by Terrence Aym

Created on: December 14, 2010   Last Updated: December 30, 2011

Teresa Ghilarducci may be the most dangerous woman in America.

Never heard of her? Read on…

Not many Americans who have private retirement plans have heard of Professor Teresa Ghilarducci.  Yet she's a woman that has the ear of some powerful lawmakers in Washington. She's working to sway minds and shape the opinions of movers and shakers in the nation's capital.

And, as far as the private retirement system goes, she is anathema.

Simply put, Ghilarducci, a professor of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, wants the federal government to grab all private retirement funds—401-k's, IRAs and company pension plans—in the name of "economic justice."

Economic justice is an old socialist code phrase for redistribution of wealth: taking assets from the hands of those more fortunate and redirecting them into the pockets of those less fortunate. It's just another form of the timeworn socialist credo "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." It's naked Marxism and undermines the incentive of any individual to produce because all rewards are leavened out in the name of social and economic justice.

In this case, all monies set aside by individuals—including any company matching funds—will be confiscated under her plan and added to the general coffers of the massively mismanaged and bankrupt Social Security Administration. What's being bandied about is a guaranteed stipend of 3 percent a year in return for the confiscated retirement monies.

Worse, if an individual dies before collecting their money, all of it would be kept by Washington.

Some peoples' retirement funds are well into six and seven figures. Under her plan, anything not doled out by the government before a coerced participant's death will be kept by the government. Nothing will pass on through the estate to heirs despite the fact that the monies were all earned and managed and built up by the individual.

All this would be done in the name of mandating equality.

During shocking testimony before the House Committee on Education and Labor, the good professor advocated a multistage plan. First, eliminate all tax breaks for 401-k and other private retirement accounts. Next, confiscate by federal edict all workers' retirement programs and dump them into the bottomless coffers of a gigantic public pool she has named "Guaranteed Retirement Accounts" (GRAs).

Finally, for those miscreants that resist, fines—even jail time—could

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