This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, April 18th, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The 1920s offer a great example of how governments could tax and spend.

When the will is there, Amity Shlays details some of this in her new book, Coolidge.

She presented at the Cato Institute last week.

I don't know who looked at the budget that the White House issued. I kind of had a Cyprus moment looking at it, particularly page 18, the right

column where it says something about 401k's and Iris that I didn't

hadn't seen before did you see this where I maybe I'm wrong but it basically said tax-preferred accounts should be people should get be able to save in their tax-preferred account

About two hundred five thousand per annum that seemed to the White House the appropriate retirement amount

I mean about enough so they would have two hundred five thousand per annum or a total of

three million in such accounts and then it didn't really say what happens when you hit 3 million in that

account is it over do they take some of the money out but it seemed to be more

than just ceasing to contribute to such an account and just one area ought to be governed by even more rules and this one area

ought to be governed by even more rules and this one area of the tax-preferred

account well we should kind of get used to the idea of the government

hand going, the greedy hand going into that area more than we had expected before.

And I think there were two reactions of people

who read this.

And then the White House allowed that the government

would get $9 billion in revenue over 10 years. That's not that much from this change, it thought, by

restricting these accounts in some new way. And the first reaction one has is some of my money

is being taken away because it will be taxed more aggressively

...