Ghilarducci When I'm Sixty-Four

The Plot against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-2438-0
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 384 Seiten, EPUB3

A crisis is looming for baby boomers and anyone else who hopes to retire in the coming years. In When I'm Sixty-Four, Teresa Ghilarducci, the nation's leading authority on the economics of retirement, explains how to confront this crisis head-on, revealing the causes behind the increasingly precarious economics of old age in America and proposing a bold plan to guarantee retirement security for every working citizen.


Retirement is one of the hallmarks of a prosperous, civilized market economy. Yet in America today Social Security is on the ropes. Government and employers are dismantling pension security, forcing older people to work longer. The federal government spends billions in exemptions for 401(k)s and other voluntary retirement accounts, yet retirement savings for most workers is falling. Ghilarducci takes an unflinching look at the eroding economic structure of retirement in America--and what she finds is alarming. She exposes the failures of pension regulators and the false hopes of privatized Social Security. She tells the ugly truth about risky 401(k) plans, do-it-yourself retirement schemes, and companies like Enron that have left employees without any retirement savings. Ghilarducci puts forward a sweeping plan to revive the retirement-income system, a plan that will ensure that, after forty years of work, every American will receive 70 percent of their preretirement earnings, guaranteed for life. No other book makes such a persuasive case for overhauling the pension and Social Security system in order to provide older Americans with the financial stability they have earned and deserve.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ghilarducci, Teresa

Fachgebiete

• Rechtswissenschaften Arbeitsrecht Betriebliche Altersvorsorge, Vermögensbildung
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Sozialpolitik
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaft: Sachbuch, Ratgeber

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction 1

Part I
The Attack on Retirement

Chapter 1: Hope for Retirement's Future 7
Principles for a Pension Rescue Plan 8
The Successes of the U.S. Retirement System 10
Three Beliefs That Threaten the Pension System 17
Individual Retirement Accounts: Current Reform Ideas Fall Short of a Vision to Successfully Preserve Retirement 23
Conclusion: Retirement's Future 25

Chapter 2: The Collapse of Retirement Income 26
What People Need in Retirement 26
What People Think They Know: Retirement Income Expectations 28
Predictions of Retirement Readiness 30
The Five Parts of a Retirement Wealth Portfolio: Four Are Failing 32
Distribution of Retirement Income and Distribution of Retirement Readiness 42
Women Face Special Pension Circumstances 44
Pension Futures for Workers with Moderate Incomes 53
Conclusion: Failures of the Current U.S. Retirement Income Security System 56

Chapter 3: When Bad Things Happen to Good Pensions--Promises Get Broken 58
Defined Benefit Pensions and the Road to a Middle-Class Retirement 59
Diminished Defined Benefit Plans 60
The Paradox of Overall Pension Stagnation 66
Workers’ Demand for Defined Benefit Pension Plans 72
Why Workers Don't Like Defined Benefit Pension Plans 78
Lump Sums and Defined Benefit Plans: A Cure that Creates the Disease 80
Box 3.1. The Story of Lump Sum Payouts 82
Why Firms Like Defined Benefit Pensions 84
Box 3.2. The Story of the Miners’ Union's Pensions: How Secondary Markets Are Transformed 87
Employers Who Do Not Sponsor Defined Benefit Plans Prefer 401(k) Plans--or Nothing 90
Legacy Costs: Defined Benefit Plans Do Not Kill Companies 92
What Should Government Policy Do? 95
Policy Options 96
Conclusion: When Bad Things Happen to Good Pensions 101
Appendix 3.1. The Pension Protection Act of 2006 103
The Pension Protection Act: Destroying the Defined Benefit System as the Way to Save It 108
The Effects of the Pension Protection Act of 2006 112
Conclusion: The Pension Protection Act of 2006 115

Chapter 4: Do-It-Yourself Pensions 116
Trends in 401(k) Plans 117
Advantages and Disadvantages of Defined Contribution Pensions 118
Longevity, Investment, Financial, Inflation, Political, and Poverty Risks 122
Box 4.1. Investment Management Fees: The Politics and Profits 128
Causes of the Shift to 401(k) Plans 130
Box 4.2. Are 401(k) Plans Cheaper Than Defined Benefit Pension Plans? 133
Conclusion: Do-It-Yourself Pensions 136

Chapter 5: The Future of Social Security 139
How Does Social Security Work? 139
Issues in Social Security Financing 143
Box 5.1. Why Did the Greenspan Commission Get It Wrong? 150
The Personal Savings Account Plan 154
Box 5.2. Advance Funding Retirement 156
Motives for and Likely Effects of Personal Savings Accounts 157
Fixes that Maintain Social Security's Basic Structure 164
Political History of the Social Security Program 169
The Debate over Social Security: Some Things Never Change 172
What Is New in the Social Security Debate? 175
Conclusion: The Future of Social Security 178

Part II: What Is Good about America's Retirement Income Security System

Chapter 6: The Short History of Old Age Leisure in America 181
Retirement Leisure by Generation 181
Repositioning the Retirement Idea 186
Praising and Promoting Work 188
Can the Elderly Work More? 190
Affordability: Are Pensions a Form of Fiscal Child Abuse? 191
America's Unique Pension Debate 192
Policy Implications of Repositioned Retirement Norms 194
Conclusion: Old Age Leisure in America 195

Chapter 7: The Distribution of Retirement Time:Who Really Gets to Retire? 197
The Value of Time and the Link between Paid Work and Health 198
Who Has the Most Retirement Time? 201
The Difference between Survivors and Nonsurvivors 210
Is Retiring Earlier Really the Ticket to Retirement-Time Equity? 212
Equalizing Retirement Time with Disability Insurance 215
Conclusion: Who Really Gets to Retire? 215

Chapter 8: Working: The New Retirement's Effect on the Economy 217
Box 8.1. Age Is in the Eye of the Beholder, the Researcher, the Lawyer, and the Retailer 218
Older Americans Are Working More 219
The Quality of Older Workers Jobs: More Push than Pull Gets the Elderly to Work 223
How 401(k)s Destabilize the Economy 226
Pension Surprises and Work 230
Conclusions and Policy Implications: The New Retirement 233
Contents ix

Part III: The Rescue Plan for Retirement

Chapter 9: The American Labor Movement: Advocating Retirement and Obtaining Pensions 237
Unions Opt for Employee Benefits 238
Are Pensions Deferred Wages or Payments for Depreciation? 240
What Unions Do: Explaining the Union Pension Advantage 245
Unions and Legacy Costs in Defined Benefit Plans 249
Organized Labor and Social Security 252
Labor's Capital 253
Conclusion: Unions and Pensions 258

Chapter 10: Rescue Plan for American Workers’ Retirement: Averting the End of Retirement 260
Guaranteed Retirement Accounts 263
GRA Efficiency, Fairness, and Shared Risk 266
Failure of the Current Tax Policy 275
Are Guaranteed Retirement Accounts Politically Feasible? 280
Box 10.1. A Persistent Policy Recommendation: Raising the Retirement Age 284
Conclusion: The Final Bottom Line 288
Appendix 10.1. Guaranteed Retirement Accounts: Questions and Answers 290

Notes 295
Glossary 331
Bibliography 341
Acknowledgments 365
Index 367

Über Autor(innen)

Teresa Ghilarducci, after having taught economics for twenty-five years at the University of Notre Dame, now holds the Irene and Bernard L. Schwartz Chair of Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research. She is also the 2006-2008 Wurf Fellow at Harvard Law School. Her books include Labor's Capital: The Economics and Politics of Private Pensions.