IRAs, QRPs and MRDs, Oh My! What About ACPs, NGPs and MRPDs? Oh, YES!!! - Caught between a ROC and a hard-headed place.

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



When talking with most varieties of financial, legal, political and policy planners, one quickly becomes familiar with the following terms.

IRAs = individual retirement accounts
QRPs = qualified retirement plans
MRDs = minimum required distributions

IRA? QRP? MRD? First thing to note is that these are all "micro" or individual process terms. And note also that so much of our national policy process revolves around trying to organize our aggregate as a collection of independent parts.

Instead of as "a more perfect union?"

What about parallel macro mgt?

ACP? - aggregate continuation process?
NGP? - national growth plan?
MRPD? - minimum required policy evolution?

Please, remind me why we communally fought a war for aggregate independence ..... and wrote a US Constitution?

Are we all to act only as a collection of contentious, non-cooperating hermits, and do ALL planning accordingly? That requires only micro-cephalic* planning. Every man for himself.

Are we to eschew macro-cephalic** or aggregate planning and policy development? Are dancers, sportspeople & soldiers the only ones who know that there is no "I" in team? Really? Why do our voters and the policy staff THAT THEY SELECT no longer behave as though they know that simple fact?

We're caught between a ROC and a hard-headed place?

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*  Cephalic disorders are congenital conditions that stem from damage to, or abnormal development of, the budding nervous system.

** Macro-cephalic disorders are cultural conditions that stem from damaged methods for shepherding the continual evolution of, our budding group-brain.