Will Governments Nationalize Retirement Accounts?

When Do Governments NATIONALIZE Retirement Accounts?

Aden Tate

As the American debt reaches record levels on a daily basis, currently being in the trillions of dollars and literally impossible for America to ever pay off, there is a very juicy nest egg that politicians are going to begin to eye at some point: retirement accounts.

By nationalizing retirement accounts, a sudden influx of cash would appear in DC’s coffers, helping to make the country look better on paper and potentially last just a little bit longer.

You may think that the nationalization of retirement accounts would never happen here in America, but there have been a lot of things that have happened over the last few years that we never believed could happen on American soil.

I’m a firm believer that we can learn from the past to gauge how things may work out in the future. Your parents likely taught you cautionary tales with the hopes that you would learn from their mistakes. They taught you the past with the hopes that you would glean lessons of how the future could turn out if a similar path is followed.

There are plenty of countries that have nationalized retirement accounts, even throughout recent history, just as there are plenty of countries that consider torture to be a regular part of the judicial process.

Let’s take a look at a few of them. Perhaps we can learn a thing or two about the American economy as a result.

Argentina

It was in 2008 that Argentina nationalized the entire country’s private pension plans – stealing an estimated $30 billion in the process. This took place as the global stock market took a nosedive, and Argentina was bumbling with massive amounts of debt.

Hungary

In December 2010, the politicians of Hungary told their people that they had two immediate options they could choose: have their retirement accounts confiscated or lose the “right” to the basic state pension. $14 billion in private savings was stolen in this manner.

Just two years prior, Hungary had taken $25 billion from the International Monetary Fund because the nation was so steep in debt that it faced bankruptcy.

Poland

Back in 2011, it was reported that Poland had previously discussed a full third of future contributions to private retirement accounts to be stolen and put into the state-run social security system. Then, in 2013, Poland nationalized half of the private pension funds.

There was no “out.” One day you had money that you had earned. The next, it had been stolen from you. $50 billion was stolen from the Poles by their politicians that day.

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