December 14, 2013
To the Illustrious Mr. Pot:
I was shocked, literally shocked, to discover (by your own admission) your active participation in a wholly capitalistic enterprise, both on your own and in service to a capitalistic master. I applaud your willingness to admit the problem and I stand ready at any time to assist and support you as a recovering liberal.
Now, on to your extensive seminar about the foibles of misplaced, malfunctioning, assembly line do-dads and the havoc they play with your computerized methodologies and algorithms or whatever they are called. Eventually I am sure I will uncover a relationship between your misplaced defectives and the wisdom of government sponsored retirement plans but as yet, regrettably, I have not. I appreciate the extensive lengths you went to explain to us unwashed semi-literates that the surprising results of investing lowers sums of cash in a retirement plans generally results in correspondingly lower returns.
But I would like to return, albeit briefly, to your adventures in computer programs that provide data to insure corporations can plan appropriately for assembly line errors, man-made or other wise. Are we still not at the technological level where factors of human nature can be incorporated into computer code? In other words, if I understand your conundrum in trying to discover the missing 4%, the program was unable to advise management that the missing defective products may have been simply discarded, hidden, or thrown away to disguise the laziness, incompetence, or apathy of assembly line workers (who were probably union organized to begin with). Perhaps top executives should have been able to ace this out for themselves, but at the exorbitant rate you surely charge your clients ( a little sarcastic humor here....I am sure you are worth every penny of your fee ...and more), a little prodding in that direction from the program could have been expected. Since I bow, however, to your obvious expertise in that area, I will leave that as an issue between you and the evil capitalists with whom you contracted.
Now, back to retirement programs, Social Security, et al. You specifically lamented the fact that I did not provide a concrete contemporary example of the benefits of private investment as opposed to government control of the golden retirement years. Since the Galveston employees are now happily enjoying their retirement and most are financially comfortable, I thought that fact, in and of itself, might at least begrudgingly elicit a positive response from you. Alas, I forgot I was dealing with a liberal mindset where empirical proof of a program's success is rarely greeted with enthusiasm, especially when taxpayer's dollars are not expended.
I must, therefore, turn to my own personal experience. I am now the beneficiary of the Social Security ponzi scheme and a separate retirement fund known as the Virginia Retirement System. After paying into Social Security for nearly 50 years, my monthly benefit is slightly above the federal poverty level. For only half of those fifty years, I also participated in the Virginia Retirement System which is invested in companies on the New York Stock Exchange and is extremely well managed. My retirement benefit is a full 30% more than an investment managed by the federal government. I hesitate to use the word “managed” since the current policy for funding Social Security seems to be to take as much in taxes as you can and spend it as quickly as you can. If private corporations treated their employee's retirement funds in the same manner as politicians treated Social Security, most would be residing now in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas.
The point is that the federal government does very few things well. You of all people can certainly appreciate the fact that the most complicated and demanding of computer web sites in private industry generally function to perfection and make lots of money for creative entrepreneurs. A recent estimate by top computer professionals place the price tag in private industry for a web site like www.healthcare.gov. at $20 million tops with a median estimate at $10 million. They also estimated development and testing time at 18 months tops. Surely, you, Mr. Pot, as a taxpayer and techno-professional must be outraged that the government attempt at this web site to date has cost us in excess of $600 million and is now entering it's fourth year of development AND IT STILL DOESN'T WORK at the most fundamental level!!!!
I lump Social Security into the same pile of broken assembly line products mentioned earlier. Why can't we at least try a new approach to retirement funds with a pilot program allowing citizens to opt out of Social Security (average return is approximately an anemic 1.6%) I believe the answer is quite obvious....it just might work and then no one would want to allow the government to determine how well off you will be in your golden years.
Incidentally, you may have noticed the Dow recently closed at over 16,000 indicating that a lot of money is being made in the stock market. While government economists have traditionally scoffed at the idea of even a 15,000 day at the NYSE, some in the private sector are now saying a 30,000 closing is not as outrageous as it once may have seemed.
I close with a compliment, Mr. Pot. Your treatise on the development and implementation of your program was scholarly and mostly intelligible even to a lay person like myself. Kudos!
Respectfully submitted,
Mr. Kettle
No comments:
Post a Comment