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.
