The Power Of Zero Show

A new report says that retirees who convert their savings into guaranteed lifetime annuities effectively double the amount they are willing to spend each year on themselves and their families. This indicates that retirees holding more of their wealth in guaranteed income are more willing to spend on luxury items and experiences because of a higher comfort level with additional spending. The report looked at retired households with more than $100,000 in savings and spending more than $25,000 each year. They were making an apples-to-apples comparison between people that had a guaranteed lifetime income and those with enough assets that they could. They were looking at the most simple form of an annuity, the Single Premium Immediate Annuity. When people get into retirement they tend to get into a protective mode where they spend defensively. Without a baseline of guaranteed income, you're basically in fear mode throughout retirement. If these guaranteed lifetime income annuities are so great, why do so many Americans not take advantage of them? The first major hang-up for most people is the lack of liquidity. When you purchase a Single Premium Immediate Annuity those funds are gone from your balance sheet and that gives some people a lot of heartburn. Another concern is inflation. The payment may be sufficient for your basic lifestyle needs now but that may not be the case in the future. Solutions to this problem include purchasing an annuity that scales with inflation, or to buy more guaranteed income than you need, the trouble with both of those is that they end up compounding the liquidity issue. The third issue is the idea that a person's heirs may be disinherited if they die prematurely. The Mac truck factor may play out for you and that's a real worry for many Americans. The annuity industry is listening and has created another type of annuity called the fixed index annuity, which goes a long way to solve those problems. It solves the liquidity problem by not requiring you to take your income right away. During the deferral period you have 10% liquidity, which is often more than enough. Once you elect to take your income, the income is linked to the growth of a particular stock market index. In the case where the index declines you are protected from the loss. The last issue fixes the inheritance, where if you die prematurely your heirs will receive whatever your initial investment was plus the growth minus any distributions. One thing missing from the article is that if you do decide to do an annuity, it's important to have the ability to do a piecemeal internal Roth conversion. A fixed index annuity in your tax-deferred bucket can result in Social Security taxation, which can force you to spend down your other assets five to seven years faster. The piecemeal internal Roth conversion also helps mitigate tax rate risk. In a rising tax rate environment like we are in now, this is a very important feature. Once the money is within the tax-free bucket, it is no longer exposed to tax rate risk. If you combine all the advantages of a fixed index annuity and a piecemeal Roth conversion feature, you too can have a happy and fun retirement. Mentioned in this Episode: Opinion: Retirees with annuities have more fun - marketwatch.com/story/retirees-with-annuities-have-more-fun-11628192718

A Democratic representative out of California has introduced a bill to change the way that Social Security cost of living adjustments are calculated. It proposes to link the Social Security increase each year to the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly, instead of the CPI for Workers. The difference between the two indexes over the course of a 30-year period is roughly 0.2% each year, which doesn't sound like much, but when you compound that over the 30 years, it adds up quickly. The cost of living adjustment has only passed 2% twice since 2010. If you add up all the growth in the CPIE, it would amount to an increase of 10.1%, versus the CPIW which only amounted to 8%. Switching may not necessarily be good for seniors, with gasoline prices being weighted disproportionately between the two. Inflation has been in the news a lot recently. Increasingly as time goes on, politicians are going to be tempted by the Modern Monetary Theory proponents to print more money to solve their fiscal problems, and the end result is going to be inflation. The Senior Citizen's League is estimating that the Social Security cost of living adjustment could be as high as 6.1% in 2022, which would be the highest cost of living adjustment in a very long time. The proposed bill has yet to receive a vote, but the bill has overwhelming support from those currently on Social Security. Prior to Covid, we knew that Social Security was slated to run out of money in 2035. Because of the additional spending during the pandemic, Social Security could run out of money in 2032 with Medicare running out in 2023 instead of 2026. This means that the likelihood of higher taxes is closer than we thought. This bill would likely bankrupt the program at an even greater acceleration. A better way to increase your own Social Security is to position your assets from tax-deferred to tax-free. Anything above and beyond the ideal balance in your taxable and tax-deferred buckets should be systematically repositioned to tax-free. With the right amount of money in the first two buckets in a rising tax rate environment, and everything else positioned as tax-free, you can be perfectly positioned to insulate yourself from the impact of higher taxes, but also get your Social Security tax-free. Simply positioning your assets properly between those three buckets will add an extra five to seven years to your retirement. You can choose to rely on the government, or you can be proactive in positioning your assets.

Joe Biden campaigned on the platform of raising taxes on the top 1% of earners in America, yet six months into his administration, there haven't been any increases thus far. The main pillars of his proposal are to increase the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% and to increase taxes on married couples earning more than $400,000 per year ($200,000 for individuals) from 37% to 39.6%. For those making $1 million or more, your long term capital gains tax rates would increase from 20% to 39.6%, effectively doubling. There are few reasons for the proposal running out of steam. The first is GOP opposition, as well as a number of economists warning that raising taxes now could jeopardize the economic recovery. Former George W. Bush Treasury official, Tony Fratto, says that the chances of big tax reforms in the near term seems reduced. There is a fear that tax reforms could squelch the growth of the economy as corporations are still trying to battle their way out of the quagmire of the Covid-19 recession. When corporate tax rates go up, those tax increases are typically passed on to consumers. We can look at major Wall Street players and how they are reacting or preparing for the proposal to get an idea of what the future may bring. Blackrock is mildly bullish on the tax rates going through with a number of senior strategists believing it to be likely but still hedging their bets. JP Morgan believes that Joe Biden will not be able to deliver on his tax proposal increases, but the discussion of increasing taxes may put a damper on market returns. Mitt Romney believes tax increases are off the table. Being able to pay for infrastructure bills with increased taxes is going to be extremely difficult to pull off. Tony Fratto says that borrowing is probably going to be how Biden will pay for all the various bills being proposed. As long as Democrats and Republicans disagree on how to pay for expenditures, borrowing is the easy solution. The US government has to refinance its loans each year, and they are directly impacted by interest rates. Interest rates may be low now, but they won't stay that way forever. If Joe Biden is going to push through his tax proposal, he has to do it soon. As a president, when you can't get things done in the first 100 days to one year, they tend to become lame ducks leading up to the next election. Biden is hoping to get all his initiatives done in the first year because polling indicates that Republicans will likely take back the House and the Senate. If he doesn't push it through soon, he may not have a chance at all. In terms of the Power of Zero worldview, this means that the status quo is likely to be maintained and that the Trump tax cuts will expire Jan 1, 2026. You have 5 years to reposition your assets from tax-deferred to tax-free. This isn't set in stone yet, we have until the end of the year before it becomes clear on what's going to happen with Biden's tax proposal. Mentioned in this Episode: Biden's plans to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy are losing momentum - https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/07/07/biden-tax-plan-corporate-capital-gains-and-income-hike-uncertain.html

The 3% Rule says that if you want to have $100,000 per year in retirement, you would need $3.3 million saved up, which is not very attainable for most Americans. If you can offload longevity risk to a company that can handle it better than you can, you have to save far less. If you take a portion of your liquid investment portfolio and purchase an annuity, you can potentially achieve the same income flow at roughly half the cost. An annuity from an insurance company also mitigates withdrawal rate risk. If you have an income guaranteed in retirement by an insurance company, you won't have to rely on your stock market portfolio to take care of your lifestyle needs. Long-term care risk is one of the most pernicious risks for most Americans. Almost, but not quite dying, is much worse than simply dying. In that case, the surviving spouse is often left with a subsistence living instead of the retirement lifestyle they planned for. People don't love paying for long-term care insurance for a variety of reasons, but there are alternatives to traditional long-term care insurance that accomplish most of the same things. If you give an insurance company a chunk of your liquid assets, they will give you a guaranteed stream of income that will live as long as you do. Your assets get pooled with thousands of other people's and statistical averages work everything out over time. Mathematically, the single premium immediate annuity is going to give you the most bang for your buck but there are three things that people tend not to like. The first is giving up some amount of liquidity, the second is the lack of inflation protection, and the third is the risk of dying early. The alternative is a fixed index annuity, which allows you to tie the growth of your income to a stock market index. This protects you from inflation, comes with a death benefit, and gives you a period of liquidity which addresses the three biggest concerns that people have with instruments that guarantee lifetime income. Your income in retirement can be guaranteed, but if you do that out of your tax-deferred bucket, the after-tax amount is not guaranteed. To plug that hole, most Americans dip into their stock market portfolio. This can also result in social security taxation, leading them to spend their stock market portfolio even faster. You should think very carefully before dropping a large amount of money into a single premium immediate annuity that doesn't have the ability to do a piecemeal Roth conversion. The Life Insurance Retirement Plan comes into play in retirement when you need to pay for discretionary expenses, typically after the 10 year mark. The years where the stock market is down are the perfect time to take money out of your LIRP. The LIRP is the perfect vehicle to fund discretionary needs like plugging the hole in your roof or taking the grandkids to Disney World without withdrawing anything from your stock market portfolio. Most LIRP companies also allow you to receive your death benefit in advance of your death to pay for long term care. If you die peacefully in your sleep, your kids can inherit the death benefit which negates the feeling of paying for something you never receive. The ideal amount of money to have in your taxable bucket is about six months worth of expenses. Any more than that is a great candidate for funding your LIRP. It's crucial for life insurance that the money be growing safely and productively. With some products, your cash value ebbs and flows with the stock market. There are scenarios where people can run out of money and death benefit, as well as long-term care. A whole life policy or an indexed universal life policy are your best choices. David favours the indexed universal life policy for most people. The IRS has strict limits on how much money can be put into a life insurance policy. Those limits were premised on what the interest rates were over time, but since interest rates have changed, they adjusted the rule and consumers can put almost twice as much money into those programs for the same amount of death benefit. People up to the age of 62 can still make use of the LIRP since they still have time to let it gain steam. Once you get to the age of 65, it's not the best option if your objective is to accumulate wealth. Insurance companies are in the business of predicting how long you will live so the viability of the LIRP is directly related to your health and life expectancy. If you can figure out which spouse is going to live the longest, it informs many different decisions regarding the overall retirement plan. Joe Biden will likely honor his campaign promise to not raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000, which means there's a lot of opportunity to take advantage of the tax sale of a lifetime before taxes go up for good.

David's first appearance on the podcast was one of the most downloaded episodes. Back in 2014, David wrote the Power of Zero book and since then the national debt has grown considerably. We are now at $28 trillion in debt and the primary problem is that much debt is only affordable as long as interest rates stay historically low. At some point in the near future, the US will no longer be able to borrow money at the current rate and this will result in the cost of servicing the national debt will grow and consume more and more of the national budget. Many experts are saying that tax rates will have to raise dramatically or the US will go broke as a country. Everybody has been saving the lion's share of their money in tax-deferred accounts. In doing so they are entering into a partnership with the IRS where the IRS gets to vote on what percentage of your profits you get to keep. The best way to insulate yourself from higher taxes is to get into the zero percent tax bracket. Taxes are evolving at a rapid pace. We have to approach retirement with a sense of flexibility and be nimble enough to make changes to the strategy. Joe Biden's tax plans are going to have major repercussions for every American, whether that is now or eight years from now. David's belief is that Joe Biden is going to extend the tax cuts under budget reconciliation for another 8 years and if that happens the government is going to have to crank taxes up to make up for lost time. Everyday Americans need to take advantage of the current historically low tax rates, stretch out their tax obligations out over the next few years, and position as much of their money to tax-free. Historically, the highest marginal tax brackets are bellwethers for all other marginal tax rates. Maya MacGuinneas did a study that showed that the government would have to raise taxes on everyone making above $40,000 to 40% just to prevent the debt from growing each year. Even though Joe Biden has made the promise that he's not going to raise taxes on the middle class, mathematically it's just not tenable. If he refuses to broaden the tax base sooner rather than later, the fix on the back end is going to be much more aggressive. Raising taxes can be a catch-22, where it stifles economic growth and lowers revenue in the end. The reality is that there are not a lot of good choices to fix the situation, but the later we wait the harder the choices are going to become. Harvard Business School did a study to discover at what point do people feel comfortable with the amount of money they have saved and whether they will run out of money. Nearly everyone said they were worried. Ultimately, the study asked the question "do you need to have $15 million in your investment portfolio to feel like you won't ever run out of money before you die, or is there another way to mitigate longevity risk?" People's greatest fear in retirement is running out of money before they die. In today's financial planning world, not a lot of people can mitigate tax-rate risk and longevity risk within the same financial plan. If you have a stream of guaranteed income from social security, an annuity, or a company pension can be the difference between being comfortable in retirement and not worried about running out of money and the fear that your money won't last. Saving more money doesn't solve your longevity risk. It's not about your assets in retirement, it's about your income. The people that have guaranteed streams of income are happier in retirement and they generally live longer lives than people that don't. Even high net worth people can benefit from guaranteed streams of income because it gives you permission to take much more risk in your stock market portfolio. Even if they don't need the income, they can take it and reinvest it. Sequence of return risk references the order of which you experience returns in your stock market portfolio. If you have a sequence of negative returns early on in your retirement, it can send your portfolio into a death spiral from which it never recovers. Sequence of return risk can be devastating. The 4% Rule used to be the prevailing wisdom for people taking money out of their stock market portfolio. As recently as 2010, those projections are outdated and the 3% Rule has become the norm. The problem with this approach is that it is extremely expensive. Having an annuity is your tax-deferred bucket, which 97% of people do, you are exposing yourself to tax-rate risk as well as social security taxation risk. Using a piecemeal internal Roth conversion to convert it tax-free insulates you from rising taxes. The problem comes from not being able to do that Roth conversion all at once and you need another solution for the first five to seven years of retirement. This is where a time-segmented approach can come in.

Roth IRA's have been trending on Twitter recently because it was discovered that Peter Thiel accumulated over $5 billion in his Roth IRA. Peter Thiel was one of the original founders of Paypal in 1999 when the Roth IRA was still in its infancy. At that time, his salary qualified him to contribute to his Roth IRA and he placed 1.7 million shares of Paypal into his account. The shares started off at the value of one-tenth of one penny ($1700), and after Paypal went public, those same shares rose to over $50 each. With all this wealth in his Roth IRA, Peter Thiel used it as a slush fund for his other investments. In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg solicited a $500,000 investment from Peter, made within his Roth IRA, and that went on to grow considerably. By the end of 2012, Peter Thiel's Roth IRA was valued at roughly $1.7 billion. Mitt Romney did something similar, where he put undervalued shares into his own Roth IRA, which ended up creating a lot of negative press for him. By 2019, a large majority of Peter Thiel's investments took place under the umbrella of his Roth IRA. He has over $5 billion spread across 96 different sub accounts reflecting different investments in different companies. Peter Thiel plans on living to 120 and is making investments in antiaging technologies. In that situation, by the year 2087 he would have roughly $263 billion in his Roth IRA. In 2010, Congress removed the income threshold that prevented people from converting to a Roth IRA. This led hedge fund managers and venture capitalists to convert portions of their existing IRA, but Mitt Romney did not. Mitt now has around $100 million in his traditional IRA. In a rising tax rate environment, Mitt should have adopted the Peter Thiel approach. Under Joe Biden's tax proposals, Mitt stands to lose upwards of 70% of that money upon distribution. The best course of action for Mitt would be to bite the bullet and convert all of that money in a single year. Even with all the taxes he would pay now, it pales in comparison to what he would pay once Joe Biden's tax reform bill comes into play. According to the Power of Zero principles, Mitt is foolish to have that much money in his IRA. He should take advantage of the tax year of 2021 because it's never going to be a better rate than 37% for him. One thing you can draw from the Peter Thiel approach is the power of the Roth IRA. Once you put the after-tax dollars in, they grow in a tax-free way no matter what you invest them in. Contrasted with Mitt Romney, the larger his wealth grows, the larger his tax bill grows. He will probably end up paying at least 50% in taxes by the time he needs to take that money out, unlike the venture capitalists like Peter Thiel, Warren Buffet, and others that have taken advantage of the Roth Conversion.

Americans have over $30 trillion sitting in 401(k)'s and IRAs, and people are waking up to the fact that those accounts are in the crosshairs of the US government to solve their debt problems. In a recent interview with Maya MacGuineas, she said the fiscal condition of the US and what's going to happen over the next 10 years is terrifying. The Biden administration will likely try to kick the can down the road and that's only going to make the fix more draconian. The political class is hyper focused on the top 1% of earners right now, but everyone needs to understand that when tax rates go up, they tend to go up for everyone. In 1960, the highest marginal tax bracket was 89% with the lowest at 22%. The highest rate tends to be a harbinger of what all the other tax rates are doing. In Maya's study, she found that the US government would have to tax the highest earners at a rate of 103% just to prevent the debt from continuing to grow. It's not enough to tax the rich. There will come a time when everybody is going to fall under the scope of the IRS and will have to pay up. The national debt that the government references is not the true national debt. If we did our books like every other country in the world, which includes unfunded liabilities, we would have a very different number. The true national debt is around $180 trillion and 8x-9x the GDP. You can't control your payroll tax or your sales tax, but you can control the money you have in tax-deferred accounts. The true purpose of a retirement account is not to give you a deduction, it's to maximize your cash flow at a period of time in your life when you can least afford taxes. The way most people are planning for their retirement is backwards. Unless you can predict what tax rates are going to be in the year you take money out of your retirement account, you don't really know how much money you have and that makes it very hard to plan. We have an aging population in the US which is creating a demographic time bomb. As the Baby Boomer generation retires, later generations have to shoulder the brunt of that increased burden on social programs like Social Security. These programs only survive when subsequent generations are larger than the previous, which has not been the case for decades. We are not having as many children as we have had in the past and that's making those social programs more unsustainable. There will not be enough people in the future generating enough taxes to pay for everything we've already promised. When the programs were created, the variables were very different. People didn't live as long and they had more children. That is not the reality of the situation now, but nothing about the programs has changed. We have three possibilities for when tax rates are going to go up. The first is when the tax cuts expire in 2026. The second is the tax cuts get extended to 2030. The third, proposed by Ed Slott, is that the government will come to its senses and, starting next year, tax rates will go up for everyone.

President Joe Biden has recently proposed a $6 trillion budget designed to make the US more competitive. Spending is already on an unsustainable trajectory so we need to examine the impact this budget proposal will have on the fiscal outlook of the country. A lot of people believe a $6 trillion budget is too much, too soon and will exacerbate the debt problem in the long run. The budget proposal introduces budget deficits over the next several years, financed mainly by additional debt. This will result in over $15 trillion in additional debt by the end of the decade resulting in a national debt of roughly $42 trillion by 2030. The assumption being made is that this level of debt is sustainable because of the belief that interest rates will stay relatively low. Should that assumption not hold true, this level of debt will cause some major issues for the US economy. The stated goal of the budget is to help Americans attain a middle class lifestyle and to make the US more competitive globally. The proposal hasn't been voted on yet. The budget focuses on infrastructure projects, as well as shoring up of social programs like affordable childcare, universal Pre-K education, and a national paid leave program. Joe Biden campaigned on the promise that middle income earners will not have to pay for this additional spending. Biden plans to raise taxes on corporations and high-income earners and expects his plan to be offset by those additional taxes over the next fifteen years. The debt continues to grow each year because of the unfunded liabilities within existing social programs like social security. The budget proposal does not address this. It's important to note that the proposed budget allows the middle income tax cuts that Trump signed into law to expire. There are sources in the White House that say that Biden will address these tax cuts at some point in the future. By 2024, debt as a share of the economy would rise to its highest level in American history, eclipsing a World War II-era record. Another worry is that the new level of spending will become the new normal going into the future. Joe Biden believes that this additional spending can be financed by an economy that is growing by just under 2% per year. We also need to be concerned about inflation. As businesses recover from Covid, people are making money again but that money is chasing fewer goods and causing prices to rise. Additional spending by the government will further increase the money supply and accelerate the inflation. If you had any doubt that tax rates will not be dramatically higher down the road than they are today, this budget calls for it. By 2030 there will be so much debt the government will be forced to broaden the tax base. Experts are no longer talking about passing the debt onto the next generation. More of them are talking about how the current generation will have to pay for it. If you have money in a 401(k) or IRA the government's crosshairs are focused on your accounts. We need to keep an eye on the fiscal trajectory of the country because that's a barometer for where tax rates are going to be over the course of the next 10 years. Mentioned in this Episode: Biden's Plan: President to Propose $6 Trillion Budget to Boost Middle Class, Infrastructure - https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/business/economy/biden-plan.html

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.