The Power Of Zero Show

Politicians are in a state of mind where they are not interested in fixing the problem, which means that the fix on the backend is going to have to be more aggressive and draconian. The damage the debt does is, in many ways, invisible to the average person. We have had decades to fix the debt problems but politicians have failed to do so. If we made these changes to something like Social Security years ago, we could have fixed it without affecting anyone depending on the system, but that is not the case anymore. If you look at where we’re headed, we will continue to see lower growth in the economy going forward. Economic growth, mobility, and income growth will be slower than it otherwise would have been. One of the real major concerns has less to do with economics than it does with national security. The US will not have the economic dominance that it had in the past that secured its geopolitical place in the world and will find itself falling behind places like China. We need to begin thinking more about the long-term changes in the nature of work due to technology. We need a social contract that reflects and recognizes these changes so people can work effectively and productively with the changes that are happening more and more rapidly. As our fiscal health weakens, our ability to meet the challenges of this century is greatly diminished and we will be dangerously weak for it. Modern Monetary Theory says that you can’t default when you borrow your own currency., which is true, but just because we can’t default, that doesn't mean we have a healthy economy. MMT recommends fiscal policy to control inflation, which means basically raising taxes. The trouble with that idea is that there aren’t any politicians willing to raise taxes, let alone cut spending or both. MMT proponents don’t understand the dangers of inflation. Inflation can wipe away your entire savings and create an economic recession that is difficult to escape and painful for everyone. Borrowing during the downturn is not an example of MMT being correct. MMT is dangerous because it’s so seductive. Who doesn’t want to be able to spend as much as you want indefinitely with no consequences? But just because you want it to be true that doesn’t make it true. Economists need to be unbiased and neutral when it comes to political ideology. There are politicians in power right now that recognize the threat of the national debt, but there are also groups that are working against the effort. Many politicians are willing to do the right thing, but they can’t do it in isolation. There is no point in having people who are willing to do the right thing get destroyed politically without achieving anything. Part of the problem is that the national debt does lend itself to grassroots outrage. Ideally, there is some leadership at the top to champion the cause.There are a lot of great members in congress and there’s a real chance for them to come together, but we are going to have to figure out how to come together as one country to solve these big problems if we want to see them rise to that challenge.   Mentioned in this Episode: Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget - crfb.org

Maya is the President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The committee itself has been around for a couple decades at this point and came about after several members of Congress left and realized how difficult it really is to be fiscally responsible with a government budget. It’s very difficult to govern in a fiscally responsible manner in a political environment because, in many ways, those two things are completely at odds with each other. Fiscally responsible is simply the notion that you will be paying for your budgetary items yourself and not pushing the cost onto the future. Politics puts pressure on politicians to promise as much as possible and defer the cost to someone else. In terms of where we are now, the current fiscal path is dire. We have just come out of one of the times to borrow and borrow we did. The US borrowed $6 trillion in response to the pandemic and the debt-to-GDP ratio is about to reach its highest point in history. The difference between the last time the debt-to-GDP ratio was this high (after WW2) and now that demographic is working against us. We are now slated to be running budget deficits of well over $1 trillion indefinitely and the debt-to-GDP is on a trajectory to grow faster than the economy every year from now on. When your debt is growing faster than your economy is the definition of unsustainable. In order to flip that and have the economy grow faster than the debt, we need to bring our deficits and debt trajectory down. When Maya started looking at this problem she was mainly concerned with the economic risks like inflation and debt crowding out investment, and those risks still exist today, but now we are also dealing with polarization. We are so polarized now that both sides of the aisle care more about beating the other party than doing what’s good for the country. One of the easiest ways to win over the public is to give them things for free, and this tactic happens on both sides. If we don’t get a handle on the dividing mentality that runs politics right now, we are not going to be able to solve the debt problem. We have to look at the costs to taxpayers to figure out if a proposal is worth it, but when you push the cost onto the future and borrow money to pay for it the cost calculation is thrown off. The truth is that there isn’t enough money in the pockets of the wealthy if you want to expand the government. Taxing the wealthy would not bring the debt to a manageable level, and certainly not if you want to expand government programs. Universal broad-based taxes will have to be part of the picture, along with reductions in spending. Politicians need to be honest with voters about paying for the things that they want and how much they cost. We can’t stay on the path we are on because it will do too much damage to the economy and our strength, and it will hurt families in an ever growing way. Maya used to be confident that lawmakers would eventually be able to compromise and come up with a plan, but not so much anymore. Politicians are being pulled to the extremes and it’s no longer a given that they will be able to come together for the good of the country. If we hadn’t postponed everything, we would have had much easier choices to make. Now, we will probably need another revenue source like a VAT or carbon tax. The solutions are available, but the political environment and leadership isn’t.

In Prosperity in the Age of Decline, the authors are predicting that 2030 will be the opening year of the greatest depression since 1930. Dr. Kotlikoff believes that it might not wait until 2030. China is already beginning to overtake the US in terms of GDP. By the end of the century, the US will no longer be the dominant economic superpower. It’s not looking good in terms of projection. For a depression to occur, there would usually have to be an event or collapse beforehand, which is definitely possible. There are too many examples of hyperinflation over the course of history for the proposition that we can just print our way out of our problems to be true. There is still time to correct our mistakes. We need an independent party to run and expose Americans to the truth of the fiscal condition of the country. One of the problems we are dealing with right now is the marginal taxation of the poorest Americans. Roughly 25% of the poor are facing marginal taxes of .70 on the dollar. We need an incentive system that helps people instead of punishing them. There isn’t much political will to change things. Dr. Kotlikoff wrote a bill to force the CBO to do fiscal gap accounting each year and it only garnered the support of eight senators. To right the ship of state, we need to broaden the tax base. Dr. Kotlikoff suggests putting everybody into a 30% marginal tax bracket while incorporating a progressive system so that the poor are differentially helped. With a few other tax structures and some reform of the welfare programs, it would be possible to get the fiscal gap under control. Reforming healthcare should be a major focus. If we could reduce the spending on healthcare to only 14% of GDP, the US would still have a very good healthcare system and be able to reduce spending considerably. Politicians need to be honest about the fiscal condition of the country if there is ever going to be momentum to change. There are a number of ideas being floated that can help reform healthcare and other social programs, but as the years go on, the options become slimmer. Politicians need to get out of the way and let economists propose solutions that can actually help people. Economics brings an entirely different way to bring financial planning to the table when compared with the industry, which is heavily focused on selling more products. Dr. Kotlikoff has a financial planning software tool you can access at maxify.com to help ensure a smooth retirement.

The official debt-to-GDP numbers are on track to be 110% by the end of the year, which is nearly a 30% increase over the last decade. The trouble is this calculation doesn’t count unfunded obligations like Social Security. Economic theory doesn’t differentiate between official borrowing and unofficial borrowing. The government has left a number of things off the books in order to keep the public in the dark about the true costs of what they are doing. Fiscal gap accounting puts everything going in and going out on the books and looks at the difference between the two streams. Right now, the US is counting the official debt of one year worth of GDP. This leaves another seven years' worth of GDP that we are not counting which is the real problem. In terms of fiscal gap, the US is in twice as bad a shape as the worst country in the European Union. In absolute numbers, the national debt is closer to $160 trillion than the $22 trillion that is officially reported. One proposed solution from the Modern Monetary Theorists is to simply print 8 years' worth of GDP, but that’s not really an option and would likely result in immediate hyperinflation. The money printed since 2008 is already beginning to have an effect on consumer prices, and printing money is only a temporary solution. Printing money is a form of taxation. While the US needs to collect more in receipts, printing money comes with inflation and that can take on a life of its own. Once people begin to expect a period of inflation, the Federal Reserve can’t do much other than accommodate those expectations. Programs like Medicare are paid in kind. If we try to inflate our way out of our Medicare problem the cost of the program will rise commensurately. When we look at what the government has been doing as a whole, it looks like Modern Monetary Theory has already taken hold. MMT proponents don’t sound like regular economists. They’re actually closer to religious fanatics or political ideologues than economists. The idea behind MMT is that as long as the printed money results in increased economic output we won’t see inflation. In order to judge inflation, we have to look at what would have taken place had the money not been printed. The big danger is a sudden spike in either prices or just the general awareness of the US government’s true fiscal situation. Like going bankrupt, right up until the day you lose everything it can all appear to be working just fine as you continue to spend down your borrowed money. Historically, MMT has not played out well for countries that tried it. The process is like a slow-growing cancer. It may take decades to take its course but the effects will become obvious and pervasive eventually. There are no great choices. To reverse course it would require either imposing a lot of pain on a small subset of people or accepting an environment of permanently high taxes forever.

Brian Beaulieu is in the business of predicting economic trends. He’s been forecasting trends for the past 39 years and he’s very transparent about his methods. Brian is politically agnostic and aims to be as objective as possible. He doesn’t make money if the market goes up or down, he makes money by being right. Between March 20th and 28th of 2020, his GDP retail sales forecast came out with a 98% accuracy. When it comes to long-term trends, there are only a few ways they can play out. In terms of accuracy, Brian forecasted the great depression of 2008 and 2009 at the tail end of 2003, so their clients were well prepared when the crash hit. Back in 1987, a month before the stock market experienced a short but rapid decline, Brian warned his clients to get out and saved them from heavy losses. Brian’s team has a unique methodology as well as business cycle theories which help them achieve such a high level of accuracy. By using a system of leading indicators, Brian can forecast major market trends with confidence. Business cycles don’t turn based on old age, but that does produce imbalances which accumulate eventually causing major trends. Overall, Brian and his team have had an average accuracy of 94.7%. It’s not particularly useful to read financial publications when it comes to trying to make predictions. Publications like the Wall Street Journal are in the business of selling ad space and have financial biases. They often look for data that reinforces what they already believe, and if they don’t play that game, then their subscription base dwindles. Financial publications are interested in articles that get clicks, not in predicting the future. Brian knows that he’s not immune to that, which is why he tends to be very dogmatic about his leading indicators. Humans have a tendency to think linearly. Financial behavior has a recency bias and whatever we have experienced most recently has the strongest imprint on us. This leads people to think that next month will look a lot like last month, and next year will look like this one. Most Millennials and Gen Xers have only experienced falling interest rates. Because they haven’t experienced a rising interest rate environment they can’t figure out ways to take advantage of it. If the success of stimulus spending is defined by people receiving a check and thinking fondly of the political process, then the most recent stimulus was indeed successful. Long-term, the stimulus has made the forecasts worse and someone is going to have to pay for it. People are aging, and as a population gets older they spend less and cost more. We are not going to get out from underneath those healthcare costs until 2036. Another issue is that the government has refused to fund Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. When interest rates start to rise again, the government is going to find itself in the position of not being able to afford both the mandatory and discretionary items. Most people like to think that rising healthcare costs are due to litigation or the greed of pharmaceutical companies, but the truth is more complicated than that. All these trends are going to line up around the time when the US national debt is so large that it becomes untenable. Advocates of Modern Monetary Theory believe that because we can print our own money that we don’t have to worry about that, but history tends to disagree. What happens when the rest of the world stops lending the US money at the current interest levels? Over the next 8 years, Brian does not expect any politicians appearing with the political will to change the trajectory of the country until it’s too late. Since the inflation from stimulus spending is not immediately present, people are going to believe that they can print money indefinitely with little to no consequences. Even with Covid-19, the level of stimulus hasn’t changed the date of Brian’s prediction. In order to prepare, you need to make as much money as you can in the intervening years and invest in assets that do well when the US dollar is declining. Around 2029, you should flip into assets that will protect you during a period of deflation. The goal is to preserve your cash on the way down, and then in 2036 get ready to begin buying assets and stocks when things get back on the upswing.     Mentioned in this Episode: ITReconomics.com

There is a new bill moving through Congress right now that has bipartisan support and is fairly likely to pass in its current form. We can get a good sense of what the bill is intended to do by looking at the title page. The stated goal of the bill is to increase retirement savings, and to simplify and clarify retirement plan rules. Change #1 is that the bill enacts changes to required minimum distributions and does so according to a schedule that depends on how old you are now. This change will affect roughly 20% of IRA owners who don’t need their RMD’s to cover their lifestyle expenses and they will be able to push their RMD’s further into the future. Change #2 involves catch-up provisions for IRAs, and that includes Roth IRAs. This section of the bill indexes IRA catch-up contributions for inflation, which brings them up to par with other retirement investment accounts. Change #3 are age-sensitive changes to catch-up provisions for traditional retirement plans. This change only affects people who are currently between the ages of 62 and 64 and says that starting in 2023 your catch-up provisions for traditional plans go from $6500 to $10000. This provides a narrow window for people who are just on the threshold of retiring but need to make greater contributions. Change #4 requires all catch-up contributions to be made to Roth accounts. Roth IRA’s are so beneficial to people, especially in a rising tax rate environment, that many people believe that at some point they will be taken away, but the truth is that the government loves the Roth IRA. It provides the short-term infusions of cash that the government and politicians desperately need today rather than decades from now. Change #5 is that retirement plan employer contributions can be designated to Roth accounts. Is a rising tax rate environment, this is exactly what we want. With a 30-year time horizon, this will allow us to squeeze the most efficiency out of our retirement dollars. This will probably result in you having to pay taxes on the matched amount, but given the historically low tax rate environment that we are in that’s still a good deal. Change #6 are changes to the penalties for failure to take required minimum distributions. Instead of being penalized by 50% for failing to take your RMD by the required date, the penalty is reduced to 25%. The penalty becomes 10% if you correct that within three years. This sounds like an improvement but it may also mean the IRS is less likely to waive the penalty than they were previously. One of the biggest takeaways from these changes is that the government loves Roth IRAs. They love it because it gives them revenue immediately, during their tenure in office, and we love it because it allows us to take advantage of historically low tax rates before they go up for good.   Mentioned in this Episode: H.R. 2954: waysandmeans.house.gov/sites/democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/files/documents/BILLS-117hr2954ih.pdf Jeff Levine on Twitter: @CPAPlanner

With the recent release of the US Census we are getting a picture of the upcoming demographic time bomb facing the country. The 2020 census revealed that there are 331 million US residents, which represents a 7.4% increase since 2010. This is significant since this period is the second slowest rate of growth we have experienced as a country since the Great Depression and roughly half the growth rate we experienced during the 90’s. When you combine the lower birth rate and declining immigration with a rapidly aging population, it indicates that we are entering a period of substantially lower population growth. If it stays this low, it could mean the end of American exceptionalism in this regard. The US population has always outpaced the growth of other developed countries but that’s no longer the case. This means that the US is losing one of its major competitive advantages. The question is why we are experiencing low population growth? Fewer births and more deaths reflect a reality where more people are delaying child bearing and delaying marriage, as well as a rise in drug and endemic-related deaths. The average age of Americans also continues to rise because of this trend. The current birth rate of America is 1.7, which is below the threshold for the replacement rate of 2.1. Historically, the answer to this demographic quandary has been immigration, but we haven’t seen the immigration levels we’ve had in the past. Fewer birth rates in Mexico and a generally improving economy means that the historical source of the majority of immigration is lower than usual. The growth rate of our nation is as tepid as it’s ever been at any point in our history, and we are likely to see a slowdown of economic output as a result. We have more people above the age of 80 than we do below the age of 2. There will come a time when we sell more adult diapers than baby diapers. With fewer people in the country producing fewer goods and services we will see a lower GDP over time. Other countries are facing the same issues and have begun offering incentives to young people to encourage a higher birth rate. From an economic perspective, we are going to have a hard time funding social safety nets and entitlement programs for citizens of the US. Ideally, every generation is bigger than the previous generation. It should look like a pyramid with more younger people at the bottom but the current reality is an inverted pyramid. With 78 million Baby Boomers, there are not enough younger people working to support Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. This means that we will need massive infusions of cash to pay for these programs. The only real solution for retirees facing this sort of demographic time bomb is to save in tax-free vehicles. If you’re one of the 95% of Americans that have the majority of their money invested in tax-deferred vehicles, it’s time to take advantage of today’s historically low tax rates. Given Joe Biden’s position on taxation, you probably have until 2030 to get most of the heavy lifting done. 2030 will be a perfect storm. Demographics, underfunded entitlement programs, and economic events will converge and could lead to a depression the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years. We cannot ignore demographics because in many ways they describe what the future will look like.

This is an apolitical podcast. The goal is to call out fiscal irresponsibility no matter what side of the aisle it’s on. It’s less about politics and more about math. Joe Biden recently came up with a proposal to reform capital gains taxes. The increased revenue that is thought to come from this reform is earmarked to pay for childcare, universal pre-kindergarten education, and paid leave for workers. The state of capital gains taxes currently is that if you are in the 10% or 12% tax bracket you don’t pay any capital gains taxes. It currently sits at 20% for people above those brackets and for people making more than $250,000 per year there is an additional surtax of 3.8%. This puts the baseline for wealthy Americans at 23.8%. When it comes to capital gains tax, there are four different taxes that may come into play. The first is at the federal level, then there are also state capital gains taxes and local capital gains taxes in some parts of the country, and finally the Obamacare surtax. The Biden proposal basically says that anyone who makes more than a million dollars per year would see their federal capital gains tax go from 20% to 39.6%. If you lived in New York City and included the other governmental layers of capital gains taxes, this would result in a total capital gains tax of 58.2%. Residents of Portland, Oregon would be looking at a capital gains tax of 57.3%. This doubling of the federal capital gains tax rate would generate roughly $1 trillion in additional revenue. This proposal will not likely pass through the usual route and would likely have to come through budget reconciliation. In its current form, the proposal will not likely pass because there are Democrats who believe that the tax is too high. Most people see the bill as the initial salvo in the negotiation process and the end result will be somewhere in the middle. Compared to other countries, this proposal would put America at the top of the list for capital gains taxes. If you make more than a million dollars per year, this proposal will likely affect you quite a bit. If you make less than that, you won’t have to worry about it. If you’re concerned about capital gains tax rates, you need to stop accumulating huge amounts of money in your taxable bucket. Raising capital gains taxes is not going to solve our country’s problems. We need to see broad base increases in taxes across the board and dramatic reductions in spending. If you want to protect yourself from the inevitability of higher capital gains taxes, you need to stop accumulating money in your taxable bucket and take advantage of all the tax havens that are available to you. The Roth IRA and Roth 401(k) are great options and allow you to put a lot of money into tax-free vehicles. There are unlimited amounts of money that can be converted to the tax-free bucket with Roth conversions. The LIRP is the great antidote to taxation in the taxable bucket. Someone is going to get your money, you might as well get something useful in exchange for it. There are no income limitations or contribution limits with the LIRP. Whether you make a million dollars a year or not, there are a number of alternatives to situate assets to grow tax-free wealth without having to worry about what’s coming down the pipe with regards to taxes. One of the fundamental issues with these tax raises is that they are always earmarked for some new initiative and never aimed at restructuring or fixing the entitlement programs that are driving the fiscal problems in our country.

If you want to maximize the amount of money you can safely spend in retirement some economists say that you should sell some of your bonds and replace them with annuities. According to Tom Hegna, there is only one mathematically ideal retirement plan and annuities are a key component. While you are working, a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds is the most efficient way to save for retirement, but once you retire the rules of the game change and you need to start thinking about distribution. Tax rate risk is not the number one risk in retirement, longevity risk is more frequently cited by retirees as the number one risk they are most concerned about. In retirement, you should not have a lot of bonds in your portfolio. There is a simple guideline that you can use to determine how much income you need to guarantee with an annuity. Look at your lifestyle and subtract your guaranteed streams of income, like social security or rental income, and whatever is left should be guaranteed with an annuity. Everything else goes into the stock market portion of your portfolio. If you have your lifestyle expenses guaranteed, you have the luxury of watching your stock market portfolio recover after a down year. If you have money accumulated in a life insurance retirement plan, you can take tax-free loans out of that life insurance as well. The last thing you want to do is to cover discretionary expenses by taking money out of your stock market portfolio while the market is down. Annuities are a form of longevity insurance. It offloads your longevity risk to an insurance company which can manage better than you can. The alternative is relying on the 3% rule to avoid running out of money in retirement, but accumulating enough money to make that a viable choice is very difficult. Annuities will extend the life of your investments more effectively than a well-allocated balance of stocks and bonds. The bottom line is that bonds and stocks do not mitigate longevity risk and actually expose you to a number of other risks that can threaten your retirement. If you have longevity in your family or anticipate living a longer life, annuities reward you for doing so. The stock/bond approach penalizes you the longer you live. There are instances where you don’t need an annuity. If you have plenty of income to pay for essential expenses there may be no need. You need to cover your fixed expenses with income that will last the rest of your life. However, this approach can spook some investors since the only money left over with this strategy is invested in the stock market portfolio. Social security is an inflation-adjusted income annuity itself and it’s generally best to max it out by not claiming it until age 70. If you want to get an idea of how long you will live, go through the underwriting process of the life insurance retirement plan. The very best annuity you can buy is to delay social security. Replacing the bond portion of your portfolio with annuities runs counter to much of mainstream financial thought but it really is a great strategy for mitigating longevity risk. All these strategies are true, but if you take your guaranteed stream of income from your tax-deferred bucket you can unleash a chain of unintended consequences which can bankrupt your portfolio years in advance. Once taken, income from your tax-deferred bucket is stuck and is exposed to tax-rate risk for the rest of your life. It’s also counted as provisional income which will dramatically increase the likelihood that your social security will be taxed. When there is a hole in their social security and guaranteed income, most Americans are forced to spend down their stock market portfolio. You can end up spending down all your other assets seven to ten years faster this way. Bonds and cash are not a great place to store your money in retirement. If your lifestyle expenses are covered you have the luxury to leave most of your money in the stock market and can take more risk. If you want the dollars that are earmarked for your discretionary expenses to last the full arc of your 30-year retirement, you can’t have a lot of money in bonds.   Mentioned in this Episode: The Case for Replacing Some Bonds With Annuities - https://stockxpo.com/the-case-for-replacing-some-bonds-with-annuities

Bernie Sanders is heading up the proposals regarding estate taxes, and his proposals are deviating to some extent from what President Biden has campaigned on. Joe Biden’s plan says that the estate tax exemption, which is currently $11.7 million as a single person, or $23.4 million as a married couple, will be reverted back to its 2009 levels. Anything above and beyond those limits would be taxed at a rate of 40% and as high as 45%. Bernie Sanders’ proposal begins at 45% and goes up as the amount being passed on increases. When Bernie Sanders ran for president he proposed a maximum estate tax of 77% at the highest tax bracket but has since toned it down. He is targeting the top .5% of all Americans with this tax and has promised that 99.5% of the American people will not see their taxes go up under the plan. The wealthy already pay a tremendous amount of taxes. The 657 billionaires that are in America will end up owing $2.7 trillion in estate tax under the current tax law, and that money has already been accounted for. Bernie Sanders’ proposal would generate an additional $430 billion in revenue and would be earmarked for additional proposals, not to pay down the existing debt. This is essentially rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It doesn’t change the overall trajectory of the US and does nothing to shore up the programs that are driving all of the debt on the government’s balance sheet. It’s not about what your estate is worth now, it’s about what your estate is worth when you die. You may not have an estate that would be taxed now, but you need to project out what your estate could be worth in the future. Another question is what the estate tax exemption will be at this point. When a country is going insolvent, it looks at quarters to raise revenue to keep itself solvent and that could be the estate tax again in the future. There are ways to mitigate the risk of estate taxes but it requires a long runway and careful planning. It involves shifting money, gifting money, and even loaning money into a trust. The specter of a much lower estate tax exemption means we are going to have to start addressing ways to mitigate tax rate risk when we have 20 to 30 years of runway to be able to position into the right types of accounts.