wbur.org
support wbur today!
Listen to this show
Retirement Savings Revolution
photo

All right. Your 401K is a 201K now. Maybe a 10K. Your IRA is squat. your retirement is distant, diminished, or both. Forget about it. Washington is about to unveil a whole new world of American savings.

New programs and tax breaks and incentives are on the table that would radically reshape the way Americans sock it away. No more 401K or IRA. The Bush administration is talking a new language of LSAs or RSAs. Proposals that would allow American families to shelter the earnings on tens of thousands of dollars a year from federal taxes.

If you and a spouse have an extra thirty thousand dollars a year to tuck away, you just might retire after all. If you don’t, you’ll have to be happy for those who do. And help payt the deficits their good fortune creates. Tonight, On Point: preparing for the savings revolution.

Guests:

Howard Gleckman, senior correspondent, Business Week

Edward Slott, nationally reconized IRA distribution and tax expert, and author, “The Retirement Savings Time Bomb…and How to Defuse It”

Mark Iwry, senior fellow, Brookings Institution and benefits tax counsel at the US Treasury Department from 1995 to 2001

Pamela Olson, assistant secretary for tax policy at the US Treasury Department

 
Share:
  • TwitThis
  • Digg
  • Reddit
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Facebook
  • Live
  • Technorati
  • LinkedIn
  • Google
  • Furl
 
Leave a comment

We welcome comments from all of our listeners.
Please stay on topic, be civil, and be brief.
These comments are moderated by On Point and WBUR.
This site supports Gravatars.

Recent Shows
Week in the News
Friday, November 21, 2008 Executive Officer Alan Mulally, testify on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 19, 2008, before a House Financial Services Committee hearing on the automotive industry bailout.   (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

All eyes on Obama’s emerging cabinet. The Big Three go begging. Markets keep tumbling. Our news roundtable goes behind this week’s headlines.

Comments [20]
 
Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Outliers’
Thursday, November 20, 2008 Malcolm Gladwell

The “Tipping Point” master Malcolm Gladwell talks about the ecology of success and where the super-successful get their edge.

Comments [49]
On Point Blog
The Party of Obama…
By Jack Beatty

Speaking to Tom in today’s second hour, Stanford historian David Kennedy noted that few would have predicted that the Democrats would nominate the nation’s first African-American president. The Democrats only “came over” on civil rights in the 1960s. The party of slavery before the Civil War, the Democrats espoused white supremacy after. Not one [...]

More » | Comments [1]
 
Listening back on the ‘08 campaign…
By Wen Stephenson

As you count down the hours to the end of this long, long election campaign, if you’re tired of staring at the endless polls and projection maps, here’s an excuse to give your eyeballs a rest and just use your ears for a while.
Clicking back through our ‘08 campaign archive just now, four shows leapt [...]

More »
 
Enemies Within…
By Wen Stephenson

Sure, there’s a Halloween sound to our second hour today — a conversation with historian John Demos about his new book, “The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-Hunting in the Western World.” But it strikes a more profound theme than trick-or-treating, one that still resonates.
Demos himself puts it this way in the book’s prologue:
Witch-hunting, large [...]

More »