UPSHIP Account

Or the Unified Personal Security Health and Investment Portfolio Account

I’ve been toying around in my mind, for some time really, with an idea which occurred to me as I was ranting to my wife about the obvious and artless nature of political machinations in today’s narrative climate.

I asked her, “If these politicians really gave a fuck about you, then why would they not put all the money they take from you in a personal account rather than into the general fund?”

The obvious answer is, of course, because then they wouldn’t get to use the money they steal from you to exert their influence in the power games that the corrupt and ignominious DC players are wont to play.

But, regardless of the inclinations of the psychopathic political operators, I do think that this is an idea – that of a mandatory personal safety-net account – worth looking at in greater detail.

As I continued to ponder over this idea, it occurred to me that there are quite a number of government run safety net programs which could all be rolled into a single personal account for each citizen.

What would the balance on an account that contained all of the following, both from your own contributions and those of your employers, look like if they went into an account in your name rather than into the government coffers?

• Social Security
• Medicare/Medicaid
• Health Insurance Premiums
• Unemployment Tax
• Worker’s Compensation Premiums
• 401K and Other Common Retirement Accounts

Imagine if all the money you’d paid into the social welfare system, as well as retirement accounts with tax benefit, and money which would have otherwise gone into the insurance racket, were all placed into an interest accruing personal account that had certain restrictions on its use.

“But what about those who do not earn enough to make those personal accounts large enough to be of use?”

Well, besides the questionable logic behind such a question, I have a proposal to mitigate the possibility. I call it the MVB, or, Minimum Viable Balance. This is the number, based upon a several factors, which would constitute the point at which the UPSHIP account would receive contributions.

Where would this money come from? A portion of the interest accrued in the accounts with a balance in excess of the MVB would be distributed to those accounts below the MVB.

So, what could this account be used for?

I propose that this account could be used for the following:

• Medical Expenses
• Replacement for Unemployment
• Down Payment on a House
• Bankruptcy Protection

In addition to these uses, this account could also serve as a replacement for social security and retirement accounts, with a portion of the balance invested into US stock exchange index funds.

I also propose that a certain percentage of the balance could be loaned to oneself for the purpose of business creation, debt avoidance/repayment, and other growth oriented and/or stabilizing economic endeavors, which would be payed back to oneself, with interest, in the form of increased UPSHIP contributions over the course of time.

Imagine a world in which the banks have trillions of dollars in actual funds more with which to make loans, the stock market has a steady and relatively stable influx of cash, individuals are able to both protect themselves from financial ruin and to invest in themselves when they see an opportunity.

What kind of stabilization, growth and diminishment of political fuckery would be possible under a regime of this sort rather than the disjointed, corrupt and nonsensical schemes we’re subjected to currently?

It seems to me to be the case that this is a no-brainer.

There are obviously a number of unanswered questions/ideas needing more detailed explanation, and I’ve purposefully left them unanswered/unexplained in this short article. We could hammer out the details later, but it would require a great shift in thinking in order for this idea to come into fruition.

Nevertheless, I can hardly imagine a scenario where the UPSHIP idea would not be orders of magnitude more useful that the current system.

Am I wrong?

Let me know what you think.