Mint's Failout

With all the bailout buzz in the air, Mint.com - a free personal finance management website - has its own plan for an economic bailout package (pictured).

I counted five different times where the Mint plan taxes wealth - not income or consumption, but actual saved money (which has probably already been taxed as income). Mint proposes taxing investments and any money made off those investments and advocates seizing corporate bonuses and money that has already been paid out.

Once again: Mint purports to be a financial managment tool. But apparently they don't believe in people saving money.

Even worse is Mint's concept of a "Main Street Bailout" - which doesn't send dollar one to Main Street at all. Their "renewable fuels" funding is nothing more than a subsidy for energy companies' research and development labs. Their $50 billion mortgage rescue package will be administered by some government entity and doesn't appear to include a plan for making those endangered mortages affordable to the borrowers who got in over their heads in the first place. And the $20 billion in state funding won't go any farther than state capitals.

Mint clearly doesn't care about creating a strong, smart, financial culture. But they do feel the need to advocate policies which sound like they help people solve problems - even if they make the problems worse.