Thermal Casimir effect with soft boundary conditions

We consider the thermal Casimir effect in systems of parallel plates coupled to a mass-less free field theory via quadratic interaction terms which suppress (i) the field on the plates (ii) the gradient of the field in the plane of the plates. These boundary interactions correspond to (i) the presence of an electrolyte in the plates and (ii) a uniform field of dipoles, in the plates, which are polarizable in the plane of the plates. These boundary interactions lead to Robin type boundary conditions in the case where there is no field outside the two plates. In the appropriate limit, in both cases Dirichlet boundary conditions are obtained but we show that in case (i) the Dirichlet limit breaks down at short inter-plate distances and in (ii) it breaks down at large distances. The behavior of the two plate system is also seen to be highly dependent on whether the system is open or closed. In addition we analyze the Casimir force on a third plate placed between two outer plates. The force acting on the central plate is shown to be highly sensitive to whether or not the fluctuating scalar field is present in the region exterior to the two confining plates.Comment: 8 pages RevTex, 2 .eps figure

Representative Ryan's $30 Trillion Medicare Waste Tax

Representative Ryan's proposal to replace the current Medicare system with a system of vouchers or premium supports has been widely described as shifting costs from the government to beneficiaries. However, the size of this shift is actually small relative to the projected increase in costs that would result from having Medicare provided by private insurers instead of the government-run Medicare system. The Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) projections imply that the Ryan plan would add more than $30 trillion to the cost of providing Medicare equivalent policies over the program's 75-year planning period. This increase in costs -- from waste associated with using a less efficient health care delivery system -- has not received the attention that it deserves in the public debate

The Wealth of the Baby Boom Cohorts After the Collapse of the Housing Bubble

This report builds upon previous CEPR projections to more accurately describe the current wealth prospects for the baby boom cohorts aged 45 to 54 and 55 to 64. The severity of the housing market meltdown, coupled with the recent collapse of the stock market, has had a severe negative impact on the wealth of these cohorts. Using data from the 2004 Survey of Consumer Finance and the November 2008 Case-Shiller 20 City Price Index, the authors create three possible scenarios for baby boomer wealth and find these households will enter retirement with little wealth beyond Social Security. For each cohort in 2004 and 2009, the paper analyzes net worth, financial assets, equity in real estate, percent of households in each cohort who will need cash to close on their primary residence, net worth of homeowners, net worth of non-homeowners, and the percent of homeowners who would need cash to close on their primary residence

The Wealth of Households: An Analysis of the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances

This paper presents data on the wealth of households by age cohort based on new data from the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF). It shows that the upward redistribution of wealth continued between 2010 and 2013. As a result, most households had less wealth in 2013 than they did in 2010 and much less than in 1989, the first year examined. This is in spite of the fact that households were much less likely to have traditionally-defined benefit pensions than in prior decades

Missing the Story: The OECD's Analysis of Inequality

The OECD recently published a lengthy volume examining the causes of rising inequality in most wealthy countries over the last three decades. This paper examines that study, finding that the OECD misses most of the story of inequality because its primary focus is the ratio of the annual wage of the 90th percentile worker to the 10th percentile worker, while most of the benefits of rising inequality were concentrated much further up the income ladder. In contrast to the OECD, this paper finds that the impact of technology is negligible and actually trivially negative over the period examined. It also finds many errors in the use of data in the OECD's study, most importantly by exaggerating the number of independent observations when many of the data points are simply extrapolations. This causes the OECD to exaggerate the statistical significance of its findings. Finally, this paper suggests that the growth of the financial sector may have been an important factor contributing to the growth in inequality over the past 30 years

Trade and Jobs: Can We Trust the Models?

This paper notes the poor track record of CGE models like the ones used by the Peterson Institute and the International Trade Commission in projecting the changes in patterns of trade following recent trade deals. These models failed to project the large rise in the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico following the implementation of NAFTA or with South Korea following the implementation of KORUS. Past research has shown that these models also failed to correctly identify the winning and losing industries in trade with Mexico following NAFTA. This analysis shows that the ITC model similarly failed to identify winning and losing industries following the implementation of the KORUS

Do Tax Cuts Boost the Economy?

There are many economists who argue that temporary tax cuts, like those in the 2009 stimulus and the ones proposed by President Obama last week, have no impact on the economy. They argue that people will save a temporary tax credit rather than spend it.Stanford Economics Professor John Taylor, who served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs under President Bush, is one of the economists making this argument. He purports to show that there was no statistically significant increase in private consumption of goods and services as a result of certain types of government transfers made over the last decade. According to his analysis, it is unclear whether an additional dollar of government transfers led to any additional spending, or, alternatively, whether it raised personal savings by more than one dollar. This paper shows that there is very little indication that -- based on Taylor's work -- personal transfers from the government fail to stimulate private spending

The Impact of the Housing Crash on Family Wealth

This paper extrapolates from data from the 2004 Survey of Consumer Finance to project household wealth, by wealth quintile, in 2009 under three alternative scenarios. The first scenario assumes that real house prices fall no further than their level as of March 2008. The second scenario assumes that real house prices fall an additional 10 percent as a 2009 average. The third scenario assumes that real house prices fall an additional 20 percent for a 2009 average. The projections show that the vast majority of families will see a substantial reduction in wealth by 2009 in any of these scenarios and that the cohorts just approaching retirement will have very little to support themselves in retirement other than their Social Security. The projections also show that a large number of families will have little or no equity in their homes in 2009