Alternative Visions - The Coming Collapse of Retirement in America - 01/30/13

Dr. Jack Rasmus will address the topic,  ‘The Coming Collapse of Retirement in America’ on today’s Alternative Visions show.  The discussion will look at the 6 elements of the retirement system in the US: Private defined benefit pensions, 401k plans, personal savings, retiree health benefits, social security, and medicare.  The retirement system in America set up in the late 1940s-early 1950s originally called for a ‘3-legged stool’ of incomes, composed of one-third retirement income from defined benefit pensions, one third from personal savings, and one third from social security. The first two of those legs have already collapsed. And now Congress is about to begin breaking the last leg, social security and medicare, with its upcoming deficit cuts. This will intensify as Congress restores defense spending cuts previously scheduled, and enacts big corporate tax cuts later in the year.  The consequences of collapsing retirement incomes affecting 70 million people will be significant, Dr. Rasmus argues, and will hold back anyk sustained economic recovery in the US in 2013-14 and beyond, as GDP data for the fourth quarter 2012 just issued today show the US economy may have already entered the ‘double dip’ recession Dr. Rasmus has been predicting for more than a year.