Badrinath: Hello, everyone.

Welcome to Ideas and Insights, a show devoted to exploring novel perspectives on contemporary issues.

I am body natural.

Your host.

Finding well-paying, decent work with sumptuous retirement benefits is daunting for many older workers, and life in retirement is just as distressing.

Security in old age is a recurring nightmare for most Americans.

My guest today is Professor Theresa Ghilarducci Bernard and Irene Schwartz, professor of economics at the New School for Social Research in New York City and eminent scholar of retirement policies.

She is the author of work retire, Repeat the Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy, published by the University of Chicago Press.

This year, her book lays bare the staggering challenges of living with dignity after a lifetime of work.

Professor Ghilarducci points out that nearly half of all families in the United States have no retirement savings.

Only 21% of Americans age 62 to 70.

Have enough money to maintain their living standards in retirement.

The remaining 79% struggle with poverty, with at most $24,000 a year to retire.

50% of older adults are living alone in precarious financial circumstances.

Ironically, in the world's largest economy, with an annual GDP of nearly $26 trillion, older Americans are forced to accept demeaning gig work at pitiful wages to get by.

Life for most senior citizens is a relentless and ruthless struggle for mere survival.

Offering a searing account of the lopsided policies leading to this mess, Professor Ghilarducci underscores the urgency of addressing the erosion of retirement before it degenerates into a dystopian scenario.

She debunks the strategy of forcing Americans to work longer to solve retirement inequality.

Professor Ghilarducci maintains that aside from being unethical and unjust, the working longer consensus does not improve a person's Social Security benefits.

Instead, she advocates a Green New Deal, a novel blueprint for improving jobs and pensions for older Americans.

This agenda prescribes long overdue initiatives, such as making age discrimination laws more stringent.

Effective job training, good pensions, more social security benefits, a guaranteed retirement account, and a tax credit for workers paid for by eliminating tax breaks for high income earners.

Professor Ghilarducci joins me to discuss her ideas further.

It's a pleasure to have you with us today, professor.

Thanks for joining us today.

Theresa: I'm very happy to see you.

Badrinath: Your book talks about the erosion of retirement in the United States.

You have discussed at length questions of, retireme insecurity and any quality.

How big is this problem and how did we get here?

Theresa: Well, it looks like the current generation of retirees are really, surviving on intermittent work.

You know, so that the retirees that have, income from work are doing so much better than the retirees, who had to stop work.

And notice the irony in what I just said.

Retirees who get money from work mean that we've disappeared.

Retirement.

You know, for that, for that group.

And that irony is what really led me to.

To investigate what you just asked me.

How did retirement disappear?

How did the new retirement become work?

And how much does, does a working class person or even a middle class person, really count on a break?

You know, catching a break at the end of a of a lifetime of work.

And so I found that the, precarity or the insecurity of retirement has just been growing for people born after 1950, you know, and beyond.

So the current retirees, especially if they're the late boomers there between like 60 and 72 now, they're probably, going to be much better off than the middle boomers and the early boomers who just turned 65.

Much and let's not talk about their children, and their grandchildren.

How did we get there?

A combination of factors.

But it started in 1980 when the United States started to cut Social Security benefits for, future retirees.

And that future, those future retirees who got their benefits cut in the 1980s are now the current near retirees that are retirees.

So raising the retirement age, and not putting more money into Social Security about ten years ago really is causing insecurity.

And then 40 years ago, we started this experiment.

With do it yourself voluntary savings.

No other country leapt into that kind of experience, like, you know, experiment like we did.

And that experiment failed.

So a failed system of voluntary retirement savings and cutbacks in Social Security are, pretty good.

Summary of how we got here.

Badrinath: We will get into all the issues that you mentioned just now one by one.

But before that, you know, as you mentioned, in great detail in your book, the entire discourse on Social Security, retirement and pension policies is riddled with myths and misinformation.

You've talked about two such myths in great detail.

The first one concerns the greed, the geese, stereotype.

And the second one is about this consensus, about the benefits of working longer.

You disagree with both of them?

Let's take them one by one.

What is this greedy geezer stereotype?

And how did we, come up with this?

Theresa: Yeah, I have eight myths, but this idea, that somehow is old.

People have secure retirement.

We give retirement income to geezers, you know, which is a pejorative.

Older people.

I sometimes call myself a geezer.

Yeah, we'll take it away from children.

And I'm really glad you brought that, myth up first.

You know, I have eight, but that one really reigns large because even my family members ask me about that.

Almost everywhere I go, good hearted people.

Will ask me all.

But if we give money to the old.

Well, we we will.

We'll be taking support away from poor children.

So I investigated this for over 20 years.

Whether or not governments are government, the United States government actually budgets that way that they have $2 and they're either going to give $2 to the old or, you know, a dollar to the old or $2 to children, as if there's a six pie.

And they divided up between those two vulnerable populations.

That's not the way we do it in the United States, and that's not the way other countries do it.

It seems that political polling missions that support benefits to the old, political, coalitions that advocate for public spending on on children's health, on children's welfare and on children's education.

So over 68 countries I examined and I examined whether there's a trade off between spending for the poor and spending for the rich.

I found no such, inverse correlation.

In fact, I found a positive correlation.

If you care about old ladies, it turns out you spend a lot of money on your children as a nation.

So that myth is, is easy to dispel.

It only took 20 years of research.

And the second myth was, Oh.

Badrinath: Working consensus concerning working longer.

Theresa: Yeah, yeah.

That other that others missed is that, we really don't need to retire.

That everyone is living longer.

Everyone is healthier.

And the labor market has changed so much that older people, can stay in the labor force in a productive way and in a healthy way.

And I really did spend a lot of time on those premise premises.

One of them is just the idea that everyone is living longer.

False false.

False.

It's a myth.

In fact, the long jeopardy and the healthy longevity among people in the United States.

And it turns out that other countries are getting the American longevity disease, the longevity inequality disease, the difference between people by their class, their income, their education, their, living situations, their race or ethnicity has actually gotten wider.

We were making great gains, up until about the 80s.

Covid made it worse, but so did, concentrations of segregated neighborhoods and the speed up and intensity of jobs made it worse.

The inequality.

So some people, do not live a healthy, human lifespan.

We know that there are some 100 year old yoga teachers.

They're educated, they're usually white.

They're usually women.

But a lot of other people, are doing heavy physical labor, heavy metal mental labor are required to in their 50s.

And we also know that people don't just work longer because they want to.

In fact, we see a lot of being pushed out of work, in their 50s.

So that's another myth that somehow, because we're living longer, we have a workability life that's much longer.

We don't.

And to the extent that we do, it's very unequally distributed.

With the left, the these I call them the privileged among us.

You can't even Badrinath: question, at greater length, momentarily.

But let me seek clarification, Professor Ghilarducci.

While discussing retirement policies, you say that the shift from the from defined benefits plans to defined contribution plans in the 1980s significantly increased precarity among older workers and led to the erosion of retirement for the benefit of our viewers, per se.

Ghilarducci.

What is this shift that you're talking about?

And could you tell us a little bit about defined benefit plans and defined contribution plans?

Theresa: So defined benefit plans, have been disappearing.

Only 11% of workers now can count on a defined benefit plan when they retire.

And most of them are public sector, employees.

They work for state and local governments and work for school districts.

What they are is a benefit that depends upon your years of service and your salary.

And when you retire, it pays, a benefit, usually a modest amount of income, but it pays for it for the rest of your life.

You cannot withdraw from your defined benefit plan.

You can't leverage it to go buy a house, or remodel your kitchen, or send your kid to school, or do all the other things that people do with their 401 K plans or their other savings plan.

It's there, in a professionally managed account that you can't touch until you retire it.

They, In contrast, a defined contribution plan is what half of the working population have, which is a workplace plan where the employer may or may not put a little bit of money in.

You put money in.

It's an individual account.

You determine where it's invested and you usually you can take it out before you retire.

There's some rules and penalties, but most people dip into their 401 K at some point, and that means there's far less in that account.

By the time that you retire.

So a defined benefit plan is a safer way to save for retirement.

But it gives, an extra benefit.

And that is it pays your benefits for life.

So when you're a 70 year old, then you have a lump of money that you have to manage for the rest of your life, or you have a promised benefits for the rest of your life.

The person with the promised benefit can sleep at night.

A person with a with a defined benefit plan.

Their job is just to wake up in the morning.

I was interviewing somebody who said that he goes golfing with his golfing buddies.

He has a defined benefit plan, but his golfing buddies have to manage a lump sum.

They chat and chat and chat about what's happening to the stock market, how long they're going to live.

They joke about dying early, and he tells them, my retirement plan is to wake up every morning because he knows he'll have it until he doesn't.

Badrinath: Let's now turn to the issues you raised in part two of your book.

You, in part two, talk about the fallacies of working longer, and you provide incontrovertible evidence to argue that working longer makes no sense.

In fact, you offer three exciting arguments against this consensus on working longer.

You says it creates unequal retirement time.

It does not promote, retirement security, contrary to what most people think.

And it, hurts older workers.

And when older workers suffer, all workers suffer.

In other words, Professor Ghilarducci, your arguments subvert received wisdom.

Yeah.

Now, many are likely to say this goes against common sense.

How would you respond to that?

Theresa: Yeah.

So in my book.

Thanks for bringing that up.

I talk about the Harvard Health Letter, and it is such a peppy, happy, letter to, to its readers to say, look at all the benefits of of working.

You engaged?

You might you're doing meaningful work.

You have friends at work, your sociability.

You protect yourself against isolation.

Your employer gives you meaning and structure in your life.

Well, that audience is a very particular audience.

I found, a lot of research.

I did a meta analysis of the research out there that for an educated group of healthy people or unusual people, they find joy in working for somebody else.

But for the vast majority of people, having time to yourself to organize your time, find your own friends, create your own meaning is a much preferred journey.

All you need is money.

So there is no, There's no convincing evidence at all that working longer adds to happiness and well-being.

It turns out some happy people do work longer, but it's not the work that does it.

It's that human beings other innate characteristics.

So there's no evidence that work makes you healthier or happier.

And for some people, it kills for women who are in service work in that kind of mind crushing, repetitive work working past 65, can often actually hasten, depression and hasten, more morbidity for some people working longer hurts.

It also creates a lot of working longer, creates a lot of inequality of retirement time.

Because you know why working longer actually makes retirement time retirement, more affordable is because you have less of it.

Like, I can have a very affordable lunch on Friday by skipping it.

And that's what the working longer consensus says is, hey, you can have an affordable retirement.

Just don't retire.

So I found black men in my database really retiring for only about 12 or 11 years.

If they had a lower educational attainment and a good percentage of them died before ever retiring.

Where white women with college education had about 19 years.

And that's because they live longer and actually were able to retire a little bit earlier, but not retiring.

But that third point, having people just stay in the labor market, stay in the labor market, does a couple of things that could hurt younger workers.

One of them is in some professions, that's not that's not growing like tenured professorship.

I just happened to be sitting here in my big tenured office.

My I'm tenured in my office is mine.

That I may be blocking the assistant professorships.

You know, a professors who want, my job, some of my own students, I've educated them.

They have PhDs, and they're out in the wild.

If we are retired, you know, around 65 or 70, there would definitely be more jobs for them.

I'm not saying that if old people get out of the way that young people have their jobs, that would be a lump of labor fallacy.

You know that there's only a certain number of jobs because old people can really help complement the work of younger people.

But, it in some professions it does block the way.

But also more people in the labor market when nothing else happening.

Does cause wages to fall, not the number of jobs, but the wages offered, because the employer actually doesn't have to look very far or try very hard to attract a younger worker because they have older workers, who are ready to bid down the job, the, the pay.

So it, making people work longer or dying in their boots, you know, or just taking a 5 or 6 year retirement can hurt the opportunity, the advancement of younger workers.

Badrinath: Let us now turn to the third and final part of your book.

Professor Ghilarducci, you having described the failed retirement policies and the ruinous consequences, for our society in the third and final part of your book, offer a new blueprint for fixing this problem.

And you call it the Gray New Deal.

What is the Gray New Deal?

And how does it work?

Theresa: Well, it's, a new deal.

Meaning that we're rethinking our retirement system.

So it really changes the system of retirement incomes support and our value system about retirement.

It says, hey, after a working life, a long working lives, everyone is entitled.

Deserves to have a time in their life when they're still healthy to re, set themselves and to create a personal narrative.

You need time for that.

So it's a value statement, a new deal.

It's a way of thinking about thriving in an aging society.

It's also new because it over turns this do it yourself saving system that we were supposed to depend upon.

And it's gray.

It's not platinum or silver or some other euphemism for gray.

It's gray.

It means the human condition is that we all grow old and most of us get gray hair.

And so it is a statement about what we can do for policies to make that third age, that third period of our lives, to be one of being thriving and personal meaning.

And so what I have said is what every American, you know, economists would say is an adult wants to work.

We should have an economy that makes sure there's a job for them.

So I'm not saying mandatory retirement, even though there's a sweet side of mandatory retirement laws, most Europeans still have them.

But we should enforce age discrimination.

Lift up the crystallized knowledge that older workers have and their increasing reliability, and protect them from, some job conditions that they can't do and accommodate their age like we accommodate those who are disabled.

So I have a whole list of ways to, train older workers to keep them in the labor market when they want to, but it's under the reality all that research I did before that chapter that most people are forced out in their 50s or 60s, most people retire before they planned.

So the reality is choices.

Great choices, good choices.

Powerful, but that most people don't have employers that want to keep them, going.

So I have a whole work plan that lifts up older worker status.

But the second plan is to make sure that when you are pushed out or you leave the labor market, you have a decent amount of money to not make your rich, yourself rich, or to go travel around the world, but at least to maintain your living standards.

Or if you are working poor to lift you out of, poverty.

And we don't have systems that do that.

Badrinath: Now, let me end this interview particular, which we are almost completely out of time with.

One quick question, and I would appreciate your brief response.

You know that there is a great deal of talk about how new technologies, advances in machine learning, AI and so on will change the landscape of work, with fewer and fewer people finding work, more jobs disappearing.

And so on, I get the impression that advancing technologies might make retirement policies.

Retirement insecurity more severe and, difficult to negotiate.

What suggestions do you have for workers to negotiate these challenges?

Theresa: Yeah, but yeah, Valerie, you're right.

Technology could help workers, but when it's implemented by employers, it's usually to help employers to maximize their wages.

So technology is usually used to speed up work or intensify work or figure out ways to pay people less.

Well, workers have to organize.

They have to be as collective and as powerful as employers are.

And so technology is good for us, but workers have to protect themselves against it, either with laws or with unions, or with other kinds of collective action.

Badrinath: So the bottom line is workers have to join hands.

They have to organize and assert their rights on that empowering thought.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

I appreciate your time and your insights.

Thank you.

Theresa: Thank you.

I appreciate you as well.

Badrinath: That's it for today.

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Until then, good bye.

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