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TABLE OF CONTENTS I. THE ROLE OF SOCIAL SECURITY AND RETIREMENT SA VINGS 268 ACCOUNTS A. Social Security's Limited Scope and Purpose 268 B. The Function of Retirement Savings Plans [...], As retirement accounts proliferate and grow in value, American retirees are increasingly leaving substantial balances in these accounts to their adult children, siblings, and other relatives. Until recently, the new owners were able to withdraw funds from these tax-favored accounts over their lifetimes as their personal circumstances dictated. But legislation enacted in late 2019 and regulations issued in February 2022 have sharply limited the flexibility that non-spousal beneficiaries now have regarding such assets. This article examines those changes, analyzes their impact on the new owners of inherited retirement accounts, and considers what planning strategies are now appropriate.

TABLE OF CONTENTS I. HEALTH INSURANCE II. SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS III. INCOME TAXATION A. Taxation of Social Security Benefits B. Sale of a Principal Residence IV. EMPLOYMENT-BASED RETIREMENT PLANS V. [...]

This article examines and analyzes six major changes enacted by the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 pertaining to plan participants in existing retirement plans. Those changes relate to: (1) increased contribution limits for 60-year-old employees, (2) longevity annuities, (3) charitable gift annuities, (4) long-term care insurance, (5) unused funds in section 529 college savings plans, and (6) emergency withdrawals. These provisions vary considerably in their connection to the principal purpose of employer-provided retirement plans—namely, to finance the retirement of affected employees. But they represent Congressional efforts to address some of the deficiencies in the present tax-subsidized matrix of employer-provided retirement savings plans and may appeal to affected plan participants. In this regard, they continue the pattern in recent years of using pension plans to accommodate an ever-widening array of social initiatives that are related only tangentially, if at all, to providing income when plan participants retire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal and financial analyses abound about various means of saving for retirement and the lax advantages that they present, but very little attention has been paid to how retirement income [...]

Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth. By MICHAEL J. GRAETZ and IAN SHAPIRO. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005, pp. 372. By most economic measures, [...]

Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four. (1) Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which [...]

WEALTH AND DEMOCRACY: A POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN RICH. By Kevin Phillips. New York: Broadway Books. 2002. Pp. xxii, 473. $29.95. In this ambitious book, famed commentator and analyst [...]

Douglas Kellner's Media Culture is a masterful, assured exercise in interpretive analysis of the vast and varied corpus of contemporary American mass culture. Kellner invokes the label of 'critical media [...]

The New institutionalism's (NI) applicability to media studies is discussed by focusing on how journalism is entangled in the conflicts and values of the political field. NI has the potential to correct the blind spots in existing theories of the news by offering a more extended consideration of how politics and culture influence and are incorporated into the organization and institutions of news producers.

The United States relies on uncompensated family caregivers to provide most of the long-term care required by older adults as they age. But such care comes at a significant financial cost to these caregivers in the form of lower lifetime earnings and diminished (or even no) Social Security retirement benefits, ineligibility for Medicare coverage of their healthcare costs, and minimal retirement savings. To reduce the impact of uncompensated caregiving on the intergenerational transmission of poverty, this paper discusses three possible mechanisms of compensating family caregivers: public payments, deemed wage credits under Social Security, and income tax incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caregivers are key recipients of property transfers, both intervivos and testamentary. The law's treatment of property transfers to caregivers changes according to the caregiver's relationship to the person cared for. Where caregivers are related to care recipients, the law generally favors the structuring of property transfers to caregivers as capital, rather than income transfers. While the law accepts that individuals are often not compensated for providing daily care for their relatives, many family caregivers receive bequests larger than their intestate shares of the care recipient's estate. On the other hand, when caregivers are not related to care recipients, the law approaches the care relationship using the terminology and frame of labor law. Bequests to non-family caregivers can raise a presumption of undue influence. In this Article, we examine how the United States, Israel, and the United Kingdom approach property transfers to caregivers. The United States authorizes the payment of public benefits to family caregivers only in very restricted situations. The U.K. provides modest public benefits to many family caregivers. Israel incentivizes the employment of non-family caregivers but will pay family caregivers indirectly when assistance from non-relatives is unavailable. All three jurisdictions rely on family caregivers working for free or being compensated by the care recipients. We examine the advantages and disadvantages of several approaches to compensating family caregivers, including bequests from the care recipient, public benefits, tax incentives, private salaries paid by the care recipient, and claims against the recipient's estate. We conclude that while the provision of public benefits to family caregivers clearly needs to be increased, at least in the United States, a model funded exclusively by public money is probably impossible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article examines the role of religion in the creation and enforcement of advance medical directives. It begins by setting out the principal similarities and differences between the two types of such directives-- namely, living wills and health care proxies (or powers of attorney). It then considers the formulation of religiously oriented advance directives and their incorporation of religious doctrine and imperatives. The Article then addresses the impact that the religious views of an individual patient's treating physician might have on such directives. Finally, the Article analyzes religiously based challenges to the enforcement of advance medical directives, paying particular attention to the Terri Schiavo case and its continuing significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explains the evolution of Medicare government program in the U.S. over the past half century in the context of how other health insurance options operate today in the U.S. and also analyzes the changes introduced by the U.S. Affordable Care Act (ACA) in Medicare.

In late nineteenth-century USA, technological developments in paper production—a shift from a reliance on scarce cotton rag to plentiful wood—drastically reduced the price of newsprint. That decline helped overturn the reigning economics of the daily newspaper and resulted in the rise of new cheap papers with vastly expanded circulation. This novel mass press encompassed almost all Americans in the public sphere as represented by its pages. Focusing on newspapers in Detroit, this study examines the manifold consequences this shift had for the press's economics, its news agenda, and the implicit identity of the audience it addressed. The rise of a mass press in the late nineteenth century, however, was not specific to Detroit or the USA. As comparative historians have highlighted, the emergence of a mass press in Europe and elsewhere was a turning point that deeply marked the historical evolution of press systems around the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article explores the history of laws related to fringe benefits in the U.S. and discusses the efforts of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to create a consistent framework for analyzing fringe benefit exclusions. Topics discussed include confusion pervading the fringe benefit due to use of varying theories and justifications for excluding fringe benefits, need of exclusion of the fringe benefits from taxation, and the nonstatutory exclusions of the benefits.

In 1967, Guy Debord published his landmark analysis of the spectacle. Building on Marx’s theory of alienation, the spectacle describes our passive, quasi-visual relation to the social world. The individual, divorced from the collective praxis that constructs our social world, is reduced to consuming corporate-supplied entrancing narratives. This article explicates and assesses Debord’s theory. Its most serious defect is Debord’s rejection of the necessary intermediation of social life by culture and communication. Furthermore, his analysis subscribes to the trope of mass society, which sees the populace as culturally denuded, divorced from community and subject to the imposition of false needs. Against this alienated world, Debord pits the ideal of a collective revolutionary subject that freely creates society. However, both terms – alienated masses and revolutionary collective – are implicitly dependent upon liberal individualism, which abstracts individuals from the cultural traditions and social relations in which they are embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the reduction in the budgetary deficits and the health care reforms taken place in the U.S. The controversies related to Medicare programs, the misconceptions related to public initiative and the future of Medicare system of the U.S. is discussed. The myths related to Medicare which includes the bankruptcy of Medicare system, medical costs coverage and long term-care is also discussed.

The article offers film criticism of the 2002 motion picture "Spider-Man," directed by Sam Raimi. The depiction of romantic love in the motion picture between its lead man and woman characters is considered for how it exemplifies man-woman relationships in the U.S. at the time of the film's production. The battles between the two lead characters and a series of villains are discussed as battles with undesirable models of sex roles, specifically male sex roles.

The article focuses on the impact of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as the Obamacare, on elderly Americans. It examines the changes in Obamacare including the coverage of prescription drugs under Medicare Part D, long term care financing and Medicare managed plans. It cites the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act, the Independent Medicare Advisory Board and the reinsurance program. Conclusions indicated the significant impact of the 2010 Obamacare legislation on older Americans.

Analyzes U.S. pension law and policy in light of the Enron implosion and considers the implications of the analysis for privatizing Social Security. Shift in retirement funding risk from professionally managed plans to ordinary workers; Enron's problem of heavy concentration of 401(k) plans in employer stock; Premise of Social Security privatization that individuals should control their own retirement assets.

Discusses the conflict of interest that has pervaded the corporate accounting environment in the United States. Finding that auditor independence is the only reason to require that public corporations be audited by outsiders; Resolution of the conflict of interest by the Sarbanes-Oxley ACt of 2002; Failire of audits to uncover large frauds and major financial misstatements; Ways in which auditing firms have become too cozy with corporate management to provide an independent check on management's abuse of corporate financial reports.

This article focuses on American journalism. The American press's remarkable performance as chief governmental propagandist and flag-waver in the "war against terrorism" provides with insights into the real nature and identity of American journalism. Beyond a presentism that reads one's most fervent hopes and most ardent beliefs back into history, the press's performance in striking back at terrorism allows to explore a new and with opened eyes, the central dynamics and historical workings of the news media. Anyone tuning into the 24/7 headline machine of cable news during the last months of 2001, stretching from the attack on September 11 through the October and November war against the Taliban on into 2002, would see that the press moved within a fairly restricted range of views and information. Such parameters resulted from a mix of forces that doubtlessly included the patriotic fervour of the populace.

Analyzes the disclosure rules relating to a corporation's income tax in the United States in terms of their objectives. Evaluation of effective tax rates. Basic corporate tax accounting principles; Role of effective tax rates in examining a particular tax subsidy.

An essay is presented on the market interaction of Detroit, Michigan newspapers in 1865-1900. The author claims that newspapers, during strong competition, specialized their appeal to capture a share of readers that was defined in part by party divisions. He adds that the competition and the resulting market strategies by newspapers were strengthened and influenced by the introduction of the so-called political capital into the market.

Focuses on tax breaks granted United States corporations that significantly reduce the tax burden of the business sector. Tax law provisions available to businesses seeking to reduce their obligations; Measures used to compute an effective tax rate; Background on deferred taxes; Taxes levied on multinational corporations; Forms of tax breaks availed by companies.