Are Baby Boomers Saving Enough for Their Retirement?

Discusses factors that determine the amount of savings baby boomers need for retirement, including income and pre-retirement consumption levels, housing wealth, family type and size, and entitlement to Social Security and defined benefit pension plans

Medicare Premiums and Social Security's Cost-of-Living Adjustments

Outlines how Medicare Part B and Part D premium hikes will cancel out the cost of living increases in Social Security benefits, severely affecting the lowest-income beneficiaries. Examines premium design characteristics and trends in premium growth

Measuring Personal Saving: A Tale of American Profligacy

Outlines the two main measures of personal savings and their limitations in accurately reflecting Americans' savings over the last twenty years, and discusses an alternative measure that includes capital gains in household savings

Will It Take a Crisis to Fix Fiscal Policy?

Explains how federal spending growth is driven by Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid, and other health costs, driven by the aging of the population; challenges for fiscal policy, including congressional dysfunction; and possible reactions to a crisis

The Giessen Model - Vector Meson Production on the Nucleon in a Coupled Channel Approach

In this paper we present the extension of our unitary gauge invariant effective Lagrangian model to vector meson nucleon final states. This model already included the final states $\gamma N$, $\pi N$, $2\pi N$, $\eta N$, $K \Lambda$, and $K \Sigma$ and was developed for a simultaneous analysis of all avaible experimental data for photon- and pion-induced reactions on the nucleon. We discuss how the extension to vector meson nucleon final states is realized, outline a generalization of the standard partial wave formalism, that is applicable to any meson-/photon-baryon reaction, and show first results for $\omega N$ production.Comment: 4 pages, talk given at NSTAR 2001, Workshop on the Physics of Excited Nucleons, University of Mainz, Germany, March 7-10, 2001. To be published in World Scientifi

The near-term outlook for fiscal policy

Fiscal policy ; Budget

Vector meson production and nucleon resonance analysis in the Giessen coupled-channel model

We present a nucleon resonance analysis by simultaneously considering all pion- and photon-induced experimental data on the final states $\gamma N$, $\pi N$, $2\pi N$, $\eta N$, $K\Lambda$, $K\Sigma$, and $\omega N$ for energies from the nucleon mass up to $\sqrt s = 2$ GeV. In this analysis we find strong evidence for various higher lying resonances as, e.g., the $P_{13}(1900)$. The $\omega N$ production mechanism is dominated by large $P_{11}(1710)$ and $P_{13}(1900)$ contributions.Comment: 4 pages, talk given at NSTAR 2002, Workshop on the Physics of Excited Nucleons, Pittsburgh, USA, 9-12 Oct 2002; to be published by World Scientifi

Committees Tackle the Deficit

Summarizes the recommendations of a presidential commission and private bipartisan committee for reducing the federal deficit by cutting healthcare costs, Social Security outlays, and discretionary spending, and by raising taxes

Have Recent Budget Policies Contributed to Long-Run Fiscal Stability?

Examines developments in budget policies since January 2010; the president's 2011 budget, including economic stimulus and tax and spending policies; congressional action; and issues for health reform. Considers their effect on long-term sustainability