Salon.com is now directing the government to go after 401k retirement plans. Why? The government doesn’t run them and rich people save more, so 401k’s are fundamentally unfair to poor people. Once again, we’re treated to another helping of weak redistributionist sauce, filling the gullible with the theory that rich people got that way because they stole something from the poor. 

New America Foundation founder Michael Lind says your privately run 401k is, well, private and subject to greedy corporations and, you know, the market and stuff. 

But the risks, including risks from poor investments and the chance that you will retire during a stock market downturn, fall entirely on the individual. Even worse, many working-class and middle-class Americans with 401Ks are stealthily fleeced by money managers, who charge high and often difficult-to-find fees for allocating retirement money among stocks, bonds and other assets.

There’s no mention of the greedy government stealing your and retirees’ money by its inflationary quantitative easing or increases in government taxes and fees in the Salon article. Oh, no, by his lights, government is the high standard against which all other things are measured. If someone makes a profit in the private sector, that’s GREED. If the government does it, that’s NEED. Oy. 

Listen to the AM radio any Saturday or Sunday afternoons and you’ll find an overflowing cup of free flowing information on how to structure your plan so you don’t get ripped off by big fees. 

Nearly a third of Americans have no savings account and nearly half do not have enough savings to pay their bills if they lost their jobs.

I agree that some people charge too much but should they be investing millions of other people’s dollars for free? Even the government charges–taxes–for stuff. The alternative? The suggestion Lind is making here is that the government be put in charge of your retirement. He bases this on the fact 401k’s are “subsidized” by the government because they’re tax deferred. He actually suggests two “smart” plans (are Democrat plans ever described in any other way?) to get keep plans “private” while having more government involvement. This is an idea labeled daft by the left when President Bush suggested individuals be allowed to invest a small percentage of their own social security funds. President Bush proposed recipients choose from a menu of plans from pre approved programs on something you could call er, an exchange. This is what the left is referring to when it talks about privatizing social security. It was considered daft at the time, but apparently it’s perfectly ok for your health insurance. 

The takeaway from the Salon article is your private retirement plan puts you at risk because you control it and not the government. So it is that the left continues to till the ground for the government to rip up your retirement plan by the roots. They’ll do it in the name of fairness. Just watch.