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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.