{"product_id":"what-if-boomers-cant-retire-isbn-9781576752494","title":"What If Boomers Can't Retire?","description":"When it was first published, What If Boomers Can't Retire? predicted what would happen when boomers switched from buying stocks to selling them for retirement income. Since then-and as predicted by author Thornton Parker-stocks have become less important, prices have declined, corporations have shifted their emphasis from inflating stocks to just surviving, and there is currently a recession in full swing.\u003cbr\u003e This book shows that there is a bright side, however. If enough boomers work in their later years and preserve their capital, and if the country improves the way it uses capital, the results can lead to fuller lives for millions of people, healthier communities, and more sustainable economies worldwide. Parker details specific actions that individuals and organizations can take to gradually make the shift from the dangerously risky pursuit of phantom wealth to productive investments based on real accomplishments, goods, and services.Foreword by Hazel Henderson\u003cbr\u003e Preface \u003cbr\u003e Acknowledgments \u003cbr\u003e Introduction: Beware of Phantom Wealth\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Part I: Baby Boomers and Their Retirement Plans\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 1: Social Security: The Tip of the Retirement Iceberg\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 2: Can Stocks Help Baby Boomers Retire?\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 3: Views from Eight Other Books\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 4: How Baby Boomers’ Later Years Will Unfold\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Part II: Phantom Wealth and Its Effects\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 5: Stocks, Wealth, and Phantom Wealth \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 6: The Drive to Create Phantom Wealth\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 7: Why Stock Prices Don’t Create Real Wealth\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 8: How Phantom Wealth Hurts the Economy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Part III: Guiding the Future--Yours and Society’s \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 9: How We Can Meet Our Real Needs\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 10: What Individuals Can Do\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 11: What Organizations Can Do\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 12: Conclusion: How to Change a Very Big System\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Appendixes \u003cbr\u003e Notes\u003cbr\u003e Glossary\u003cbr\u003e Index\u003cbr\u003e About the AuthorMost people specialize in one or a few fields and progress up through them in what are often called stovepipes or fence pickets. Thornton (Tip) Parker has done the opposite by deliberately working on tasks that require knowledge of multiple fields. He is a generalist with more than forty-five years of widely diverse government and business experience in management, strategic planning, finance and accounting, manufacturing, marketing, personnel administration, transportation, technology management, large computer and information systems, intergovernmental relations, assistance management, and policy development.Beware of Phantom Wealth\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 1\u003cbr\u003e THE IDEA OF USING STOCKS to solve the Social Security problem seems like a “good, long-term, quick fix.” The idea is so alluring, it just keeps coming up. But before jumping to that conclusion, we should be sure that we understand the problem, retirement plans in general, and what stocks really do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The Five Main Messages of This Book\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e This book was written to present five major messages.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Much of the country’s economy and many of its retirement plans are built on a structure of phantom wealth that depends on stock prices.\u003cbr\u003e Stock prices are based on projected future events or what people hope will happen, not on actual corporate accomplishments. Using stock prices to measure wealth is like counting chickens before they’ve hatched.\u003cbr\u003e The drive to create phantom wealth by inflating stock prices helps some people, but it distorts the economy and hurts society as a whole.\u003cbr\u003e Demographic trends and retirement plans are helping to build the phantom wealth structure. But unless the structure is replaced with one that is more sustainable, those same trends will eventually make it fail, and that in turn will drag down the retirement plans and the economy.\u003cbr\u003e Individuals and organizations can help prevent retirement plans and the economy as a whole from collapsing—or protect themselves in case there is a collapse—by creating real wealth based on work, earnings, and solid accomplishments, instead of just hopes. But doing this requires a different mindset that includes new values, goals, and ways of thinking about living, aging, investing, and running companies.2\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e These five messages apply to individuals and their retirement plans, to all the country’s retirement plans in the aggregate, and to the whole economy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e What Is Phantom Wealth?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e A phantom is something that appears to be but has no real or physical existence. Like an apparition, a shadow, a dream, or a vision, a phantom is not what it seems to be.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Throughout this book, we use the term phantom wealth to refer to the returns from corporate stocks that are based on market prices. Individuals, companies, investors, retirement plans, and the country as a whole are ignoring the transient or ephemeral nature of trillions of dollars of phantom wealth. The opposite of phantom wealth is real wealth, and it has very different characteristics. We will explore how phantom wealth is created, how unreal it is, and how quickly it can vanish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Will Baby Boomers Have Enough Money to Retire?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Nearly everybody knows the conventional explanation of how capitalism works. It starts with people saving money, which they invest in companies, which use the money to build plants, buy tools, develop new products, and create jobs. The companies grow, their stock prices go up, the investors are happy, the economy prospers, and all is well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Based on that explanation, millions of American workers—who can expect to live longer than any previous generation—are being told that their formula for years of comfortable retirement is simple: just be guided by the history of the stock market, buy stocks, and retire on the gains. Companies, state and local governments, and many other employers are using the formula to reduce the costs of pensions that they have promised their employees.3\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But the explanation is insidious. It sounds right and it seems to explain why the economy is doing so well. The concept has endured for decades. It has few detractors and even the collapse of the Soviet Union increased its general acceptance. It is particularly appealing to those who are benefiting the most from today’s stock-driven economy. And it contains enough truth to save it from being labeled fiction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e For many reasons, however, the explanation has gradually become more fiction than fact. One reason is that little of the money that most people use to buy stocks for retirement accounts ever gets to the companies. Instead, it goes to previous stockholders through trades that often help increase stock prices, thus increasing the base on which phantom wealth is built.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As we will see, there are few positive links between the stock market and large companies. There are negative links, however, that work backwards from the conventional explanation. Important parts of the economy are running in spite of the stock market rather than because of it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Even the prevailing formulas that are used to manage retirement accounts have a fatal flaw. Based on these formulas, baby boomers are buying large quantities of stocks and inflating the prices. But nobody knows what prices they will receive when they have to sell their stocks for retirement income. We will explain why there are serious risks that the stock-based retirement formulas may turn out instead to be formulas for an economic depression.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Money Isn’t Everything\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e We in this country are constantly being bombarded by magazines, television programs, Internet sites, investment advisory services, brokers, and even banks purporting to explain how easy it is to make money with stocks. The financial services industry has large advertising budgets to convince us that if we save and invest in stocks, we can plan to enjoy years of retirement. All we need to do is buy enough of them soon enough and build a kitty that is large enough.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e If you sense that something is missing in all this advice, you are right. As this book goes to press, the appealing idea that one can get something for nothing and create wealth out of thin air is working. But for baby boomers’ retirement plans, the idea is fundamentally flawed, because it rests almost entirely on phantom wealth and transfers of money from workers to retirees. 4\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Some members of the baby boom generation will have enough money to retire in comfort when they choose to. But as we will discuss, millions of other boomers will have meager retirement incomes, and many of them who hope or expect to retire will find that they have to work well beyond their mid-sixties.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It is important to understand that a sustainable system for older people involves a lot more than just money. It must provide adequate supplies of the things that money is used to buy, including the broad array of goods and services that are needed by most people of limited means. The economy now serves affluent people of all ages better than those who are less well-to-do.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A sustainable system must provide opportunities for millions of people to work at jobs that are appropriate for their interests, capabilities, and limitations. As a growing fraction of the country’s adults live longer, they will have to help make the pie from which they will receive their slice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Finally, a sustainable system must encourage people to find satisfaction and fulfillment by living more simply and within their means, limiting the amount they consume. This will be both an economic and an environmental necessity. Indeed, the consequences of this country’s aging population will reinforce points that environmentalists have been making for decades.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Related Views\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Many books have already discussed some aspects of what we will discuss here. Three of the best present a triangle of concerns.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In The Post-Corporate World, David C. Korten explains in extensive detail how large corporations are shaping the world to serve their own ends and the ends of their stockholders as opposed to communities, society, and the environment.1\u003cbr\u003e In The Emperor’s Nightingale: Restoring the Integrity of the Corporation in the Age of Shareholder Activism, Robert A. G. Monks explains how large corporations are out of control from a social standpoint and suggests that large institutional stockholders such as pension funds should bring them into line to better serve society.2 5\u003cbr\u003e In Gray Dawn, Peter G. Peterson explains how the populations of most developed countries are aging even faster than America’s, and he discusses the social, political, and economic dislocations that may be expected to occur throughout the developed world.3\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e These are strong books by responsible authors who have wide business experience and deep concerns for this country. They have different ideas about what should be done, but in combination they show the need to review where the country is today, where it is going, and why effective actions must be taken while there is still time to prevent disaster. The themes about corporations, investments, and aging populations that run throughout these books provide a good background for the five main messages of this book.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The Challenge\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Those three books present the country with a challenge, but the challenge is even bigger. In The Fourth Turning, William Strauss and Neil Howe explain five hundred years of Anglo-American history as a series of cycles.4 Each cycle includes four seasons or turnings. As the authors describe them:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order is implanted and the old values regime decays.\u003cbr\u003e The Second Turning is an Awakening, a passionate era of spiritual upheaval, when the civic order comes under attack from a new values regime.\u003cbr\u003e The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions, when the old civic order decays and a new values regime is implanted.6\u003cbr\u003e The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one.\u003cbr\u003e The authors say that the cycles tend to be repeated roughly every eighty to one hundred years because no one lives long enough to remember and avoid the mistakes that were made during the corresponding phase of the previous cycle.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Strauss and Howe assert that, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the United States is about to enter the Fourth Turning, or the crisis phase, of the current cycle. This cycle began as World War II came to a close, just before baby boomers started to appear. The authors predict that the next crisis phase will be similar to the crisis phases of the two previous cycles: one that included the Civil War and the other that included the Great Depression and World War II.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e They predict the next crisis will start early in the twenty-first century—just when demographic trends are going to roil most developed countries, according to Peterson. Strauss and Howe don’t think the next crisis can be prevented because they don’t believe people can learn from the earlier crises and act to prevent it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e They may be right. But do they have to be?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e What If Boomers Can’t Retire? was written in the belief that if enough Americans understand what is happening and where their actions are leading them, they will be able to make the changes necessary to prevent another crisis that could include the depression that Strauss and Howe predict.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This country is exceptionally lucky as it enters the twenty-first century for three reasons:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Rarely is it possible for people to see an impending national disaster in time to prevent it from happening. This is one of those few times.\u003cbr\u003e As the five major messages of this book show, the present situation is easy to understand.\u003cbr\u003e America has a history of responding to challenges.7\u003cbr\u003e Will the United States rise to this challenge as it has risen to challenges so many times before?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Highlights\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Each chapter in this book includes one or more Highlights, brief summaries of important points made in the chapter. The Highlights form a logical chain to support the book’s five major messages. The following list of chapters and their Highlights provides a summary of the book.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 1: Social Security: The Tip of the Retirement Iceberg\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 1. Today, there are about 35 million people over age 65. By 2030, that number is expected to double.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 2. The Social Security problem is that more people are living longer and expecting to receive retirement benefits during their additional years that will have to be paid by relatively fewer workers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 3. Stocks can’t solve the Social Security problem because to help pay retirement benefits, they would have to be sold to the same workers who can’t continue the program as it operates today.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 4. The so-called solutions that would use stocks to solve the Social Security problem would have far worse consequences and would make the program even weaker.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 2: Can Stocks Help Baby Boomers Retire?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 5. The stocks-for-retirement (SFR) cycle has a front, or build-up half, and a back, or selling half. Today everybody is concentrating on the front half and ignoring the back half.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 6. Demographic projections and stock-buying patterns indicate that only about half of the workers who will be contributing to Social Security will have enough income to buy retired boomers’ stocks.8\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 7. System-failure analysis shows that the stocks-for-retirement cycle probably can’t work for most baby boomers because the most critical requirement of the cycle—adequate buying power—will be missing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 8. There are just two possible sources of returns from stocks—from within a company and from outside. The difference is critical.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 3: Views from Eight Other Books\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 9. Investment advice varies widely and is often contradictory.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 10. Much investment advice for boomers is irrelevant or wrong.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 4: How Baby Boomers’ Later Years Will Unfold\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 11. Many boomers are going to find themselves surprised when they learn they can’t retire as they anticipate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 12. The effects of aging baby boomers may cascade throughout the economy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 13. The trend toward retirement self-sufficiency will force many boomers to decide how long they expect to live. That is the Impossible Decision.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 14. Before the country increases its dependence on the stocks-for-retirement cycle, it should do and publicize a due-diligence, system-failure analysis that shows how the cycle can work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 5: Stocks, Wealth, and Phantom Wealth\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 15. Productive investors provide money that companies use to create real returns and real wealth. Parasitic investors don’t know or care who gets their money, and the returns they seek come primarily from outside the company as phantom wealth.9\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 6: The Drive to Create Phantom Wealth\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 16. Phantom returns can make a few people appear very rich—at least for a while.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 17. The drive to create phantom wealth hurts people, companies, communities, and society.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 7: Why Stock Prices Don’t Create Real Wealth\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 18. Only shares of a public corporation’s stock that trade set the price, but all shares are treated as being worth the price of the last trade.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 19. Stock prices result from the balance between supply and demand, but the balance is not as freely determined as market theorists say it is.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 20. Stock prices aren’t a realistic basis for evaluating either companies or retirement portfolios.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 8: How Phantom Wealth Hurts the Economy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 21. The drive to create phantom wealth has many hidden costs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 9: How We Can Meet Our Real Needs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 22. The phantom wealth structure is based on false expectations. The way to replace the structure is to remove the expectations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 10: What Individuals Can Do\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 23. Millions of individuals can help change the course of history by looking ahead and acting in their own interests and the interests of the country.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 11: What Organizations Can Do\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 10\u003cbr\u003e 24. The most important steps that organizations can take are to evaluate the national stocks-for-retirement cycle and, if they find that it is unreliable, to evaluate retirement portfolios realistically.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 25. There are vast opportunities for organizations that pioneer new types of sustainable investments, investment instruments, financial institutions, and business organizations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Chapter 12: Conclusion: How to Change a Very Big System\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 26. The key is to change a few critical things that will cause many other changes to ripple out and eventually to cascade.","brand":"Berrett-Koehler Publishers","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303570559205,"sku":"NP9781576752494","price":12.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781576752494.jpg?v=1767743840","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/what-if-boomers-cant-retire-isbn-9781576752494","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}