Word: pensioned
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Newton, Mass., was in a desperate hurry to hire a new field-service worker to repair the equipment his company sells and leases. So he placed a help-wanted ad that offered plenty of come-ons: a starting wage of up to $9 an hour, plus profit sharing, a pension plan and full medical coverage. After three weeks, the ad drew responses from only five people, none of whom was remotely qualified for the position. Says Scarpato: "One applicant had a severe drinking problem. Three could not speak or read English. And the last one wanted $12 an hour, even...
Congress overhauled the retirement program in 1983, after dire predictions that the Golden Age for the post-World War II generation would bring on the Dark Ages for Social Security. Before the reforms, the trust fund had worked more like a chain letter than a pension plan. Each current retiree's benefit check required payroll taxes from four current employees. But so many children were born right after the war and so few after 1964 that the pay-as-you-go system threatened to collapse when the boomers retired. In the first half of the next century there will...
Already, three other nations have faced similar surplus quandaries. Japan restricts excess retirement money to a reserve fund, which boosts the country's savings rate. The Canadian government lends its pension cushion to provinces to support schools and build roads, and Sweden's fund is used to finance mortgages and pay off debt. Lending the money can be a good idea, says Barry Bosworth, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, "if the loan goes to develop capital growth and productivity rather than consumption...
...however, lawmakers have already used the pension reserve for a far less noble cause -- to help mask a big part of the federal deficit. Since Social Security receipts count as part of the overall budget, congressional projections indicate that the deficit should gradually shrink from $150 billion in 1987 to $134 billion in 1993. Without Social Security's extra padding, however, lawmakers would be forced to admit an unpleasant reality: the deficit resulting from all other Government programs will actually grow from $170 billion in 1987 to $231 billion in 1993. Says Bosworth: "The basic budget deficit is getting worse...
What began in 1935 as a temporary pension program for widows, then ballooned into an income-maintenance program for millions of unemployed women with children, may now become a job program that would enable people to get off the dole altogether. By a vote of 93 to 3, the Senate agreed last week to revamp the nation's welfare laws in the hope of breaking the cycle of dependency on government support. "It's the first major change since the 1930s," said New York's Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the architect of the bill, "and it redefines the notion...