.

I think some countries use a different tradeoff than the US for their income tax. Instead of spending a ton of government and taxpayer time and effort to accurately assess what each taxpayer owes, the government simply generates an estimate based on what it knows about each taxpayer and uses that. They accept the reduced accuracy but it is offset by the reduced effort in determining everyone's bills. That is to say, you don't need to move away from an income tax to address the problem.

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