Product Description: International Book Award Finalist-Best Self Help Book THIS book gives you an easy-to-understand, step-by-step plan on how to apply for and win your Social Security Disability or Supplemental Security Income claim. It includes the information you need to prepare your claim, it contains the forms you need and information on where to get additional forms, and it provides a place to organize your correspondence, gather and record your medical records and supporting document, and track your progress...read more

While much attention has been focused recently on the well-being of Social Security, the revolution in the private pension system in the United States during the past three decades has remained relatively under the radar. Beginning in the 1980s, many employers in the United States switched the type of pension plans they offer their workers from defined benefit (DB) plans to defined contribution (DC) plans. This freed them from having to set aside funds to pay guaranteed lifetime benefits to retirees. It also shifted the investment risk to workers, making them responsible for contributing to and managing their retirement funds through 401(k) accounts. Edward N. Wolff calls this the Great Transformation, and for good reason. From 1983 to 2007, the share of families with DC plans rose from 12 percent to 64 percent, while the share with DB plans fell from 69 percent to 39 percent. This change has not only thoroughly altered how millions of Americans fund their retirement, it has also, as Wolff shows, generated growing income inequality and insecurity among retirees while escalating the importance of Social Security as a source of retirement income. Increasingly, when it comes to retirement wealth, those with DB plans are the haves while those with DC plans are the have-nots, particularly in times characterized by economic recession or stagnation. Wolff seeks to address six basic questions: 1. With the Great Transformation, did pension coverage expand or contract over time? 2. Did the value of pension wealth increase or decline? 3. Did overall wealth inequality rise or fall? 4. Did the retirement prospects of middle-aged Americans improve or worsen? 5. How did the Great Transformation affect different demographic groups? 6. How did these effects vary between the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s? Through exhaustive analysis, Wolff identifies the weaknesses in the current private pension system and offers practical, policy-based solutions aimed at strengthening the system, thereby making retirement a less daunting prospect for workers relying on 401(k) plans as a key source of retirement income and wealth. He also recognizes the importance of Social Security to these workers and suggests ways of strengthening it as well.

The life expectancy of Americans continues to increase, and each day 12,000 baby boomers turn 50, expanding the ranks of our older population while ramping up the pressure on public and private retirement programs. At the same time, public policy has failed to keep pace with the challenges this aging population brings of how to pay for the living costs of those added years; many of our current social policies and employee benefit policies were designed during an era when people had shorter life spans. In Longevity Policy: Facing Up to Longevity Issues Affecting Social Security, Pensions, and Older Workers, John A. Turner addresses these policy issues and makes the case that longevity policy should be recognized as a distinct area - as we do now for climate change. Instead of treating issues relating to older age, Social Security, and pensions separately, we need to recognize the interrelationships among these areas and adopt a unified approach toward policy. Doing so, Turner argues, would make for much more effective and efficient policymaking. Turner begins the book by documenting the overall increase in life expectancy, the ensuing distributional issues observed in the United States diverse population, other related demographic changes, and the costs associated with increased longevity. The remainder of the book is divided into four parts: 1) issues relating to the labor market for older workers, including changes in the health of older workers and in the job requirements by employers; 2) an examination of how Social Security policy is affected by increasing life expectancy, and a proposal for a new benefit that Turner dubs "longevity insurance;" 3) a look at how private pension policy is affected by increasing life expectancy, including issues for 401(k) plans and defined benefit plans; and 4) a set of five policy recommendations based on an integrated approach to solving the problems arising from increased life expectancy. Turner not only makes the case for a number of distinct policies, he goes further, expressing the need for a package of complementary longevity policies. These policies would reinforce one another in accomplishing several things: they would help encourage work at older ages, move Social Security toward solvency, provide more efficient targeting of Social Security benefits, increase annuitization of 401(k) accounts, and encourage employers to offer defined benefit plans to their workers. Taken together, Turner argues, they would facilitate the adjustment of workers and pension systems to the costs and benefits of a longer life.

Offers advice for planning a retirement based not entirely on saving money, but also including keeping healthy, making new friends, and nurturing family relationships.

The author recounts his first season, in 1983, as president of the Utica Blue Sox, a single A baseball team in the New York-Penn League (view table of contents)

Searching for rustlers around the Double C ranch, Jessie and Ki, learn that the Chinese ranch hands are members of the Tong, a secret organization that has sentenced Ki to death

Product Description: The fifth edition of the classic volume on public and private social insurance and related programs now operating in the United States. Thoroughly revised and updated to reflect the 1981 reports of several national commissions and the views of the Reagan administration...read more