Yale law school professor Dan Kahan’s new research paper [3] is called ‘Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government,
Though 401(k) plans (a defined contribution retirement plan) are supposed to build wealth, a new study by the Economic Policy Institute suggests that these plans are actually exacerbating wealth inequality by not adequately providing for most people’s retirement.
The report authors explain that the 401(k) began as a creative supplement to pension plans. But, it was never intended to be the primary base for retirement. Now, the report suggests, the plans serve primarily as a tax shelter for the wealthy. For instance, among America’s top 20 percent income bracket, nearly 90 percent have savings in retirement accounts that average $308,674.
The paradox is people often think of 401(k) plans as a middle class perk, when, in reality, nearly half of U.S. households don’t have savings invested in any retirement plan. Half of the middle 20% of income earners with savings in retirement accounts have an average of only $34,981 in them. And even fewer — 11 percent — of the bottom 20% of income earners have retirement savings, averaging only $7,543.
Part of the problem stems from many low-wage or part-time jobs not offering a retirement plan. Unlike defined benefit pensions, which automatically enroll workers, 401(k) plans […]
While hybrid drivetrains have led to significant fuel economy gains for cars, it’s not necessarily the same equation for a city bus.
A typical bus gets only between four and six miles per gallon. About half of that fuel is never used to put the bus in motion.
Instead, that energy is gobbled up powering other equipment, namely systems to cool the engine and keep a window-lined interior the size of a small studio apartment at a comfortable temperature.
A year ago, two of the world’s most advanced ‘super hybrid
The overuse of antibiotics has caused three kinds of bacteria - one that causes life-threatening diarrhea, one that causes bloodstream infections and one that transmits sexually - to become urgent threats to human health in the United States, federal health officials say in a landmark report out Monday.
The report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the first to categorize the threats posed by such germs in order of immediate importance, from ‘urgent,’ to ‘serious,’ to ‘concerning.’ It is also the first to quantify the toll of such so-called superbugs, saying they cause at least 2 million infections and 23,000 deaths each year.
‘It’s not too late’ for the nation to respond, rein in the infections and keep antibiotics working by reserving them for when they are truly needed, but several steps must be taken right away, CDC Director Tom Frieden said Monday. ‘If we are not careful and we don’t take urgent action, the medicine cabinet may be empty for patients with life-threatening infections in the coming months and years.’
On the urgent list:
The fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is due out on September 27th, and is expected to reaffirm with growing confidence that humans are driving global warming and climate change. In anticipation of the widespread news coverage of this esteemed report, climate contrarians appear to be in damage control mode, trying to build up skeptical spin in media climate stories. Just in the past week we’ve seen:
Stage 1: Deny the Problem Exists
Often when people are first faced with an inconvenient problem, the immediate reaction involves denying its existence. For a long time climate contrarians denied that the planet was warming. Usually this involves disputing the accuracy of the surface temperature record, given that the data clearly indicate rapid warming.
In the 1990s, Christy and Spencer created a data set of lower atmosphere temperatures using measurements from satellite instruments. These initially seemed to indicate that the atmosphere was not warming, leading Christy, Spencer, and their fellow contrarians to declare that the problem didn’t exist. Unfortunately, it turned out that their data set contained several biases that added an artificial cooling trend, and once those were corrected, it was revealed that the lower atmosphere was warming at a rate consistent with […]
