The Archer-Shaw Social Security Plan: Laying the Groundwork for Another S&L Crisis

The Social Security reform plan proposed by Reps. Bill Archer (R-Tex.) and Clay Shaw (R-Fla.), chairmen, respectively, of the House Ways and Means Committee and its Subcommittee on Social Security, is a compromise between a Clinton administration plan to let the government invest workers' payroll taxes in the market and congressional proposals to let individuals invest their payroll taxes in personal market-based accounts. Government investment has been criticized for the possibility of political influence on investment decisions, while personal accounts face attack for making individuals shoulder the burden of market risk. The Archer-Shaw plan is an attempt to satisfy critics of both approaches. The Archer-Shaw plan would let individuals make investment decisions, thereby reducing the likelihood of political influence, but the government would be required to protect workers against any losses. The plan's proposal to privatize profit and socialize risk resembles the incentive structure that led to the 1980s savings and loan crisis, which cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. That incentive structure creates what economists call "moral hazard" and could again lead to large taxpayer liabilities if allowed to take root in the Social Security system

Entitlements: Not Just a Health Care Problem

[Excerpt] “A new consensus on entitlement reform has developed in Washington: rising per-capita health care spending is the only real crisis besetting the government‘s entitlement programs, while America‘s aging population and Social Security play minor roles at best. Some cite this view to shift the policy emphasis from entitlement cost control to the restructuring of the U.S. health sector, including private health care. But this new consensus is flawed. Using standard accounting practices and including all major government entitlement programs, population aging will play an equal role with health care cost growth over the next seventy-five years and a significantly larger role than health spending over the next few decades. While rising health care spending is indeed a pressing issue, discounting population aging leaves out half of the problem and ignores half of the potential solutions.

How the Coronavirus Could Permanently Cut Near-Retirees’ Social Security Benefits

As a group, retirees are more financially insulated from the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic than are most other demographic groups in the United States. Yet due to how the Social Security benefit formula interacts with the sharp economic downturn due to the Coronavirus, some groups of near-retirees are likely to suffer substantial permanent reductions to their Social Security retirement benefits. Assuming a 15 percent decline in the Social Security Administration\u27s measure of economywide average wages in 2020, a middle-income worker born in 1960 could have his annual Social Security benefits in retirement reduced by around 13 percent, with losses over the retirement period in excess of $70,000. Methods of addressing this problem are discussed, including both ad hoc adjustments applying only to affected cohorts, and also permanent changes to the benefit formula to prevent similar benefit “notches” from occurring in the future

How Much Should the Poor Save for Retirement? Data and Simulations on Retirement Income Adequacy among Low-earning Households

Both policymakers and members of the public are concerned regarding the adequacy of U.S. households’ retirement savings. In response, proposals have been made to expand Social Security benefits and to establish state government-run retirement plans for private sector employees. In both cases, the largest effects would be on low-earning households, who currently have low rates of retirement plan coverage and participation and who rely heavily upon Social Security benefits in retirement. However, there has been little systematic analysis of the retirement saving needs of low-earning households other to point out that they currently save little. But this leaves open the possibility that low savings are appropriate given Social Security’s progressive benefits. I explore these questions in two ways. First, I present a variety of data on the retirement saving and retirement incomes of low-earning households. While these households save little, their retirement incomes have risen steadily over the past decades and their poverty rates dropped significantly, seemingly as a result of rising real Social Security benefits. Low-income retiree express less satisfaction with the adequacy of their retirement incomes than other retirees, but their self-assessed retirement income adequacy has increased in recent years. Second, I present a simple model to calculate the household wealth and saving rates necessary for stylized earners to achieve income-specific retirement income replacement rate targets, net of scheduled Social Security benefits. For very low earners, roughly the poorest quintile of the earning distribution, little savings are necessary on top of Social Security. For earners above that level saving requirements increase, but are likely achievable so long as an earner has access to a retirement plan and participates in it

Retirement Replacement Rates: What and How

Replacement rates compare retirement income to pre-retirement earnings. They are used both by financing advisors in advising households on how much to save for retirement, and by policymakers who wish to assess the adequacy of retirement saving in the population. But in recent years, there has been renewed discussion of how replacement rates should be calculated. I discuss three topics in this current debate. First, should policymakers be presented with replacement rates based upon stylized workers or using administrative or microsimulation data? Second, should the denominator of the replacement rate calculation—pre-retirement earnings—be adjusted for the growth of prices or the growth of economy-wide wages? And third, should replacement rates incorporate a family-size adjustment to account for how having children affects parents’ need to save for retirement? I illustrate the effects of these methodological choices using a microsimulation model of Social Security benefits and employer-sponsored pensions. The results suggest that much of the disagreement over whether Americans face a ‘retirement challenge’ or a ‘retirement crisis’ stems not from differing estimates of how much income American retirees will have, but of how much income they will need to maintain their pre-retirement standards of living

Financial Advisors' Role in Influencing Social Security Claiming

For millions of Americans, financial advisors are a trusted source of financial and retirement preparation information. This includes providing advice and information on Social Security benefits, a critical component of most Americans’ retirement finances. To gain greater insight into what financial advisors say to their clients about Social Security, an online survey of over 400 professional financial advisors was conducted in the Spring of 2011. The results reveal that a majority of advisors believe that they are responsible for educating their clients on the role Social Security will play in their retirement income. Moreover, advisors have the ability to influence their clients’ decisions about when to claim their Social Security retirement benefits. Three-quarters advise the majority of their clients on when to claim. In addition, the study finds that the Social Security Administration (SSA) is the leading and preferred source of information and education for financial advisors and their clients. Over half of advisors say it is a major source of Social Security-related information, more than any other source. However, advisors are critical of the job SSA does in educating advisors and the public, and are interested in additional resources from the Agency. Financial advisors also indicate that the financial services companies they work with could improve their communication and education efforts as it relates to Social Security. The research findings uncover a need for improved methods of educating and disseminating information to financial advisors and the public on Social Security.

Oxidation of tertiary amine-derivatized surfaces to control protein adhesion

Selective oxidation of omega-tertiary amine self-assembled thiol monolayers to tertiary amine N-oxides is shown to transform the adhesion of model proteins lysozyme and fibrinogen upon them. Efficient preparation of both secondary and tertiary linker amides as judged by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and water droplet contact angle was achieved with an improved amide bond formation on gold quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensors using 2-(1H-7-azabenzotriazol-1-yl)-1,1,3,3-tetramethyl hexafluorophosphate methanaminium uronium (HATU). Oxidation with hydrogen peroxide was similarly assessed, and adhesion of lysozyme and fibrinogen from phosphate buffered saline was then assayed by QCM and imaged by AFM. Tertiary amine-functionalized sensors adsorbed multilayers of aggregated lysozyme, whereas tertiary amine N-oxides and triethylene glycol-terminated monolayers are consistent with small protein aggregates. The surface containing a dimethylamine N-oxide headgroup and ethyl secondary amide linker showed the largest difference in adsorption of both proteins. Oxidation of tertiary amine decorated surfaces therefore holds the potential for selective deposition of proteins and cells through masking and other patterning techniques

A Binary Millisecond Pulsar in Globular Cluster NGC6544

We report the detection of a new 3.06 ms binary pulsar in the globular cluster NGC6544 using a Fourier-domain ``acceleration'' search. With an implied companion mass of ~0.01 solar masses and an orbital period of only P_b~1.7 hours, it displays very similar orbital properties to many pulsars which are eclipsed by their companion winds. The orbital period is the second shortest of known binary pulsars after 47 Tuc R. The measured flux density of 1.3 +/- 0.4 mJy at 1332 MHz indicates that the pulsar is almost certainly the known steep-spectrum point source near the core of NGC6544.Comment: Accepted by ApJ Letters on 11 October 2000, 5 page

Use of a fluorinated probe to quantitatively monitor amino acid binding preferences of ruthenium(ii) arene complexes.

In order to address outstanding questions about ruthenium complexes in complex biological solutions, 19F NMR spectroscopy was used to follow the binding preferences between fluorinated RuII(η6-arene)(bipyridine) complexes and protected amino acids and glutathione. Reporting what ruthenium compounds bind to in complex environments has so far been restricted to relatively qualitative methods, such as mass spectrometry and X-ray spectroscopic methods; however, quantitative information on the species present in the solution phase cannot be inferred from these techniques. Furthermore, using 1H NMR, in water, to distinguish and monitor a number of different complex RuII(η6-arene) adducts forming is challenging. Incorporating an NMR active heteroatom into ruthenium organometallic complexes provides a quantitative, diagnostic 'fingerprint' to track solution-phase behaviour and allow for unambiguous assignment of any given adduct. The resulting 19F NMR spectra show for the first time the varied, dynamic behaviour of organoruthenium compounds when exposed to simple biomolecules in complex mixtures. The rates of formation of the different observed species are dramatically influenced by the electronic properties at the metal, even in a closely related series of complexes in which only the electron-donating properties of the arene ligand are altered. Preference for cysteine binding is absolute: the first quantitative solution-phase evidence of such behaviour

MUSE-ALMA Haloes IX: Morphologies and Stellar Properties of Gas-rich Galaxies

Understanding how galaxies interact with the circumgalactic medium (CGM) requires determining how galaxies morphological and stellar properties correlate with their CGM properties. We report an analysis of 66 well-imaged galaxies detected in HST and VLT MUSE observations and determined to be within $\pm$500 km s$^{-1}$ of the redshifts of strong intervening quasar absorbers at $0.2 \lesssim z \lesssim 1.4$ with H I column densities $N_{\rm H I}$ $>$ $10^{18}$ $\rm cm^{-2}$. We present the geometrical properties (S\'ersic indices, effective radii, axis ratios, and position angles) of these galaxies determined using GALFIT. Using these properties along with star formation rates (SFRs, estimated using the H$\alpha$ or [O II] luminosity) and stellar masses ($M_{*}$ estimated from spectral energy distribution fits), we examine correlations among various stellar and CGM properties. Our main findings are as follows: (1) SFR correlates well with $M_{*}$, and most absorption-selected galaxies are consistent with the star formation main sequence (SFMS) of the global population. (2) More massive absorber counterparts are more centrally concentrated and are larger in size. (3) Galaxy sizes and normalized impact parameters correlate negatively with $N_{\rm H I}$, consistent with higher $N_{\rm H I}$ absorption arising in smaller galaxies, and closer to galaxy centers. (4) Absorption and emission metallicities correlate with $M_{*}$ and sSFR, implying metal-poor absorbers arise in galaxies with low past star formation and faster current gas consumption rates. (5) SFR surface densities of absorption-selected galaxies are higher than predicted by the Kennicutt-Schmidt relation for local galaxies, suggesting a higher star formation efficiency in the absorption-selected galaxies.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 25 pages, 19 figure