[quote=spdrun]Oh please. Have you actually seen how the average family on welfare lives?

Really the only thing that’s changing is that the playing field for health insurance is being leveled between the self-employed, small businesses, and large conglomerates. This is a good thing for capitalism and free-enterprise, since people will be more free to walk off and start their own businesses – immobility of labor due to insurance or other considerations is a bad thing.[/quote]

Oh please, the average person on “welfare” isn’t in the stock market….

BUT, the average american worker that goes in day in and day out into a 9-5 job is very much in the stock market with their retirement plans and mostly just let there “investments” sit and rot there thinking the markets are gonna get better. It ain’t…

The other thing is with, previously lots of folks were dividend investing, to capture the special 15% cap gain treatments. New rules now… So expect some volatility there too… Might not matter if you have say 100-200 shares of say Phillip Morris…But it makes a huge difference if you have say a few thousand shares. So yeah, 5%’ers have a lot of things to worry about.