San Antonio College Library

In a book remarkably free of technical or social science jargon, Max J. Skidmore demonstrates exactly why Social Security is not in danger of going bankrupt and proposes a series of incremental adjustments that will allow the system to support future generations even better. Social Security and Its Enemies shows that far from being a system on the verge of collapse, Social Security in fact does exactly what it was created to do keep America's aged...

"Synthesizing mountains of data and explaining sophisticated economic concepts in layman's terms, the Santows expose myths about how entitlement programs actually work, arguing, for example, that while the financial state of Social Security gets most of the press, Medicare and Medicaid are in much more serious trouble. Moreover, they are highly critical of privatization plans, demonstrating that similar programs have failed in other countries and...

Presents an analysis of the present system, arguing that the changes advocated by President Bush are based on faulty interpretations of the program provided by lobbyists of the brokerage and insurance industries.

Publisher's description: Why, alone among industrial democracies, does the United States not have national health insurance? While many books have addressed this question, Dead on Arrival is the first to do so based on original archival research for the full sweep of the twentieth century. Drawing on a wide range of political, reform, business, and labor records, Colin Gordon traces a complex and interwoven story of political failure and private response....

A concise, readable, knowledgeable overview of the workings of individual account programs in a wide range of countries. The author expertly examines these plans' risks, concluding that plans "carved out" of existing social security systems are generally less desirable than those which "add on" to existing plans--because they shift too much risk to individuals, do not seem to boost savings rates, and are plagued by numerous easy-to-overlook problems....