It's TAX TIME in the home of XE, and she is once again AGHAST at how much Uncle Sam wants HER to pay (15%!!!) out of her miserable pittance of an income. And how STRICT and STERN the adminitions are if she doesn't cough up properly and ON TIME! Her beloved tax accountant warns: "Penalties and INTEREST," etc.
Interest. That's a hot topic. XE added up all the interest her various savings accounts earned over the past year, and the sum was in the LOW TWO FIGURES!!! XE is definitely not in the category of, say, General Electric, taxwise.
XE was raised in North Dakota, which was one of TWO states (out of 50, let me remind you) that wound up this year IN THE BLACK!!! And do you know why? I don't know about the other state, but ND has a STATE BANK, which is dedicated to helping North Dakotans grow their businesses and educate their children and harvest their crops and all of those other SOCIALIST ideas wherein the people get rich but the bank executives don't--any more than the people, that is.
The State Bank of ND was a hot topic about three weeks ago, but since then, ZIP! Any time any news reporter suggests that a banker might be happy not to be stinking rich, the MS media shut down. So there has not been much in the news these recent days about the SUCCESS of the STATE BANK of North Dakota.
I noticed today, also, when riding the BUS, as befits my position as a humble member of the penniless proletariat, that while there is a very PROMINENT street in DC named after South Dakota (South Dakota Avenue, which I pass TWICE A DAY and which goes on for BLOCKS AND BLOCKS), there is only a simple three-block thoroughfare in our nation's capitol named after NORTH DAKOTA.
Please join me in eating our hearts out......
This is the first year I've been entirely self-employed since 1987 and I'd forgotten what a huge chunk of change it takes to square me with Social Security. I'm not that far from cashing out on that investment, but the sticker shock was not pleasant. (As for the penalties, though, they aren't big enough to justify giving Uncle Sam an interest-free loan every quarter.)
ReplyDeleteIt's absolutely horrifying....the rich get richer and the poor...get children which they can't afford to feed or educate.
ReplyDeleteMike: You'll be glad you squared yourself with SS. If SS had been voluntary when I was younger, and I'd blown it off, I'd be lost without it now. It was indeed a worthwhile investment, and I pray to the gods of sanity that they don't succeed in privatizing it. The costs of the U.S. government's running a privatized retirement system is a fraction of the annual per-participant cost in current privatized systems (as in Chile). Privatization of Social Security is the big ice cream sundae on the menu of the far right. It enables our capitalist corporations to grab even more of our capital.
ReplyDelete