The People's Pension is both groundbreaking history and an indispensable guide for anyone concerned about one of the biggest issues in the upcoming election. With 95 percent of Americans participating in the program either as beneficiaries or through their payroll tax contributions, Social Security is quite literally the "glue" that binds Americans together as a community. Yet in the aftermath of the debt reduction deal between Barack Obama and congressional...

The United States faces a serious retirement challenge. Many of today's workers will lack the resources to retire at traditional ages and maintain their standard of living in retirement. Solving the problem is a major challenge in today's environment in which risk and responsibility have shifted from government and employers to individuals. For this reason, Charles D. Ellis, Alicia H. Munnell, and Andrew D. Eschtruth have written this concise guide...

Edwin Amenta is professor of sociology and history at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Professor Baseball and Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy (Princeton). When Movements Matter accounts for the origins of Social Security as we know it. The book tells the overlooked story of the Townsend Plan--a political organization that sought to alleviate poverty and end the Great Depression...

Confused or uncertain about Social Security? This friendly, easy-to-understand guide cuts through the complexities and gives you the practical information you need to make the most of the program and make smart decisions about retirement. You'll find advice on when to start collecting benefits, get the facts on working in retirement, learn how potential changes could affect you, and see how Social Security fits into your plan for economic security....

A sharp examination of the troubled state of retirement in America shares sobering insights into how the real estate crash and limited social security are preventing retirement and inducing widespread poverty in aging Baby Boomers. "As millions of baby boomers reach their golden years, the state of retirement in America is little short of a disaster. A third of Americans have no retirement savings at all. The real estate crash wiped out much of the...

Federal entitlement programs are strewn throughout the pages of U.S. history, springing from the noble purpose of assisting people who are destitute through no fault of their own. Yet as federal entitlement programs have grown, so too have their inefficiency and their cost. Neither tax revenues nor revenues generated by the national economy have been able to keep pace with their rising growth, bringing the national debt to a record peace-time level....

Want to know how to navigate the forbidding maze of Social Security and emerge with the highest possible benefits? You could try reading all 2,728 rules of the Social Security system (and the thousands of explanations of these rules), but Kotlikoff, Moeller, and Solman explain Social Security benefits in an easy to understand style. What you don't know can seriously hurt you: wrong decisions about which Social Security benefits to apply for cost some...