A damning portrait of the dire realities of retirement in the United States--and how we can fix it. While the French went on strike in 2023 to protest the increase in the national retirement age, workers in the United States have all but given up on the notion of dignified retirement for all. Instead, Americans--whose elders face the highest risk of poverty compared to workers in peer nations--are fed feel-good stories about Walmart clerks who can finally retire because a customer raised the necessary funds through a GoFundMe campaign. Many argue that the solution to the financial straits of American retirement is simple: people need to just work longer. Yet this call to work longer is misleading in a multitude of ways, including its endangering of the health of workers and its discrimination against people who work in lower-wage occupations. In Work, Retire, Repeat, Teresa Ghilarducci tells the stories of elders locked into jobs--not because they love to work but because they must. But this doesn't need to be the reality. Work, Retire, Repeat shows how relatively low-cost changes to how we finance and manage retirement will allow people to truly choose how they spend their golden years.

Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy

Business & Money

Ghilarducci, Teresa

Economics

University of Chicago Press

Everyone deserves to be able to retire with dignity, but this core feature of the social contract is in jeopardy. Companies have swerved away from pensions, and most of the workforce has woefully inadequate retirement savings. If we don’t act to fix this broken system, rates of impoverishment for senior citizens threaten to skyrocket, and tens of millions of Americans reaching retirement age in the coming decades will be forced to delay retirement and will experience a dramatic drop in their standard of living. In Rescuing Retirement, Teresa Ghilarducci and Tony James offer a comprehensive yet simple plan to help workers save for retirement, increase retirement savings by earning higher returns, and guarantee lifelong income for everyone. Built on people’s own money in individual Guaranteed Retirement Accounts, the plan requires no new taxes, no more bureaucracy, and no increase in the deficit. Speaking to Americans’ growing anxiety about their ability to retire, Rescuing Retirement provides answers to anyone wanting to understand the growing movement to protect a period of life once considered a deserved time of rest and creativity and offers a practical guide to the future of secure retirement.

Rescuing Retirement: A Plan to Guarantee Retirement Security for All Americans (Columbia Business School Publishing)

James, Tony

Columbia University Press

Everyone deserves to be able to retire with dignity, but this core feature of the social contract is in jeopardy. Companies have swerved away from pensions, and most of the workforce has woefully inadequate retirement savings. If we don’t act to fix this broken system, rates of impoverishment for senior citizens threaten to skyrocket, and tens of millions of Americans reaching retirement age in the coming decades will be forced to delay retirement and will experience a dramatic drop in their standard of living.\nIn Rescuing Retirement, Teresa Ghilarducci and Tony James offer a comprehensive yet simple plan to help workers save for retirement, increase retirement savings by earning higher returns, and guarantee lifelong income for everyone. Built on people’s own money in individual Guaranteed Retirement Accounts, the plan requires no new taxes, no more bureaucracy, and no increase in the deficit. Speaking to Americans’ growing anxiety about their ability to retire, Rescuing Retirement provides answers to anyone wanting to understand the growing movement to protect a period of life once considered a deserved time of rest and creativity and offers a practical guide to the future of secure retirement.

Rescuing Retirement: A Plan to Guarantee Retirement Security for All Americans

Why are pension funds so large and benefits so small? This examination of the 120-year-old American system of privatized social insurance - often called, at 1.7 trillion dollars, the biggest lump of money in the world - reveals that the system fails to provide adequate retirement income security, its most prominent goal, and, in fact, its greatest influence is in supplying funds to U.S. capital markets.Linking market forces, historical movements, and social norms in the evolution of pensions, Ghilarducci's study is the first to focus on all major aspects of the system. Its trenchant analysis of the many sides of pensions and pension policy addresses questions of whom the system benefits, its direct and social costs, and the possibilities of reforms that would take into account the related problems of capital formation and retirement income.Ghilarducci describes the history of pension funds and the involvement of unions in bargaining. She takes up the "moral hazard" involved in the conflicting interests of corporations and their employees, tackling issues of information availability and inequality of pension distribution based on sex, race, and job hierarchy. And in two chapters, each focusing on corporate and union uses of pension funds, she covers such topics as tax breaks, the effect of corporate takeovers, the use of pensions to pay back debt, and the kinds of skimming that can occur despite government regulation of pension activities. Ghilarducci concludes by presenting an ideal pension plan that would benefit both employer and employee and by offering predictions about pension plans of the future. Teresa Ghilarducci is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame.

Labor's Capital: The Economics and Politics of Private Pensions

Human Resources

Mit Pr

This examination of the 120-year-old American system of privatized social insurance reveals that the system fails to provide adequate retirement income security, its most prominent goal, and, in fact, its greatest influence is in supplying funds to U.S. capital markets.
Why are pension funds so large and benefits so small? This examination of the 120-year-old American system of privatized social insurance - often called, at 1.7 trillion dollars, the biggest lump of money in the world - reveals that the system fails to provide adequate retirement income security, its most prominent goal, and, in fact, its greatest influence is in supplying funds to U.S. capital markets.Linking market forces, historical movements, and social norms in the evolution of pensions, Ghilarducci's study is the first to focus on all major aspects of the system. Its trenchant analysis of the many sides of pensions and pension policy addresses questions of whom the system benefits, its direct and social costs, and the possibilities of reforms that would take into account the related problems of capital formation and retirement income. Ghilarducci describes the history of pension funds and the involvement of unions in bargaining. She takes up the "moral hazard" involved in the conflicting interests of corporations and their employees, tackling issues of information availability and inequality of pension distribution based on sex, race, and job hierarchy. And in two chapters, each focusing on corporate and union uses of pension funds, she covers such topics as tax breaks, the effect of corporate takeovers, the use of pensions to pay back debt, and the kinds of skimming that can occur despite government regulation of pension activities. Ghilarducci concludes by presenting an ideal pension plan that would benefit both employer and employee and by offering predictions about pension plans of the future.

Labor's Capital (MIT Press)

MIT Press (MA)

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.

When I'm Sixty-Four: The Plot against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them

Princeton University Press

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.

Personal Finance

Designing pension plans to cover workers and provide the necessary retirement funds for them is one of the critical issues of the turn of the century. Written by four experts in the field of pension funds, this work examines the possibilities for pension reform based on a detailed understanding of a successful system, the union pension fund of the Operating Engineers. This type of plan is managed by workers and management trustees, covering workers that do not have secure and predictable jobs. The authors demonstrate just how this pension fund can provide a useful blueprint for executives, pension fund managers, industrial relations professionals, and public policy decision makers.

Portable Pension Plans for Casual Labor Markets: Lessons from the Operating Engineers Central Pension Fund

Peterson, Jeff

Mangum, Garth

Philips, Peter

Education & Reference

Praeger

Rescuing Retirement offers a solution to one of America’s biggest challenges—and a path to financial security for millions of retirees. Over the next two decades, almost 10,000 Americans will reach retirement age every single day. They deserve to live their older years in dignity. Instead, they will experience a dramatic drop in their standard of living. Our country is on a path that will lead to rates of impoverishment for senior citizens not seen since the Great Depression. The reality is America’s retirement system is broken. Rescuing Retirement charts a visionary, bipartisan, and surprisingly simple way to solve this problem: <ul>
<li>Every full-time worker can save enough for retirement. </li> <li>Retirement savings grow by earning higher rates of return. </li> <li>Everyone retires with guaranteed lifelong income for themselves and their spouse. </li> <li>The plan doesn’t add a dime to the deficit, increase taxes, or create any new government infrastructure. </li> </ul>
 A better, smarter retirement future is possible. This book shows American workers, employers, and political leaders how to get there.

Disruption Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ghilarducci, Teresa. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Ghilarducci, Teresa

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ghilarducci, Teresa. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy

Rescuing Retirement: A Plan to Guarantee Retirement Security for All Americans (Columbia Business School Publishing)

Rescuing Retirement: A Plan to Guarantee Retirement Security for All Americans

Labor's Capital: The Economics and Politics of Private Pensions

Labor's Capital (MIT Press)

When I'm Sixty-Four: The Plot against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them

When I'm Sixty-Four: The Plot against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them

Portable Pension Plans for Casual Labor Markets: Lessons from the Operating Engineers Central Pension Fund

Rescuing Retirement: A Plan to Guarantee Retirement Security for All Americans