How to use this Page

I'm coming to you from balmy Atlanta this week, where Mary Lee Hahn and I will be presenting later today a session called "Risking Writing," along with Dr. Shanetia Clark of Salisbury University and author Patricia Hruby Powell.  At the heart of this session is the writing of a poem brainstormed by Shanetia, drafted by Mary Lee, and revised by me.  Patricia will supply inspirational commentary. Do check back in to see what we came up with!

For now, here's our presentation in a nutshell:

Despite progress in the care and treatment of mental health problems, violence directed at self or others remains high in many parts of the world. Subsequently, there is increasing attention to risk assessment in mental health. But it this doing more harm than good?

The post The traumatising language of risk in mental health nursing appeared first on OUPblog.

Thanks for speaking to Boomerang Books Blog, Fleur. Thanks you for having me on the blog Joy. Your new YA novel, Risk (Random House Australia) is creating a buzz in Australian YA circles. I believe that it has a very important message, told as an engaging story. Is it your first published work? Have you met […]

A red open car blasts past you, exhaust and radio blaring, going at least 10 miles faster than the speed limit. Want to take a bet on the driver? Well, you won’t get odds. Everyone knows the answer. All that exhibitionism shouts out the commonplace, if not always welcome, features of young males. Just rampant testosterone, you might say. And that’s right. It is testosterone. The young man may be driving the car but testosterone is what’s driving him.

The post Sex, cars, and the power of testosterone appeared first on OUPblog.

Someone asked me recently why it can be hard for libraries to change. She wondered why when her library wanted to try something it required a committee of people and a long process that in many cases meant by the time the something was ready to implement it was too late. I think about this construct a lot and have realized that a part of what is going on is a desire or need to make sure that a program or service is perfect before it launches to the public. When we strive for perfection in libraries we end up creating an environment that isn’t nimble or flexible or responsive to the community. And, as a result, we don’t move forward as quickly as we need.

The conversation where someone asked me about libraries and change led to this Tweet:

@LibraryFanatic …and it's a beautiful thing! pic.twitter.com/24OZ8cZGHn

— Gillian Madeley (@aljasngenietoo) August 24, 2014

That idea, (Fail=First Attempt in Learning) is the message we need to get across to teens, teachers, parents, and librarians. Learning, producing, creating, implementing is a process. In order to actually learn or produce or implement something imperfection, and even failure, is required. Think about some of the things you have learned – how to drive, how to use a particular software program, how to use a particular device, how to cook something… I could go on and on. But, the key is that I bet the first time you got behind the steering wheel or the first time you baked a cake or the first time you turned on a new device, you weren’t perfect at it. I certainly could tell stories about failing at each of those things when I first was learning how to do/use them.

In libraries, and with teens, we have to be willing to fail, learn from our experiences, and then either try again, or move on to something else (if what we learn says this wasn’t a good idea at all). Think about how freeing that is when planning a new program or service. Say you want to start working with some new community partners to help support teen workforce development skills. If you wait until you have built the perfect relationship with the potential partners or have a proved track-record with the partners it could be the year 2044 before you get something off the ground.

Instead of working towards perfection in the partnership give yourself a quick turn-around timeline for building and piloting the program. Work backwards on your calendar to plan out what you need to accomplish by that completion date. Give up the idea that every piece of the project has to be thought out perfectly before you launch. Start contacting partners and asking them how you can work together to create something awesome for teens. Go with the flow and see what happens.

And then, and this is a big thing, at the end of the process look at what worked and didn’t work and then decide next steps. What were you looking for in the partnership and did you achieve that – why/why not? Were you able to support teen acquisition of workforce development skills – why/why not? If you were to do this project again, what would you do the same and what would you do differently – why? Those answers are really going to help you to understand how you failed, what you learned, and what you need to do next.

And, then, be honest with everyone! Yes everyone! About your failures and what you learned. One of the reasons I think we in libraries don’t like to fail and strive for perfection is because, while we exchange lots of information about what we do with teens, we aren’t always talking about what didn’t work and what we would do differently next time. It seems to the world that we are perfect, and we are not.

Take the leap this fall and learn how to fail and how to celebrate that failure. Instead of working towards perfection be nimble and flexible in planning, try out ideas, evaluate, learn, and try again.

If you want to keep learning about taking risks and learning how to fail try out these Twitter hashtags and feeds:

• #act4teens – is a YALSA generated hashtag all about developing great library services to support teens.
• @educationweek – the official Twitter feed for the Education Week newspaper and website.
• @edutopia – the official Twitter feed for the George Lucas Foundation dedicated to innovation in education

#

Over the past couple of weeks as a part of the 30 Days of Innovation series I’ve written about the importance of embracing failure and the need to breed a culture of innovation in libraries. Last week I had some people ask me what happens when you understand the value of failure and innovative culture in the workplace, but your colleagues and administration do not? People wonder how they can feel safe in failure and get the innovative juices going when those around them aren’t supportive. Some ideas:

• Ask Yourself Why: Why are your colleagues and/or administrators against innovative practices? Is it because they are scared of looking bad to others? Do they not know how to articulate the ideas of innovation so that they are understood by elected officials and other town administrators? Have they never really had a chance to understand what it takes to be innovative? Do they think that innovation means throwing out everything, even what works really well, and starting from scratch? Ask yourself where the barriers to innovation are and then find ways to break through them. For example, If fear is an issue then come up with low-risk innovative opportunities to get things going so that colleagues and administrators can gain a track record of innovative success. Then build from there.
• Be an Innovation Advocate: In order to serve teens successfully in libraries we need to be constantly trying new things and advocating for the value of innovation. Since you should be advocating regularly as a part of your teen services job, then make sure to add talking points, stories, and examples that advocate for innovation in teen library services. Explain why a program or service is important to teens and also why you needed to innovate (and why the innovation was successful) in order to provide that program or service. Don’t just explain the what of the innovation get into the why it was required too.
• Read Together: In some libraries staff all read the same book and talk about it. Suggest that you do just that in your library and read a book like Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson or The Innovators Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen. Volunteer to facilitate the discussion and help to make the conversation a positive one by coming prepared to talk about the ways the ideas discussed in the selected title are possible to achieve within your library.
• Be a Role Model: While it is definitely hard to do it alone, someone has to start. That means if you are ready to innovate and use innovative practices in your library then do what you can to lead the way in order to demonstrate how it’s possible to achieve innovation success in your library. Let others watch what you are doing without saying too much. Just do it. You’ll set an example that will help others feel more able to take your lead and try and support innovation themselves.
• Be a Mentor: As people in your library start to see you succeed in innovation and want to try their own hand at being innovative, help them in their efforts. Let them know what you have learned about being innovative and support them as they learn what does and doesn’t work. Make sure to help them understand that if the idea doesn’t go off as planned, and perhaps is a failure, that that’s OK.

It is never easy to go it alone and be the first to try new ideas. That&

Tweet

By Charles D. Ferguson

The ongoing Japanese nuclear crisis underscores yet again the risks inherent in this essential energy source. But it should not divert nations from using or pursuing nuclear power to generate electricity, given the threat from climate change, the health hazards of fossil fuels, and the undeveloped state of renewable energy. Instead, the events at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant should turn more attention to ensuring that nuclear power plants meet the highest standards of safety and protection against natural disasters.

More than 30 nations have commercial nuclear power plants. A further two dozen are interested in having them, including several in earthquake risk areas such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey.

Some nations are pro-nuclear for energy security; some for prestige. Others, including Iran, have invested in nuclear power because they may want the capability to make nuclear weapons. These nations are seeking to acquire uranium enrichment or reprocessing technologies: useful either for producing fuel for peaceful nuclear reactors or fissile material for nuclear bombs.

Although some national leaders profess to be interested in nuclear energy because operating plants do not emit greenhouse gases, this is usually a secondary motivation. If it were their primary concern, nations would invest far more than they have in measures such as energy efficiency and solar and wind technologies.

The Japanese crisis has affected three important criteria: public opinion, safety and economic costs. Governments and utilities have had to grapple with these for decades. Now they must renew their efforts to finance expensive nuclear projects and ensure that existing and future nuclear plants maintain the highest standards — and must be seen to do so by the public.

Building nuclear power plants has always been expensive. For a large reactor with a power rating of 1,000 megawatts or greater, the capital cost ranges from US$4 billion to $9 billion depending on reactor design, financing charges, the regulatory process and construction time. The recent nuclear crisis is likely to change all of these, pushing up costs.

Contemporary plant designs — ‘generation III’ — have better safety features than the 1970s-era generation II designs for the Fukushima reactors, making them more expensive. Some, such as the AP1000 designed by the Westinghouse Electric Company, headquartered in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania, have passive safety features that do not require technicians to activate emergency systems or electrical power to ensure safety after a mishap. Others, such as Paris-based Areva’s EPR, have advanced active safety systems designed to prevent the release of radioactive material to the environment. Further designs, such as the pebble-bed modular reactor, may prevent nuclear fuel from ever experiencing a meltdown. Concerns were raised about the Fukushima designs as early as 1972, the year after reactor unit 1 began operations. But the nuclear industry opposed shutting down such reactors because 32 were in operation worldwide — about 7% of the world’s total. Almost one-quarter of the reactors in the United States are of this type. The remaining plants of this design should undergo a thorough safety review and, as a result, some may need to close. Since the crisis began, several governments, including China, Germany and Switzerland, have called for increased scrutiny of their plants and a moratorium on plant construction until plant safety is assured. Germany has also shut down its seven oldest reactors.

But phasing out nuclear power worldwide would be an overreaction. It provides about 15% of global electricity and even larger percentages in certain countries, such as France (almost 80%) and the United States (about 20%). Eliminating nuclear power would lead to much greater

One of the things I really want to do in my writing is take risks. I want to be knowledgeable about the marketplace and the "accepted" topics and approaches in kids' writing, and I want to have a career as a children's writer, but I also want to risk foolishness and non-publication by continuing to write things I think kids will devour, even if chances of the works published and getting past the gatekeepers is small.

I also like risk and change and learning new things in my non-writing life. My latest adventure has me really intimidated, though. With my husband, who marched in the drum and bugle corps Suncoast Sound in the 80s, and our 18-year-old daughter, I'm trying to join the color guard of Minnesota Brass, an all-ages corps here in the Twin Cities. The color guard is the group of people who dance and spin and toss flags, rifles, and sabres.

Don't let the all-ages label fool you. At the meeting (which actually turned out to be the first rehearsal, too, though they didn't tell us that ahead of time), I was a good 20 years older than almost everyone else in the color guard group (except one or two of the teachers). And I was one of only three people who hadn't been in a color guard or drill team or whatever. Amost everyone was in their early twenties and had just "aged out" of the top level corps, which have a max age of 22, I think.

One of the instructors mentioned that she had spun with Minnesota Brass until she "got too old."

She was younger than me.

The same instructor said to the group at the end of the night, in an encouraging voice, "Don't feel bad if you don't get it right away. It takes a while to learn, and, well, it seems to be easier in general to pick it up the younger you are." She spoke to the group, but you KNOW who she was looking at when she said it!

So, keep your fingers crossed! I'm hoping some of the risk-taking there will translate into new adventure in my writing, too.

 

Image via Wikipedia

 

What’s the riskiest thing you’ve ever done?

Related Articles

• Ten Riskiest Retailers, Resorts And Radio Networks (forbes.com)
• Tsk Tsk Please Stop Overhyping Risk (blogs.wsj.com)

Celebrating Banned Books Week is all about risk-taking. By celebrating titles that have been, or might be, banned in a library, those working with teens are saying to the world, “Look, we have controversial books in the library and we are proud of it.” That’s quite a risk and it’s a risk that many teen librarians accept and value.

In this video, Connie Urquhart and Lisa Lindsay (Fresno County Public Library) talk about the risks they’ve taken in collection development and in teen services – Including risks that went really well and risks that weren’t as successful as was hoped.

Risk taking in collection development and in teen services doesn’t always come from hailing controversial, or possibly controversial, materials with community members at a specific time of year. It also also comes when talking with co-workers about titles in the collection, trying to get buy-in from colleagues about new genres to add to the collection, and even when having day-to-day conversations with teens about a variety of topics that might come up.

Banned Books Week gives teen librarians the chance to celebrate together their risk taking endeavors. Don’t forget that risk taking in teen services is an every month of the year endeavor. Celebrate your risks with teens and the community as often as you are able.

Last night YALSA’s monthly chat was on the topic of risk in teen services. A pdf file of the transcript is now available.

It was quite an invigorating discussion with a variety of risky topics covered including:

• Risks of librarians friending teens on Facebook and other social networks
• Differences that exist in risk-taking in school libraries and public libraries
• Importance of having support in risk-taking in the workplace
• Importance of being able to talk with others about risky situations, decisions, etc.
• Need to assess levels of risk and when to take risks in library services to teens
• Categories of risk
• Connections between fear and risk
• The need to be able to access stories of librarian risk-taking

And that’s just a few of the topics covered.

One of the areas that jumped out for me during the discussion was the difference between planned risk-taking and on-the-fly risk-taking. For example, it’s possible to plan to take a risk in a new program, but it’s not possible to plan for the spontaneous discussions librarians have with teens on topics that might require saying something risky as part of the discussion. (For example conversations that might lead to discussion of sexual orientation, religion, health, politics, etc.)

On-the-fly risk-taking is something I want to consider more. I definitely want to talk to other librarians about this topic. Perhaps readers of this blog have thoughts about on-the-fly risk-taking. If you do, feel free to post them in the comments. (Actually, any thoughts about the topic of risk feel free to post in the comments.)

As a reminder, YALSA will publish a book, titled Risky Business, in summer 2010. If you have stories about risk in your career and/or your library, you can send a message to [email protected]. One of the book’s authors will get in touch with you to talk more about your story and its possible inclusion in the book.

The next YALSA chat is scheduled for Wednesday, September 2, 8PM Eastern. The theme is Teen Read Week. You can participate by going to YALSA’s space in ALA Connect and clicking on the chat link on the right side of the page.

Today's high five come from wonderfully weird Salvador Dali.



His artwork was about taking risks and seeing things in a new light.


Salvador Dalí. (Spanish, 1904-1989). The Persistence of Memory. 1931. Oil on canvas, 9 1/2 x 13" (24.1 x 33 cm). Given anonymously. © 2008 Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Dali was not afraid to make mistakes. He seemed to invite missteps. He was searching for the surprises that seem to spring out of chaos.

Don't be afaid today to try something new, something different. Stretch in a way you've never tried before. open yourself up to the possiblities, the happy accidents, and the unpredictable providences. Yes, it might be a mess. It might not work. But today let yourself be wild. You might be surprised at the results.

Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them. Salvador Dali

Last, another Golden Coffee Cupper is the talented Mr. Kevan Atteberry. He is the illustrator of the very first Children’s Choice Book Award picture book, Frankie Stein, written by Lola M. Schaefer. His skewed sense of humor is refresing and inspiring. He is certain to create something earth-shatteringly original.

Hey, I know stuff is getting done out there, so SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! Keep going Coffee Cuppers we are almost half-way there.

Today we are proud to bring you Teresa Ghilarducci (who just published When I’m Sixty-Four) in conversation with Jacob Hacker (author of The Great Risk Shift). These two experts will be debating how to ensure retirement for future generations. This is part two of the which will we be publishing all week, so be sure to come back and check our exchange.

Teresa Ghilarducci taught economics for twenty-five years at the University of Notre Dame and now holds the Irene and Bernard L. Schwartz Chair of Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research. She is also the 2006-2008 Wurf Fellow at Harvard Law School. Her most recent book is When I’m Sixty-Four: The Plot against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them.

Jacob Hacker is a Professor of Political Science at Yale University and a Fellow at the New American Foundation. His most recent book is The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement And How You Can Fight Back.

Dear Teresa,

I see these multiple perspectives on retirement every day, in my research and my own life. I visit my dear colleague Bob Dahl, who in his mid-90s continues to publish path breaking books on democracy and political equality. How can I talk with someone so intellectually vibrant and not want to be contributing in that way in my own old age?

And then I remember Elinor Sheridan, whom I wrote about in my book. In her seventies, she was trying to find a job because her 401(k), crushed by the stock-market decline of 2000, had already been depleted. Even with Social Security, the pension she receives from 17 years at a hospital provided a meager standard of living. Elinor had worked her whole life — as a mom and wife (divorced) and then, ironically, as a “risk manager” at the hospital — and now she was not because she wanted to but because she had to. So much for the golden years.

It is good to have someone celebrating retirement as a benefit to our society, rather than a burden on us and future generations. The labor movement may be the “folks who brought you the weekend,” but it was FDR and countless fellow campaigners for a guaranteed retirement income who who brought us retirement as we now know it. And the campaign is not over.

Retirement security is under attack. Corporations are jettisoning traditional guaranteed pensions, Congress is pouring money into tax breaks for individual benefit plans that exclude millions and mostly benefit the affluent, virtue in proposals for partial privatization of Social Security that will put the promise of secure retirement= further at risk.

But this exchange would be pretty uninteresting if all I said was “Amen,” and so let me continue in the vein of disagreement for at least a little while. I have two concerns about the Guaranteed Retirement Account (GRA) vision — the first more philosophical, the second more practical. (And I should note, as a fellow policy wonk, that GRA is a nice acronym, especially when compared with John McCain’s chosen shorthand for his health plan of last resort, GAP, or “Guaranteed Access Plan.” Note to the McCain candidacy: A plan that’s billed as filling gaps should probably have another moniker, though perhaps the McCain folks believe in truth in advertising.)

First, the more or less philosophical concern: Are GRAs the best immediate use of federal resources and the scarcely unlimited running room for new federal taxes — excuse me, “mandatory contributions”? I am not one to go in for the clash-of-generations view so common in official Washington and the news media. (After all, we all get old, and young and old alike support Social Security and say they want a secure retirement.) But I am not sure I am ready to man the barricades for a major new commitment to provide enhanced retirement income when so many needs go unmet for working age Americans and kids. For one, and I say this only half in jest, I would rather have the 5 percent of payroll proposed to fund GARs for my universal health plan
= (http://www.sharedprosperity.org/topics-health care.html). For another, Social Security provides a tattered but still crucial safety net that is sorely lacking in other areas of American economic life—most notably, health care (again, I really want that 5 percent!). My point is not that we don’t need a new campaign for retirement security — we do. It’s just that I”m not sure it should be the first priority of those seeking economic security. The aged look out for themselves pretty well in American politics. Not so the young, the disadvantaged, the cash-strapped working family — though, yes, they will all be old some day and, yes, our pension system fails them above all.

Now, the practical worry. We have a huge 401(k) complex on which millions of Americans rely. In my 2002 book, The Divided Welfare State, I described the slapdash way in which this system came into being (trust me; almost no one knew what they were getting into, though once the floodgates were opened, corporations figured it out pretty quick). But I also made the point that existing systems of social protection, however haphazardly created or inadequate in practice, are fiendishly difficult to supplant with new, more rational arrangements. I called this “path dependence.” But we could just as well call it “political reality.” And it seems to me that the political reality today is that it will be very, very hard to completely redirect existing tax breaks for 401(k) plans and create an entirely new supplementary pension system managed by the federal government.

If that judgment is correct (dispute away), then where does it leave those of us living in the reality-based policy community who recognize that the 401(k) defined contribution model is incapable of providing retirement security for all but those at the top? I argued in The Great Risk Shift thSocial Security, and (2) transform 401(k)s into something that looks like a guaranteed retirement benefit. Without going into the details, I called for making 401(k)-type accounts available to everyone, even if their employer failed to provide them; requiring automatic enrollment through the workplace; and offering progressive “matches” to supplement lower-income workers’ contributions, even if employers do not offer a standard match. And I said that all account balances should be automatically converted into annuities (a guaranteed income for the remainder of one’s life) at retirement unless someone could show they had sufficient wealth to protect themselves against outliving their assets. (providing such annuities through the post office back in the 1930s).

By the way, this would surely cost serious money – which puts it somewhat in tension with my first point about priorities. But it has the virtue that it could be done in stages, with the lowest-cost aspects (automatic enrollment; annuitization, which should be self-financing) coming \ first. Its more important virtue is that it might be possible to do at all.

Fire Away,

Jacob

Thanks for reminding me of Robert Dahl and what was unspoken, our hope we are as incisive in our nineties and in control of our time.

Please know it was both — FDR’s Social Security and union pensions (e.g. those for the Ladies Garment Workers, bricklayers, coal miners, steel, auto workers etc.) that created the middle class and middle class retirement. But, as you point out, the campaign for “decent retirement for all” is not over. Except for the wealthiest men and women, people, now in their 40s and 50s, will likely be the first U.S. history to be more at risk than their parents of experiencing a sharp drop in living standards in old age.

I bristle a bit when accused of not being a reality-based policy wonk. There is not a pension economist on the planet that will defend our system of tax breaks for savings that only help the affluent move money from taxed accounts to tax-favored accounts, costing the Treasury over $80 billion per year. Thus, it is no surprise that the tax breaks - called tax expenditures - have soared while overall savings rates keep on going down. A full 50% of the tax expenditures for 401(k)-type accounts go to only 6% of workers; those at the top earning over $100,000 per year.
70% of the tax breaks go to the top 20%. The most head banging reality of it all is that these people would have saved without the help. The current system has no basis in logic.

Who did this? Who brought old age income security under attack? I used to think it was mostly corporations spending less on pensions because they could get away with it. The shift in market power to employers and away from workers is partly the reason, but a big part of the attack comes from Congress indulging the 401(k) industry. And a dedicated, ideologically-based campaign to transform Social Security into individual accounts (my Chapter 5 covers that intricate history and, as you rightly point out, continuing saga) is the other source of the plot against pensions.

My proposal for guaranteed supplements to Social Security is based in this reality. GRAs obtains pensions for all with no additional risk or federal spending. And, they restore savings rates to the higher rates before the “debt boom” that started in the 1980s.

Philosophically we are on the same page. You didn’t say it right out, but I guess you are just as terrified as I am that high payroll taxes would cause terrible things like widespread tax evasion and an underground economy. I’ve come to appreciate how lucky we are in America that we have almost 100% employer compliance (the stray restaurant and construction sites notwithstanding) in paying social security tax.

Keeping payroll taxes low is philosophical and practical. Nonetheless, I support your plan for an additional payroll tax to pay for health care and for a mandatory 5% contribution to a GRA. First, the government will offset the 5% GRA contribution with an indexed $600 annual contribution.

Second, the “mandatory contribution” is unlike a tax, it will go into an individual’s account under that individual’s name. Third, money for the old doesn’t take away money from the young. One of my best articles has the best title - Do the Old eat the Young? (I also teach a class on social policy with the same name). The ugly fear that supporters of Social Security and pensions compete with government support for working-age Americans and kids is not well founded. You know what? Nations that pay for the old also pay for kids. It is also a pattern in American history. When American families funded their pensions and paid ever increasing Social Security taxes, they voted for increases in property taxes to pay for schools.

Thus, we can plausibly argue for a bread and roses social policy. Your great book, The Great Risk Shift, put working class families’ insecurity front and center. The kids! The kids! Only African American kids have higher poverty rates than older single women. And, you are right, over the last 4 decades, we have drastically cut old age poverty rates while more kids face poverty risks. But did bread leave the mouths of babes to feed the grandmas? No. Tax expenditures - taxes not collected for special reasons, like for oil depletion and for profits of banks operating abroad — between 1974 - 2004 tripled. And the growth in tax breaks, mostly for businesses and the wealthy, far exceeds the growth in social spending. That is where much of the money for cash-strapped working families have gone.

I agree, thought the practical reality of checking the runaway 401(k) industrial complex might be difficult, it is not impossible don’t annihilate Wall Street firms, the government will contract with for-profit professional money managers just as we do for for investing pensions for Federal Reserve employees, Texas teachers, etc. Even Chuck (in the “Talk to Chuck” campaign for Charles Schwab brokerage accounts) and other broker dealers will have something to do. Employers can still keep their 401(k) plans, but their merits have to be r al, not based on the tax breaks going to the bosses. So, though it is difficult to implement policy as if we are “starting from scratch” because of “path dependence” this 401(k) path is fairly new - the tax breaks have soared only recently. And, if we can keep tax breaks for 401(k) contributions up to $5,000 per year - not up to, in some cases, $46,000 — we only spend $25 billion per year for GRAs for all, funded with $600 federal contributions for everyone.

So, don’t throw me out of the reality-based policy community. Guaranteed Retirement Accounts, with all due respect, is a more effective, straightforward plan than your plan that relies on clever psychological jujitsu with automatic this and thats. You aim to raise pension coverage rates by taking advantage of human laziness through auto enrolling, auto annuitizing and - you should add — auto investing. Fundamentally, relying on voluntary, commercial accounts does not address huge leakages from high retail fees, leakages from churning and scams, and leakages from early withdrawals and, the biggest leak of all, the fact most employers do not bother to sponsor a pension plan at all.

The best part about the GRAs is that it addresses the two Americas. The GRAs gives every American worker with a Social Security number what only some lucky workers have. Workers with government, corporate and union defined benefit plans, and college professors in TIAA -CREF have low cost, not-for-profit financial institutions handling our pensions. The other Americans have nothing, or pay retail fees for leaky 401(k) accounts. The GRAs close that access gap - everyone has access to a low fee, professional, quasi-governmental, financial institution that guarantees an inflation-protected competitive market return.

Jacob, we can get health and pension security. No?

Teresa

ShareThis