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[Commentary] © 2002 Philip Hyde, The Timesizing Wire™, Box 622 Cambridge MA 02143 USA (617) 623-8080

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Eroding Retirement, July-Sept/2002

9/22/2002   eroding retirement -

• Nursing homes struggling - They have too few nurses, aides for growing elderly population, by Gary Rotstein, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, front page.
  In the typical American nursing home,
  • too many residents are waiting too long for too little assistance on the good days.
    
  • And on the bad days, something tragic happens..\..
    Bert Spontak's wife, Shirlie, suffers from dementia and is a patient at Passavant Retirement & Health Center in Zelienople PA. Spontak and his sister, Madelin Ruffner, had Shirlie transferred there because they believe staff at Friendship Ridge in Beaver County PA didn't respond properly to changes in her condition last March. The family said those changes were later found to have been due to stroke. [photo caption]....
  The nation's 85-and-over population will double by 2030, swelling the ranks of Americans living with their bodies and minds in disrepair and requiring skilled nursing care. Presently, more than 1.5 million people reside in 17,000 nursing homes nationally..\..
  • In good homes, tens of thousands of well-intentioned but underpaid, undertrained workers struggle to care for patients who arrive far sicker than residents did years ago.
  • In the bad places, residents endure unanswered call buttons, cold meals, festering pressure sores, inexplicable medication errors and worse results of inattention....
  The pool of younger females who traditionally have served that group of elderly, meanwhile, is stagnant. A lack of manpower - or more accurately, womanpower - is already used often by the industry's defenders to explain its shortcomings. A recent government study found that fewer than one in 10 homes employs the optimum number of nurses and aides. Few facilities are even cited for understaffing, however, because minimum government standards are set far below the levels needed to help assure high quality care. A succession of federal reports also has highlighted neglect, abuse and enforcement problems.
  [3 words: pay them more.]
  At the state level, only one of every nine Pennsylvania nursing homes went through 2001 free of violations on the regular mandated inspections and complaint investigations conducted at the more than 700 facilities, according to the Health Dept....

• Baby boomers snub standard retirement age, by Dave Carpenter, AP via Albuquerque Tribune, B6.
  [This is an all-too-typical misleading article which is reporting on a negative trend but by focusing on a tiny atypical minority (babyboomer CEOs) presents it as a positive trend.]
  ... If [CEOs] do keep working into traditional retirement years, they'll have plenty of age-group company. The number of Americans 65 and older in the labor force has grown substantially in the past two years - to 4.5 million in July, up 7% from two years earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
  [As if working is the same kind of free financial choice for them as it is for the tiny group of CEOs.]
  Also, a survey of boomers by the AARP...found that 80% believe they will continue to work during retirement....
  [Again, this AP reporter has suppressed some very important words that these people are saying, "We will have to keep working during 'retirement' because we can't afford to retire."]

• Retirees face shrinking health benefits, pointer digest (to A2), WSJ, front page.
  ...and those leaving in the next 20 years will bear even more such costs.
  [Yet another "front" on which America is sinking inexorably* into the Third World. *"Inexorably," that is, unless we get a grip and implement timesizing to centrifuge our national income, dynamize our consumer spending, and enrich us all beyond any historical precedent. How to centrifuge? By creating a general manhour "shortage" that market forces will reward with higher pay and benefits. How create the manhour shortage? The intelligent way, which we followed between 1840 and 1940, is by gradually trimming the workweek (we could also implement a better design for overtime that linked it to training and hiring). The unintelligent way? War.]
  Health benefits for retirees continue to shrink, study says - Outlook is even bleaker for workers leaving jobs over the next 20 years, by Kelly Greene, WSJ, A2.
  ...In a study of 56 retiree health plans offered by companies with at least 5,000 active employees, Watson Wyatt Worldwide, an HR consulting firm in Washington, found that
  • 17% have "virtually eliminated" their liabilities for such benefits by requiring retirees to pay the full premiums.
  • And 20% already have eliminated such plans altogether for new hires.
    
  ...Thursday, the federal Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality [another glob of government makework?!] said that
  • the share of private-sector establishments offering health insurance to retirees under age 65 dropped to 12% in 2000 from 21.6% in 1997.
  • Offerings to retirees who were 65 and older dropped to 10.7% from 19.5% during the same period....

• Folks over 50 miss chance to catch up in retirement plans, by Bridget O'Brian, WSJ, C1.
  ...Since Congress last year invited investors age 50 and older to make extra contributions to their mutual funds and other investments in tax-advantaged retirement plans, only a fraction of those who can use these "catch-up" provisions have done so.
  [Gee, what a surprise. Actually, only the brain-insulated Wall St Journal would be surprised at this, given the state of the stock markets and CEO honesty these days, not to mention the general impoverishment of all but top-bracket Americans.]
  That's happened even though socking away more money in individual retirement accounts has been relatively straightforward for the over-50 crowd since the new rules went into effect on Jan. 2.
  [Oh sure, Wall Street would love to take more of your money as the markets stumble. But watch them immediately contradict this assertion -]
  But complicating matters is that many participants in 401k and other employer-sponsored retirement plans who might want to do the same have been stymied by administrative, legal and logistical hurdles in their efforts to contribute more.
  [Oh so we're going to turn this into a homily against red tape, are we? - anything but face the fact that Wall St is not safe storage for our retirement money after all. And check out this other article today, which helps explain what's been happening -]
  Some seasoned advice for a small fortune, pointer blowout (to B1), WSJ, front page.
  For many CEOs, retirement now brings a great consulting gig at their old employer, but the perk has drawn controversy lately.
  [or the source article -]
  How CEOs retire in style - Many former chief executives get lush perks and fat fees for limited 'consulting' work - Inactive chiefs can't justify lavish deals, by Joann Lublin, WSJ, B1.
  [This is presumably what our corporate titans call "efficient" and "productive" - for themselves anyway.]

• Shrivelling pensions after Halliburton deal - Traditional pension plans are insulated from stock markets, but not from corporate mergers, by Mary Walsh, NYT, C1.
  [Bkgd - Halliburton took over Dresser-Rand in 1998 and then sold it off again less than two years later, booking a gain of $215 million from the sale.]
  In June, puzzling letters began appearing in the mailboxes of hundreds of employees of the Dresser-Rand Co., saying that they had become eligible for retirement benefits even though they were still working. To request their money, they were told to call the Halliburton Co.... Over the summer, many of the employees ha[ve] done so and concluded that what the letters actually portrayed as an early payment of benefits was actually a reduction, [made possible] by the Halliburton merger and [the] spinoff less than 2 years later.
  Halliburton has given the workers 90 days, which ends later this month, to sign up for a much smaller payment than promised earlier, or forfeit their right to a lumpsum forever.
  In addition to the current employees who got those notices, some recent retirees received letters saying that they had been paid too much and should return thousands of dollars in pension money to Halliburton. After comparing notes, a few of the employees and retirees have estimated that [Halliburton is trying to strip] the group...of $25 million in benefits, reflecting roughly $50,000 on average for about 400 people.
  While Halliburton appears to be within its legal rights as the current sponsor of the workers' pension plan,
  [If this is true, there's something suicidally wrong with contract law in America.]
  its handling of their retirement benefits contrasts starkly with its treatment of VP Dick Cheney, who was CEO of Halliburton during the acquisition and then the spinoff. The Dresser-Rand workers have lost their early retirement provision, and must now work until 65 to qualify for their full benefits. But when Mr. Cheney left in August 2000 to become the Republican Party's VP candidate, Halliburton's board voted to award him early retirement - even though he was too young to qualify under his contract. That flexibility enabled him to leave with a retirement package, including stock and options, worth millions [of dollars] more than if he had simply resigned....
  [Republican consumer-base and self destruction rolls on and on. These people are sooo stupid.]
  [Here's a letter of rebuttal from Halliburton's VP and general counsel which answers some of the charges above but not all -]
  Shrinking pensions, letter to editor by Albert Cornelison Jr, 9/17/2002 NYT, A30.
  "Shrivelling pensions after Halliburton deal" (Business Day, Sept. 10) does not mention two key facts.
  • First, all employees of the Dresser-Rand Co. will continue to receive all pension benefits to which they are entitled. The plan is a contract, and we honor our contractual commitments. No decrease in benefits has occurred, and none will.
  • Second, Halliburton did not realize any gain in the sale of Dresser-Rand related to the pension plan. Yet you quote a source who asserted that the assets of the plan were treated as "corporate assets that can be bought and sold." We did not sell our pension obligations.
    
  We strongly object to this source's characterization of the matter as "scandalous," given that we honored our contractual commitments to Dresser-Rand employees, followed the letter and spirit of the law, and made no profit from the pension.
  [Now we need to hear from the "source."]

• For retirees forced, by shrinking nest eggs, back into the work force, the re-entry can be brutal, pointer blowout (to 3-10), NYT, 3-1.
  [So let's see. First, by denying that human employment is shrinking and refusing to cut hours and share the vanishing work, we clobbered raises and forced housewives and mothers into the job market, starting in the '70s once the baby boomers hit the job market. Now by continuing to stop responding to technology by displacing employees instead of sharing the vanishing work, we have cut wages and spending for millions of consumers, clobbered stocks and forced retirees back into the job market starting in 2000 once the record 1990s immigration hit the job market. Brilliant. Especially when the whole purpose of all these technological miracles is to let us all live in heaven.]
  As portfolios shrink, retirees warily seek work - Using experience and maturity to compete with youth for jobs, by Melinda Ligos, NYT, 3-10.
  Norman Dorosin returned to work as a pharmacist in Prattville, Ala., after the value of his retirement savings fell 40% [photo caption].
  ...Apprehensi[ons] about having to compete for positions with younger workers who may be more technologically advanced...are facing more and more retirees who re-enter the workforce after absences of years or even decades. Many of these people had hoped to spend their advanced years in traditional retirement pursuits: hobbies, for example, or volunteer work. But because of the slide in the stock market over the past 2½ years, they are finding that they can no longer live off their investment portfolios. Since 2000, retirees' portfolios have shrunk by about $678 billion, according to a recent study by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.
  [Still want to privatize Social Security? If we do, we'll -
  • further weaken our currently weak upper limit on worklife per person,
  • further worsen our currently worse surplus of manhours in the job market,
  • further weaken the currently weak upward pressures on wages and benefits,
  • further weaken our currently weak consumer base alias effective domestic demand.]
  About 20 million older Americans rely on investment income for part of their living expenses, said William Rodgers, an economics professor at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., and a former chief economist for the Labor Dept. He estimated that retirees who ranked in the top 20% in earnings during their careers typically have more than one-third of their assets tied up in the stock market, and another 20% of their income comes from Social Security. "It's the higher-income retirees who are out seeking jobs," Prof. Rodgers said.
  [At least this will counter the lulling but socially suicidal habit of the Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] to count as unemployed only those who are "actively seeking work" rather than making an attempt to count all those who have not worked for over the last 6-8 weeks and are neither self-supporting nor supported by some other private individual or taxpayer-independent organization.]
  The number of people 55 and older in the workforce rose by more than 7%, to around 20 million, in the 12 months ending in July, according to the BLS, while the number of workers in all other age groups declined.
  Career experts say many retirees returning to work can expect a rocky road.... "The people who used to work in..\..troubled industries like telecomms and technology...aren't even getting in to see recruiters"..\..said Jeff Kaye, president and co-CEO of the Kaye/Bassman International Corp., an affiliate of Mgt Recruiters International, based in Dallas.... "They're getting jobs ripping tickets at movie theaters or punching the clock at a Wal-Mart."
  [Or being prevented from punching the clock at a Wal-Mart - see "Suits say Wal-Mart forces workers to toil off the clock" on 6/25/2002 #1.]
  Joseph Turner, a former senior service account manager at Nortel Networks in Schaumburg, Ill., knows what the search is like. In May 2001, at the age of 55, he took an early retirement package. But seven months later, after his 401k plan, invested almost exclusively in Nortel stock, lost about 2/3 of its value, Mr. Turner realized that he would have to return to work. After failing to get even one interview in the telecomms field, he broadened his search to account management positions in other industries. "I eventually just started looking for any job that dealt with customers," said Mr. Turner, who lives in Crystal Lake, Ill.
  [Formula for economywide collapse -]
  After 2 interviews that proved fruitless,...he began doing odd jobs for neighbors and has gone into business for himself as a carpenter. He works 8-12 hours a day and earns about half his former...income.
  Although age discrimination is illegal in the workplace, career experts say older workers may fall victim to some type of it....
  [No kidding.]
  Dennis Ahlburg, assoc. dean of the Carlson School of Mgmt at the Univ. of Minnesota in Minneapolis...advises older job seekers..., "Don't say you're out of money.... Say that you were bored in retirement abd you want to be an active part of the labor force. You want to solve the problems of a potential employer, not add to them." ..."Position yourself as a bargain"..\..said Bill Coleman, senior VP of Salary.com, a website that provides compensation information for jobseekers. For example, he says, many [retirees] are willing to work part time and do not need the salaries that younger workers require....
  [That's the first time we've seen willingness to work part-time touted as a selling point. Usually people are desperately seeking part-time work from employers who want a blank check on their lives.   What a pathetic excuse for an "intelligent species" we are! We've surrounded ourselves with work-saving technology, yet we've painted ourselves, with downsizing instead of timesizing, into a corner where we're working longer hours and later in life than we have for the last 50 years.]

• Can we afford to retire? - A median-income couple [the Vierra's] have paid off their house, but saved little for the future - Stuck in the middle, by Joseph Pereira, WSJ, B1.
  NEW BEDFORD, Mass.-...Now, the Vierras realize they must start saving furiously to maintain a semblance of their personal lifestyle in retirement. To do so, they should be squirrelling away about a third of their gross earnings - about $15,000 a year - in an annuity or some other investment, according to calculations by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based thinktank. That would fetch them a joint investment income in retirement of about $1,700 monthly. When added to the $1,900 they anticipate from Social Security, the couple would then have about 60% of their current income in 2010...when Mr. Vierra would like to retire....
  [So the answer to their question, "Can we afford to retire?" is "No," because they will never be able to sock away a third of their gross earnings for the next 10 years, and even if they could, would the annuity or whatever survive the rocky road ahead, given current corporate sleaze and financial turmoil.]

1. Public pension plans come up short, by Kara Scannell, WSJ, C1.
   Steep stock-market losses are sucking money out of the nation's public pension plans. More than 50% of all public pension funds are underfunded, from from 31% two years ago, a recent study...of 93 pension systems, which will provide pensions to teachers, firefighters and other state and municipal employees..\..shows. The pain will grow, says Wilshire Assocs. Inc., a Santa Monica CA consulting firm that advises public pension plans on investments...to 75%....

2. Changing fortunes - Market's swoon boosts pensions over 401(k) plans - Once high-flying portfolios now pale beside payouts from old-fashioned funds..., by John Hechinger, WSJ, front page.
   [Funny how the Wall St Journal doesn't mention that the market's swoon also boosts the old-fashioned concept of Social Security over the new-fangled movement to privatize it.]
   ...During the biggest stock-market downturn in a generation, [there is] a telling new feature of the American retirement system. The extended bull market helped popularize 401k plans, which happened to be introduced just as the long boom began in the early 1980s. But this year's stock rout has exposed their risks - and the advantages of [old-fashioned] guaranteed-payout pensions. Old-fashioned pensioners, a vanishing breed, have become unexpected[??] winners compared with the swelling population of workers who rely on 401k's.
   Over the last 20 years, private corporations have been rapidly shifting away from traditional pensions. More than 6 in 10 US workers with retirement coverage rely primarily on 401k's and similar plans for their retirements. Even the federal government has used 401k-like plans as part of the retirement package for new civilian hires since 1987, while longer-standing employees can choose to retain their rich traditional pensions.
   But there have been many notable holdouts. Many unionized workers, including those in state and local governments and the auto and airline industries, stuck with the old approach - an assured payout based on salary and years of service. Now these employees, if they are nearing retirement, can hardly believe their good fortune....
   {But they are a minority (only 14% of the American workforce is still unionized) and as mentioned, they are a "vanishing breed." This is another factor that will reduce the American consumer base in the future and conduce to economic depression. As we've said so many times, the new American pension is dying on the job or dialing 800-KEVORKIAN.]

• Retirement funds hit hard - But still have surpluses, by Russ Wiles, Arizona Republic, D1.
  Arizona's largest public pension fund was hit with $2B in paper losses during the last fiscal year due to steep stock market setbacks.
  [Compare Idaho's, 7/25 below,]
  The 30,000-member Arizona State Retirement System [ASRS] won't report official results for several weeks, but Dir. Leroy Gilbertson confirmed the losses will...equal to a setback of more than 9%. The portfolio assets fell to $19B as of June 30 from $21.6B a year earlier....
  [Ah, 21.6-19= a $2.6B decline and 2.6/21.6= a 12% decline, not just "more than 9%." Are we trying to avoid a panic by putting a rosy glow on the facts here?]
  The investment declines have continued into this fiscal year, with the ASRS losing about $1B last month [alone]..\..
  [Well, that would be 1/19= an over 5% decline in one month, which if it continues will mount up to a 63% decline in the current fiscal year.]
  The fund also paid out $600m more in benefits than it received in contributions from employers and employees during..\,, the last fiscal year....
  The [state's] 2nd-largest pension fund, the Public Safety Personnel Retirement System, dropped roughly 15% [$650m] over the 12 months that ended June 30, said James Nielsen, asst. administrator....
  [The assumption that stocks are generally going to go up no longer rests on a sustainable basis of contained wealth concentration alias enforced centrifugation, because that centrifugation was only enforced by one-time, non-designed, outside-economics events like the shortage of manhours caused by World War I and World War II. That means that work, income and wealth concentration today is uncapped, and when as long as one person can accumulate all the spending power, it doesn't matter how much spending power there is in the system, that system will always be poor and miserable. There will be no markets for the productivity of that system, no matter how good that productivity is. Ordinarily in a transition time of growing wealth concentration, the wealthy inflate the stock market and inflate stock prices because they have sooo much, there is nowhere else to put it - no other location can absorb it. The sums are too great for commodities or real estate or treasuries.... But a sustainable stock market rests not only on productivity, but on marketable productivity. And marketability rests on spending acitivity. And spending activity rests not merely on spending power but on centrifuged - and therefore active - spending power. Concentrated - and therefore inactive - spending power does not qualify. There have been many attempts in the last few decades to imply that consumer spending rests on the stock market - the so-called "wealth effect" - but the spending activated by a stock bubble such as that of the 1990s is nothing compared to the spending power that is getting deactivated by concentration, In the last pre-depression stages of strangling wealth concentration, the wealth run hither and yon searching desperately for safe havens to store their money. They run to real estate until they see there are not enough buyers to keep it escalating in price. They run to gold - ditto, ditto. They run to any new technology or gimmicky financial instrument like derivatives and hedge funds. The analysts and economists try to construct a myth of a "new economy" or "new economics" where the old rules - such as needing a return - don't apply. Leaders like the Bushes appeal for people to work without pay - since there are no jobs anyway. Volunteerism is promoted by the wealthy, who simply don't realize that their own astronomical and uncapped degree of concentration is the problem. The problem behind that is the lack of bargaining power of the many many ordinary employees, and the problem behind that is the general and huge surplus of manhours on offer in the job market, a job market reduced by worksaving technology and stressed by virtually uncontrolled immigration and the entry of more and more cohorts of desperate jobseekers, including housewives and seniors and college students. All this awaits either the usual kill-off of war or plague, or the return and enhanced design of the intelligent alternative, the rationing of worktime per person - in short, workweek reduction. Workweek reduction spreads the diminishing available work onto everyone, raises pay by absorbing the floods of desperate jobseekers who are willing to do your job for less pay, and restores active spending power and markets. The best workweek-adjustment designs automatically compensate for leaps in worksaving technology or the inpouring of new groups of jobseekers. Such a design is the Timesizing program, which is also market-oriented, gradual in onset, and scrupulously democratic. All variables are either set by their opposites (for example, in Phase 4) or by regular public referendums (for example, in Phase 1 and Phase 5). The sooner we move to an full-employment program such as Timesizing, and the greater variety of situations in which we apply it, the more economic security we will all have.]

• [finally, the great damage-control editorial from the Wall St Journal -]
  The great retirement scare - Investing in the stock market is still the best long-term strategy - Hold, hold, hold, editorial, WSJ, A8.
  [The tone of this self-interested suicide advocacy is shown in the first paragraph -]
  The run of bears on Wall Street is being exploited for all kinds of political ends. But the most disreputable is the campaign to scare grandma, and the rest of us, from investing in the stock market for retirement. The people selling this line are the real threat to a secure old age.
  [Oh, so a stock market that has entered the pre-depression bubble stage is some kind of guarantee to a secure old age? Their argument is the usual B.S. about $1 invested in 1925 would turn into $2279 in 2001, never mind that
  • this isn't adjusted for inflation
  • their cutoff at the end of 2001 ignores the stock collapse this spring and summer
  • it took the stock market 15-20 years to recover its 1928 value after the 1929 crash (and even then, it was only because of World War II, not anything intelligent like Timesizing, and certainly nothing automatic à la much over-celebrated 'invisible hand') - what if you retired during those two decades? - what if you're trying to retire now?
  • few people live long enough to wait for their dollar to appreciate this much anyway - 2001-1925 = 76 years. This whole line of argument is spurious.]
  "With stocks plummeting...Americans' financial futures are in peril," aversTime magazine [see 7/29 below], implying that Baby Boomers [capitalized??? - (possibly for obsequious respect?)], will have to work, oh, until they keel over on the factory floor.
  [Wake up and smell the coffee, morons - pre-babyboomers such as ourselves are already doing just that. And exactly how is Time magazine exploiting the stock collapse "for all kinds of political ends" here?]
  Then there are those using the bear market to discredit Social Security "reform":...
  [our quotes - ed. - they should call a spade a spade and say "privatization," which has nothing to do with reform]
  "If you needed any understanding of why it's a bad idea," intones House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, "I'm sure you got that from what you've seen happen in the stock market in the last year." To which the best reply is, Stop trying to scare people out of a good deal....
  [Ha. What they mean is, stop trying to scare people away from our bread-&-butter gambling casino.]

• Will you ever be able to retire? With stocks plummeting and corporations in disarray, Americans' financial futures are in peril - Here's how to make the best of it, Time Mag, cover.
  [contents blurb -]
  Retirement - In an era of collapsing stock prices and distressing corporate scandals, nest eggs are cracking, forcing many to wonder if they'll have to forgo shuffleboard and work until they're 80, contents pointer (to 22), Time Mag, 5.
  [actual article -]
  Everyone, back in the labor pool - Eroding pension benefits, longer life-spans and a major meltdown in stocks add up to this: most sof us will have to work well into our 70s, by Daniel Kadlec, Time Mag, 23 (cartoon on 22).
  [caption -]
  Still on the job - After declining in the 1970s and '80s, the number of older workers has been increasing steadily, chart, 23.
  [bottom border text -]
  • 95% of people ages 55 to 64 and still working plan to get another job after they retire, 24-25.
  • The S&P 500 has fallen 44% from its peak; $77 trillion has been wiped out in 2½ years, 26-27.
  • Half of all households didn't save a penny last year; debt has risen 30% in the past 5 years, 30-31.
  [Then they have blowouts on -]
  • Work sheet: When can I retire?, 26.
  • How to live cheaply - and well, 28.
  • The new "staged" retirement, 29.
  • The college crunch, 30.
  • Seven top executives with no retirement woes, 31.
    [Slime names,
    how much they made off with, and
    what they did to their companies -]
    1. John Rigas, Adelphia
       $4.2m
       bankruptcy
    2. Gerald Levin, AOL Time Warner
       $26m
       minus$40B
    3. Jeffrey Skilling, Enron
       $78m
       bankruptcy
    4. Gary Winnick, Global Crossing
       $273m
       bankarupty
    5. Sam Waksal, ImClone
       $38m
       minus$3.4B
    6. Dennis Kozlowski, Tyco
       $110m
       minus$80B
    7. Joseph Nacchio, Qwest
       $178m
       minus$26B

1. Stock plunge makes retirees nervous, by Seth Hettena, AP via AR, D4. ...The 2½-year Wall Street slide has hit older Americans hard. Retirements are being delayed, big expenses are on hold and some are considering going back to work....

2. Baby boomers face a future shrunk down and pinched in, op ed by John Balzar, LA Times via AR, B11.
   I'm hearing the same unsettling lament again and again from familly, friends and acquaintances: They were planning for retirement, they explain. No more. Now they'll have to stay on the job until they're 70. Or 75. Or whatever.
   If so, we're heading for a chain reaction collision of generations just around the bend.... Biologists use the phrase "dominant-year class" to define a...bulge in the population of a species of animals. ...The post-World War II [baby] boomers are something of a dominant-year class of living Americans and will be for the next 25 years or so. The first of these 14.2m employed boomers face the retirement age of 65 in less than a decade, hardly enough time to find comfort in that old nostrum about taking the long-range view of the markets. Behind them are an additional 30m workers ages 45 to 54.
   Let's suppose for a moment that a significant number of these graying Americans now hope to [delay] their retirement plans. Will they really be able to keep their jobs? Can employers afford to carry 60-year-old workers for another 10 years, paying high-end salaries, covering their rising health insurance costs, investing in their training? If so, what about the crushing effect on aspirations of younger workers itching to rise. More likely, many boomers will be flushed out of their careers.
   [Did the smart-ass economists who love to sneer at what they misname the "Lump of Labor Fallacy" ever strain their brains to point their ridicule at the concept of sharing the limited employment not just on the workweek basis but on the worklife basis?]
   Corporate reform as now discussed has nothing to do with making companies more paternal...and our laws provide scant protection against age discrimination. So where will these workers go? And how much will they squawk? ...There isn't enough Prozac in the world to prevent a boil-over of social tensions.
   The seeds were planted 20 years ago when employers successfully - and quietly - secured government approval to revolutionize the nation's pension system. Company-paid retirement plans began to be phased out, steadily replaced by 401(k)s and the like as the retirement foundation o fhe wage-and-salary workforce. Recent studies show that workers ended up with the [raw] end of the deal as corporations reduced their pension contributions by about 18% per worker.
   But employees did not complain very much. Their quarterly mutual fund statements spelled out bright futures. [However, the] fallout [now] is unlikely to be quiet at all. Even optimists who foresee a market recovery are realizing that they cannot realistically expect to catch up and attain the savings balances they recently counted on. Quite suddenly, we feel the future pinching in, not opening up.
   We boomers are not practiced at what seems to confront us: a diminished tomorrow. Meanwhile, the immutable rule of the "dominant-year class" ensures that everyone else will suffer too.

• Idaho: Boise, AP via USAT, 6A, via Grand Canyon photography rep Kevin Fuller.
  The stock market plunge since July 1 has stripped $500m from the public pension fund, officials said. That's on top of a $473m loss during the previous 12 months....

• Retirement crisis looms as many come up short - Stock losses just part of problem: Often, workers don't own 401(k) plans and have nothing saved - Recent studies show workers will be shortchanged when they retire, by Christine Dugas, USAT, front page, 2A.
  [How many times are Americans going to make the same stupid mistake? They went through this whole shtick in the 1930s and Social Security was supposed to solve it. Clearly it didn't. FDR tinkered with the system at the last minute and changed it from a safe government savings plan to a weird government pyramid scheme. And over the last decade, Congress has been using it as a slush fund. Now Americans are right back where they were in the "keep working till you die" 20s. Dumb dumb dumb. At least Timesizing makes it a LOT easier to keep working later in life, with much shorter workweeks that virtually allow everyone to retire on a weekly basis with a longer and longer weekend.]

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