While America Aged illuminates the scope of the problem we’re facing, and warns that the worst is yet to come. With the narrative flair and talent for decoding financial ambiguities that readers have come to rely on, Lowenstein brilliantly chronicles three fascinating pension cases: the collapse of the over-obligated General Motors, the pension strike that halted New York City’s subways and effectively shut down the city, and the scandalous bankrupting of the affluent corner of Southern California, the city of San Diego. Not only compelling historical sagas rich with detail and unforgettable characters, each story also acts as an object lesson. Lowenstein warns that these pension wars are only the beginning of the retirement and healthcare crisis we will face if we don’t find ways to address this latest moral hazard. Governments and corporations across the country used pensions as a seemingly easy way to curry favor with unions (easy because the expense would be deferred until a later generation). But now, with cumulative retirement deficits approaching $1 trillion, the day of reckoning has arrived.
Is there a way out? Lowenstein recognizes that fixing pensions will be difficult but securing retirement is a critical issue―especially in our rapidly aging country―and he proposes a cogent solution to the impending crisis. Masterfully written and convincingly argued, While America Aged is a timely and crucial wake-up call to a pension damaged America.
While America Aged
Introduction
Part One: Who Owns General Motors?
1. Walter Reuther and the Treaty of Detroit
2. The Anti-Reuther
Part Two: The Public Freight
3. An Entitled Class
4. On Strike!
Part Three: Debacle in San Diego
5. Finest City
6. Pension Plot
7. The Bill Comes Due
Conclusion: The Way Out
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
“ Financial journalist Roger Lowenstein uses the stories of three deeply encumbered institutions . . . as examples not only of the way most individual Americans conduct their personal finances, but also of how the country as a whole has long lived beyond its means. . . . Gripping.”
—Phillip Longman, The Washington Post
