Subject: Taxation of benefits Comment: At a time when most individuals with employer-provided benefits are being required to shoulder more and more of the cost of receiving their health and other coverage, when defined benefit pension plans are either going the way of the dinosaurs or into default because of mismanagement and sending many thousands into an uncertain "retirement," and mid-tier jobs are fast disappearing, this is the best you can do? Taxing one of the few things that gives families and individuals some sense of security in a troubling, unpredictable world? Shame on you! I'm guessing that no one on this panel has anything to fear economically from such a development; you all probably sit in that priviliged spot from where you can look down on the rest of us and decide what's best for us. You are the same types of people who cluelessly stand in front of TV cameras, mopping your brows after the "hard work" of laying off thousands of workers, smiling that the enterprise is now safe and utterly incapable of understanding the misery to which you have consigned such people. I make 37% less than I did 4 years ago, and still have children to get educated, married off, and otherwise set up in their own lives. I'm also struggling to put aside something to keep from descending into complete poverty in my "golden years." (I was there as kid on welfare, and never want to go back.) Thanks so much for one more potential nail in the coffin; and may you experience anything that you wish upon the rest of us, the unwashed masses. |