[Alberta's Child]

Not to defend Obama here, but there's nothing outrageous about this proposal when you look at it objectively.

You can have as much money in your retirement account as you'd like. The proposal here is to cap the amount for tax deferral purposes.

If you think this is a ridiculous idea, just keep in mind that the U.S. tax code already puts a cap on retirement plans -- at the front end. There's an annual limit to the amount of money you can deposit in an IRA or 401(k) on a tax-deferred basis. It typically changes with inflation, but you can do a simple Google search to find out how much it is for any given year.

[Alberta's Child]

On the other hand, I don't think proposal is going to go anywhere. The U.S. investment banking industry is probably gearing up its lobbying machine to quash it before it ever sees the light of day in Congress.

Keep in mind, though, that this kind of sh!t is exactly why I was telling anyone who would listen that it was a bad idea to do Roth IRA conversions back in the 1990s when the Roth IRAs first came into existence. Anyone who did that had to pay taxes on the conversion from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA in exchange for future tax exemption for withdrawals from the Roth IRA. I thought it was a bad idea because there was no way for anyone to know how the tax code might change between the time you made the conversion and the time you withdrew the money.

[SkyDancer]

To me it’s the idea of the gov’t inserting itself into your personal life i.e. retirement. They want to control all aspects of your life.

[TexasFreeper2009]

ok... lets say there is a max...

and you use that 3 million to invest in something just doubles overnight to 6 million...

what then?