It’s no secret that the governments of the world need money.  Just look at the massive debt-to-GDP ratios of the US, the Eurozone, Japan and China.  Staggering.  They are kind of tapped out in the conventional methods usually employed like issuing bonds.  The yields on these notes are very low and in some cases like Japan BELOW ZERO!  It’s truly time to “look in the couch cushions” and scrape up what they can. 

It’s not like a government can act like a common street thug and walk up to you and demand you money.  Oh wait!  Sure they can.  It’s called Civil Asset Forfeiture.  This goes something like this:  “Well Sir/Madame, I see you are driving through our little village here and I stopped you (for dubious reasons like having out of state license plates) here today.  I notice that you said you have a large amount of assets (cash) on your person and that can be used for only one thing…drugs!  So, under the law, I am going to take this cash from you and good luck getting it back!  Sure you could have very legitimate reasons for having this cash like buying a used car or winning it at one of our legal casinos, but you know how it goes.”  For the moment, this is not common practice but the rate at which this occurs is becoming alarming.

No, what they will do is take (strong arm) this money in much more innocuous ways.  Like a dog license for example.  Can anyone tell me why I have to pay the city of “Whereverville” $50 per year to have a dog?  Is it for all the wear and tear my dog puts on the sidewalks?  Obviously, this is not the reason.  This is just another way to pull whatever they can from my pockets.

But now it’s getting more serious.  I wrote last year about MyRA.  It’s a program that allows workers access to a retirement plan where one does not exist at their current employer.  It also has the distinction of the underlying assets being UNITED STATES TREASURY OBLIGATIONS!  That’s pretty simple and ingenious.  “Why not have Joe Six Pack buy our bonds from us?“

You could say:  “No one is forcing us to do this, so what’s the big deal?”  From Simon Black of Sovereign Man blog:

Two years ago the government launched a new initiative to ‘help Americans save for retirement.’

It’s called MyRA. And the idea is for people to invest retirement savings ‘in the safety and security of US government bonds’.

Since then they’ve gone on a marketing offensive involving the President, Treasury Secretary, and other prominent politicians. 

(Most recently Nancy Pelosi published an Op-Ed in the San Francisco Chronicle a few days ago promoting the program.) 

They’ve also proposed a number of legislative reforms to ‘encourage’ American businesses to sign their employees up for MyRA. 

Just last week, Congress introduced the “Making Your Retirement Accessible”, or MyRA Act, which would charge a penalty to employers whose workers don’t have a retirement account.  The proposed penalty is $100. Per worker. Per day.  Imagine a small business with, say, 10 employees who don’t have retirement accounts. The penalty to Uncle Sam would be a whopping $30,000 PER MONTH. 

What could possibly be wrong with the government’s motivation here?