This article discusses moral issues raised by defined contribution retirement plans, specifically 401(k) plans in the United States. The primary aim is to defend the claim that the federal government ought to require 401(k) plans to include a range of socially responsible investment (SRI) options. The analysis begins with the minimal assumption that corporations engage in behavior that imposes morally impermissible harms on others with sufficient regularity to warrant attention. After motivating this assumption, I argue that individual investors typically (...) share in the responsibility for the harms imposed by corporations in which they invest, and that they therefore have a moral obligation to incorporate considerations of social responsibility into their investment decisions, when possible, to avoid being complicit in morally impermissible corporate behavior. I further argue that individuals are subject to substantial institutional and structural pressures that create a powerful incentive to invest in 401(k) plans, even though such plans typically lack any SRI options. To eliminate this pressure to commit indirect harm in the process of saving for retirement, I recommend that the federal government requires 401(k) plans to incorporate a range of SRI options, and I defend this proposal from several possible objections. (shrink)

There has been a backlash from recently graduated proponents of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa that they are unemployed not just because of dwindling church member numbers, but mainly because contract posts are being filled by retired ministers and not by the proponents. International research suggests that the reason retired ministers continue working is not necessarily because they want to, but because they do not have sufficient retirement savings. The aim of this study was to examine the (...) perceptions of Dutch Reformed ministers who would reach retirement age within the next 5 years, in an effort to establish their preparedness for retirement. The respondents were sent a link to an online questionnaire and 147 useable questionnaires were returned, representing a response rate of 47.7%. The results indicated that almost half of the respondents stated that they would want to continue working in a part-time ministerial post after retirement and that the ministers’ motivation to continue working was directly linked to their lack of financial provision for retirement. A major cause for concern is the high number of respondents who selected the ‘uncertain’ response option for most of the retirement questions, as they are so close to retirement. An intervention to incorporate financial management specifically in theological training is urgently needed. (shrink)

As workforce aging continues through the next decade, the number of persons who will retire from long-held jobs and careers will increase. In recent years, researchers across disciplines of psychology have focused attention on the impact of the retirement process on post-retirement adjustment and well-being. One area that has received attention from investigators in both psychology and economics pertains to the impact of retirement planning on the retirement decision and post-retirement adjustment. The objective of the (...) current review is twohreefold. The first goal is to review the literature on retirement planning with attention to past conceptualizations and current theoretical specifications. Second, empirical work investigating the psychological antecedents of retirement planning is reviewed. The primary conclusion reached from this review is that, conceptually, retirement planning continues to be poorly delineated and, thereby, narrowly investigated. Empirically, cognitive antecedents of retirement planning continue to figure prominently in both workplace and retirement researches. The boundary conditions of retirement planning, as well as alternative mechanisms for adult wellbeing, are discussed. Specifically, retirement planning’s meaning amidst increasing job mobility and longer life expectancies are identified as two complementary areas for future empirical integration of work - retirement research domains. (shrink)

Drawing on detailed German panel data, we find that gifts and inheritances substantially increase households’ private pension savings in accounts which are costly or impossible to withdraw prematurely. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the average difference in bequest-induced private pension savings between heirs and non-heirs accrues to more than 40,000 euros at retirement, and that it would take an average non-heir household roughly 14 years to match this gap. The sizable difference in private pension savings between heirs and non-heirs persists (...) when we take into account other investments of heirs and non-heirs potentially intended to provide for old age. Our evidence supports the impact of gifts and inheritances on inequality in retirement wealth highlighted in recent research on intergenerational justice. We discuss several policy implications of our results. Online appendix. (shrink)

Old-age income protection is provided in wealthy democracies by publicly funded defined-benefit pensions. Budgetary challenges have forced policy makers to consider private alternatives to these traditional systems. I consider the shortcomings of private saving arrangements in duplicating the advantages of public pensions. Some shortcomings can be overcome by introducing compulsory elements into private saving plans. Worker contributions into such plans could be mandatory; some or all worker accumulations in the plans could be converted to annuities at retirement; (...) and workers’ investment choices could be narrowly circumscribed. These restrictions do not eliminate the biggest weakness of private saving plans. Fluctuations in asset prices make it hard even for well-informed savers to select an affordable saving rate and an investment strategy that will assure decent income in old age. Public pension systems partly insulate workers against economic and financial market risks by sharing those risks broadly across workers, retirees, and taxpayers in multiple generations. (shrink)

An influential line of thinking in behavioral science, to which the two authors have long subscribed, is that many of society's most pressing problems can be addressed cheaply and effectively at the level of the individual, without modifying the system in which the individual operates. We now believe this was a mistake, along with, we suspect, many colleagues in both the academic and policy communities. Results from such interventions have been disappointingly modest. But more importantly, they have guided many (though (...) by no means all) behavioral scientists to frame policy problems in individual, not systemic, terms: To adopt what we call the “i-frame,” rather than the “s-frame.” The difference may be more consequential than i-frame advocates have realized, by deflecting attention and support away from s-frame policies. Indeed, highlighting the i-frame is a long-established objective of corporate opponents of concerted systemic action such as regulation and taxation. We illustrate our argument briefly for six policy problems, and in depth with the examples of climate change, obesity, retirement savings, and pollution from plastic waste. We argue that the most important way in which behavioral scientists can contribute to public policy is by employing their skills to develop and implement value-creating system-level change. (shrink)

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 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. (shrink)

In the superannuation/pension industry, ordinary investors entrust their retirement savings to the trustees of the superannuation plan. Investors rely on the trustees to ensure that ethical business and risk management practices are implemented to protect their retirement savings. Governance practices ensure the monitoring of ethical risk management (Drennan, L. T.: 2004, Journal of Business Ethics 52, 257-266). The Australian superannuation industry presents a unique scenario. Legislation requires employers to contribute a minimum of 9% of the employees wage to (...) retirement savings. However, there are no legislated governance standards, although there are standards of recommended governance practices. In this article, we examine the level of voluntary adoption of governance practices by the trustees of Australian public sector and industry superannuation funds. We also assess whether superannuation governance practices are associated with performance and volatility /riskiness of returns. Survey results show that the majority of superannuation plans adopt recommended governance practices supporting the concept of ethical management of the member's retirement savings. The examination of governance principles that impact returns and risk shows that board size and regular review of conflicts are positively associated with return. Superannuation plans with higher volatility in returns meet more frequently. (shrink)

Recent findings from psychology and behavioral economics suggest that we are “predictably irrational” in the pursuit of our interests. Paternalists from both the social sciences and philosophy use these findings to defend interfering with people's consumption choices for their own good. We should tax soda, ban cigarettes, and mandate retirement savings to make people healthier and wealthier than they’d be on their own. Our thesis is that the standard arguments offered in support of restricting people’s consumption choices for their (...) own good also imply support for “epistocratic” restrictions on people’s voting choices for their own good. Indeed, the philosophical case for paternalistic restrictions on voting choices may be stronger than the case for restricting personal consumption choices. So, paternalists face a dilemma: either endorse less interference with consumption choices or more interference with voting choices. (shrink)

This paper presents rational and unanimously agreeable norms in (a) governance, (b) economic policy, (c) constitution and (d) religious and scientific beliefs for civilized coexistence. The basis of unanimous agreeability is that individuals do not prefer to have their wealth (including life) robbed, even surreptitiously. This preference is unanimous because even robbers do not want to be robbed. I argue that unanimously agreeable norms are necessary for civilized co-existence of humans and are consistent with the ancient philosophy (Hindutva), which originated (...) in India more than 3000 years BC and is reflected in Gita, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bhagavad_gita. Gita is considered by Courts of India as a philosophical document. The basic ethos of Gita is explicit and transparent: the state (King Dhristarastra) must not allow anyone (including privileged princes like Duryodhan) to take away others' (Pandavas') property even surreptitiously (through Sakuni's rigged game of Pashakhel). The modern constitution ordains freedom through rights to property, liberty and pursuit for happiness of individuals. But it has tacitly allowed establishment of a system (rules) of governance to facilitate surreptitious robbery. Individuals accumulate property like home and retirement savings with a hope to attain freedom, eventually, which they cannot achieve if they are robbed, even surreptitiously. The ancient philosophy of Gita prohibits robbery of any kind and, thus, guarantees hope for individual freedom. The modern philosophy—underlying the established system (rules) tacitly allowing surreptitious robbery—cannot, however, achieve individual freedom. Widespread or inclusive economic prosperity can be attained only if the constitution and rules of law are unanimously agreeable which will be consistent with ancient ethos but not modern philosophy. (shrink)

Drawing on behavioral economics, nudges (policy interventions based on choice architecture) have the capacity to strategically shape policymaking, subtly guiding individual behavior by adjusting their decision environment. Applied to enhance vaccinations, boost retirement savings, or promote healthy habits, these interventions align with consensus-defined well-being. As governments adopt nudges, scholars have explored their role in fostering virtues. This paper argues that nudges have the potential to efficiently contribute to virtuous development by instilling and sustaining habits, respecting individual choice, and ensuring (...) deliberation. It introduces the concept of virtue nudges, emphasizing the alignment of habits with virtues for targeted behavioral change and the formation of morally virtuous habits. (shrink)

The United States has introduced automatic enrollment into retirement savings schemes, and the United Kingdom is in the throes of doing so. The financial crisis has reminded us that returns on these schemes can be poor, even negative. Behavioral economics shows that people can be “nudged” into schemes regardless, but it also implies that the liberal account of market legitimation through informed choice cannot be applied. This article examines how risks are assigned in schemes and how enrollees might seek (...) recourse if their expectations are disappointed. Comparing the United States and the United Kingdom, it argues that enrollees are more likely to seek recourse from the government in the United Kingdom. The explanation can be found in regulatory decisions that reflect the structure of each country’s public pension scheme. This structure is conducive to private risk bearing in the United States, but not in the United Kingdom, suggesting that regulatory market liberalism is undermined by a residual approach to public provision. (shrink)

I make three points. First, the i-frame and s-frame are not helpful frameworks for thinking about behavioral public policy. Second, the authors ignore the role of politics: Policies (and the s-frame) require laws and regulations. Third, the research on retirement savings, which is all about the system, undercuts their claims.

After retirement, older people often find themselves far from their children and grandchildren, and many spend their last years isolated and alone. As traditional concepts of family and social institutions fragment, social networks weaken, leading to an epidemic of loneliness, and substance abuse and suicide in developed countries. In fact, life expectancy in the US has dropped for the past few years, in large part due to a dramatic increase in suicide and drug overdose. None of these social problems (...) is likely to be solved by metformin. They point to a crisis of identity and meaning, an existential crisis. In this context, one might wonder if we are already seeing the effects of tinkering with our lifespan. There are many more conclusions one could draw about the implications of longevity, many of which have been elegantly described in Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness, published by the President’s Council on Bioethics, which I used as a reference for this talk. I hope I have been successful in providing a 10,000-foot view of the questions of efforts to extend human longevity and its implications that will provoke thought and discussion. I would like to end these reflections by turning back to my favorite transhumans. The reason we love superheroes is not for their superior strength or intelligence, but their characters. They use their powers to protect and serve humanity rather than dominate or annihilate it. It is not their gadgetry that makes them great, but how they use it to save the vulnerable. Even as a small child I knew that if everyone acted the way they did, the world would be a better place. The moral of every story was that the “enhancement” humanity needed would not come as the fruit of technology, but of virtue. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Karl Barth and Christian Ethics: Living in Truth by William WerpehowskiJames W. SkillenKarl Barth and Christian Ethics: Living in Truth William Werpehowski BURLINGTON, VT: ASHGATE, 2014. 172 PP. $54.95 (PAPERBACK), $153.00 (CLOTH)In this two-part volume, William Werpehowski aims in part 1 to elucidate Karl Barth's "approach to the nature and source of the good, the divine command in its relation to the personal history of a moral agent, (...) and the place of narrative in Christian ethics" (xii). The author does this both by exposition of Barth's writings and by engaging with the arguments of other students of Barth, including James Gustafson, Stanley Hauerwas, John Webster, Matthew Rose, and Gerald McKenny. The titles of the chapters of part 1 indicate the ground being covered: "Divine Commands and Philosophical Dilemmas," "Command and History," "Narrative and Ethics," and "Realism and Discernment." In part 2 the author presents diverse essays on "virtue, moral practices, and discernment," most of which deal with the rearing and education of children, which shows the author's sympathy with Barth even as he draws on other traditions of Christian ethics.Werpehowski's exposition is generally clear and detailed as he seeks to explain and defend Barth's identification of the norm for human ethics with the subject, Jesus Christ. According to Barth, "humanity's obedience to God … must always be obedience to and conformity with Jesus Christ. He is the criterion by which is measured all demands on our behavior" (6). Furthermore, "God's eternal will is for humanity in Jesus Christ; the normative criterion is identical to God's will and the history it accomplishes" (7). Although the response to God's electing love in Christ should be willing obedience, Barth (with Werpehowski) does not deal substantively with the accountability of those who do not so respond. In the end, for Barth, God's "Yes" in Christ always trumps God's "No" to sin (see 65–69).At times the author's defense of Barth appears to be more a deflection of, than an engagement with, the criticism. One example: the author offers a brief summary of Nigel Biggar's sympathetic criticism of Barth at the point where he believes Barth deals inadequately with human responsibility and accountability. Werpehowski acknowledges the legitimacy of Biggar's point—"that the temporal world of eternal grace may be depicted as our one common world only if creaturely rationality and non-arbitrary moral justification are prominently affirmed" (63); he states that Biggar is trying to save Barth "at his best" from a weakness in his position. Yet Werpehowski's next step is to say that Biggar's correction "is in danger of being an overcorrection" because his [End Page 212] moral justification requirement "belongs more to the periphery of the ethics of [Barth's] divine command" (64). That requirement, says Werpehowski, "must be governed by the central significance of the gracious God who commands in the reality of the ethical event" (64).Werpehowski's book is worthy of careful study, especially by those who want to understand Barth in relation to other ethicists. A criticism I have concerns the limits of Barth's ethics with respect to human institutions and social practices for which humans bear communal responsibility. Werpehowski acknowledges that those limits are due to Barth's focus on the relation of Christ to the individual person in the "ethical event." By contrast, at a few points in part 2, Werpehowski draws in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who insists that it is in "friendships, families, work, citizenship, and life in the church" where Christ is present preserving and reconciling the world to God (141). Despite all the attention in recent decades to Christian social and political ethics, the author does little with that subject in either his assessment of Barth or in the chapters of part 2.James W. SkillenPresident (retired), Center for Public JusticeCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Over the past several years a cascade of corporate scandals have erupted. Savings and provisions for retirement have shrunk drastically. Jobs have been lost. One of the world's largest and best-known accounting firms is gone. Ordinary people have been hurt and they have lost confidence in business leaders. The on-going public debate over business ethics and corporate reform points to one common conclusion: Things cannot be corrected by simply adding more laws and new rules. The solution will come from (...) high moral leadership. The Heart of A Business Ethic is based on the Hansen-Wessner Lectureship Series established by the ServiceMaster Foundation to consider the source of moral authority and ethical behavior in business. The eight lectures in this series were presented at major universities in the U.S. and Britain, and brought together some of the most distinguished business experts of our time. What they have to say is important for business teachers and students, and business leaders at every level. The scandals at Enron, Tyco and others have generated many books on business ethics, but none offer the expertise or breadth of thinking that this volume does. The Heart of A Business Ethic is useful to professors, students, and practitioners who not only want to understand what has happened, but who also want to think through the basis for a new standard of morality in business. (shrink)

This case recounts the founding of HealthSouth Rehabilitation, its rapid growth, financial mishandlings and the struggle former CFO Aaron Beam had in dealing with a conscience that kept him awake at night. Beam had met HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy when applying for a job with Lifemark Hospital Corporation in Texas in 1980. After Lifemark was bought by AMI in 1983, Scrushy invited Beam to join him in the launching of his new company in Birmingham, Alabama. The uniqueness of the hospital (...) was that it would provide inpatient surgery for those who had suffered an injury, but it would also provide outpatient services such as rehabilitation, nutrition guidance and psychological counseling. This type of structure was appealing to insurance companies because it would move the patient out of the hospital much quicker and save the cost of extended hospitalization. The company experienced rapid growth and went public within three years of launch. By 1996, the top executives of the company realized that they would not be able to meet Wall Street analysts’ forecasts which would affect the price of their stock and reduce their holdings. They decided to “cook the books” temporarily to meet quarterly expectations. However, once the financial mishandling had begun, the executives found it difficult to reverse their actions and report accurate numbers to the public. Beam decided to retire from the company in 1996; and after this action, he continued to find it difficult to sleep at night because of his involvement in the fraud. The issue in the case is whether Beam should consider coming forward and revealing to the Securities and Exchange Commission how the books had been doctored so that he could salvage his damaged conscience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Controversy Between Schelling and Jacobi LEWIS S. FORD SCHELLING, ALONGWITH FICHTE, has suffered the fate of being labelled one of tIegel's predecessors. Richard Kroner provides the classic expression of this viewpoint in his monumental study, Von Kant bis Hegel, which examines Schelling's thought primarily for its contribution to Hegel's final synthesis.I In English we have Josiah Royce's sympathetic and lively account of Schelling's early romantic exuberance, regarded as (...) a transitional stage in the development of German idealism. 2 But this emphasis on the early ScheUing has led to an unfortunate neglect of his work subsequent to the break with Hegel in 1807. Schelling's romanticism, so ably documented by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., 3 can only be regarded as one phase in the total sweep of his thought, for, after the break with Hegel, Schelling produced at least three major works: the essay •ber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit,4 wrestling with the problem of evil and human freedom, the fragmentary Weltalter, 5 which in scope and dialectical intricacy should be compared with Hegel's Logic, and the Philosophie der Mythologie und Offenbarung, 6 furnishing a fundamental critique of the whole dialectical enterprise. Save for the essay on human freedom, however, none of these works were published during his lifetinm, as Schelling withdrew from the public eye after his controversies with Hegel and Jacobi. Thus the publishing histories of Schelling and Hegel are exactly reverse. Schelling rushed into print his early speculative gropings, while Hegel suppressed his/making the Ph~nomenologic des Geistes his first major publication. Then while Hegel's Logic and Encyclopedia were being publicly acclaimed, Schelling remained silent. This accident of history is largely responsible for the illusion that Schelling is the older of the two x (Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1921-24),2 vols. 2The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1892), Lecture VI, 164-189. Wordsworth and ScheUing, A Typological Study of Romanticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960),Yale Studies in English, Vol. CXLV. 4Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph yon Sehelling, Philosophische Untersuchungen i~berdas Wesen der menschlichen Freyheit und die damit zusaramenhdngenden Gegenstdnde, 1809. Reprinted in the Sdmmtliche Werke, Erste Abtheilung, VII. Band (Stuttgart und Augsburg: J. G. Cotta, 1856), 331-416. English translation by James Gutmann: Of Human Freedom (Chicago: Open Court, 1936). 5Three fragmentary versions of the Weltalter have been published. The Urfassungen of 1811 and 1813were edited by Manfrcd SehrSter and published as a separate Naehlassband to the M~nchener Jubildumsausgabe of the collected works: Die Weltalter, Fragmente (Munich: Biederstein, Leibniz, 1946). A later version is published in S.W. I: 8, pp. 195-344,which has been translated by Frederick de Wolfe Bolman, Jr. : The Ages of the World (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1942). 6Philosophie der Mythologie is published in S.W. II: 1-2; Philosophie der Offenbarung in S.W. II: 3-4. These essays were first collected and published by Herman Nohl in Hegels theologische Jugendschriften (Tiibingen: 1907).T. M. Knox translated them into English, with an introduction by Richard Kroner: GeorgWilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Early Theological Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948). [75] 76 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY thinkers (actually he was five years Hegel's junior), who retired from the philosophical scene after making his contribution to the Hegelian synthesis. Paul Tillich's doctoral dissertations s and Ernst Cassirer's studies in post-Kantian thought 9 made serious inroads on this conception, yet the iIInsion persisted. Their insistence on the importance of the later Schelling has been brilliantly sustained by two recent studies: Horst Fuhrmans's Schellings Philosophie der Weltalter1~and Walter Schulz's Die Vollendung des deutschen Idealismus in der Spdtphilosophie Schellings, ~ and we may hope that the conventional estimate of Schelling will be drastically revised. Fuhrmans has demonstrated that the split between the early and the later Schelling must be placed in the year 1806 when he came in contact with Franz yon Bander in Munich, who encouraged him to delve deeper into the theological and cosmological ramifications of Jacob Boehme's thought. TM The reorientation this caused is apparent in the essay on human freedom, published in 1809, but it was not fully exploited until the... (shrink)

Environmentalists do not appear to walk their walk as consistently as animal liberationists and anti-abortionists. Are we therefore more hypocritical? Maybe; but there's another explanation. Unlike concern for individual animals or individual fetuses, environmental concerns are holistic —air and waterpollution, species extinction, diminished ecological health and integrity. One pro-life pregnant woman may preserve the life of one unborn baby, the one in her uterus; and one animal liberationist can save the life of one animal, the one he didn't eat. But (...) one environmentalist who refuses to own and operate an automobile has no measurable effect on air pollution. Only collective, social change—universal banning of automobiles, mandatory recycling, etc.—will effectively redress environmental insults. Thus, the best way to put environmental ethics into practice is not to try to do one's bit—retire one's own car, recycle one's own waste—and leave it to every other person to do his or her bit and hope that all such individual environmental ethical acts will aggregate into significance. The best way to put environmental ethics into practice is to work to instill environmental values in society as the foundation for coercive environmental policies, regulations, and laws. The mechanistic-materialistic worldview and its associated consumerist value system trickled down into the collective consciousness via its technological manifestation in a plethora of machines. The systemic worldview in which environmental values are embedded may be communicated to the general public less by means of discursive discourse than by a new generation of systemic-electronic technologies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Limits of Our ObligationsRyan C. MavesDisclaimers. No funding was utilized for this manuscript. Dr. Maves is a retired U.S. Navy officer, and the opinions contained herein are his own. The opinions in this manuscript do not reflect the official opinion of the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense, nor of the U.S. Government.In 2012, I was a commander in the United States Navy, deployed to the NATO (...) Role 3 Multinational Medical Unit in Kandahar Airfield (KAF), Afghanistan. The KAF Role 3 began as a tent hospital under Canadian command, built along the flight line at Ahmad Shah Baba International Airport as [End Page 176] part of an expanding NATO base. By the time of my arrival, it was a small but capable brick-and-mortar building under U.S. Navy command, with four operating rooms, two CT scanners, and a busy intensive care unit (ICU).Not long before my deployment, the KAF Role 3 was described as one of the busiest trauma hospitals in the world. Casualties arrived every day, usually by helicopter. Blast injuries from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were common, ranging in severity from concussions in passengers in armored vehicles, to multiple amputations from blast injuries with concomitant thoracic, abdominal, and pelvic trauma. KAF had a daytime population of over 30,000 in 2012, and our hospital was effectively the referral center for the region, so patients with non-surgical diagnoses were similarly common: myocardial infarctions, seizures, pulmonary emboli, and endemic infections, to name a few.As an infectious disease (I.D.) specialist, I functioned mainly as a hospitalist, managing patients postoperatively, but I also provided any consultative support when needed. During mass casualty events, the intensivists and I would act as backups in the trauma bay, freeing up the surgeons for the most acutely injured patients. It turned out that an I.D. doctor’s skillset lent itself well to acute trauma evaluations; we are well known for having an eye for fine details, combined with low-grade paranoia. These traits served me well during what I came to describe as “my involuntary trauma fellowship.”Our patients could be divided into five key groups: Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF, including the army and national police), non-Afghan coalition military (mostly U.S. and other NATO members), Afghan civilians, NATO civilian contract staff, and the Taliban. Our approach to each of these groups was different. For all patient groups, we would provide the same emergency care, including acute resuscitation and immediate life-saving surgery. It was after this emergency care period that our management plans diverged.For coalition forces, our next priority after acute resuscitation and stabilization was to assess whether a patient could remain in theater. Stable patients with relatively minor injuries could often undergo rehabilitation at KAF; many personnel could subsequently return to combat duty with their units. More seriously-injured patients would be transported out of Afghanistan within 24-48 hours (if not faster). Usually, this would involve stops at Bagram Airfield near Kabul and then Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany before reaching a military hospital in their home countries. There were few limits on whom could be transported. Dedicated critical care air transport teams (CCATT) included intensivists, respiratory therapists, and critical care nurses, who could manage the most unstable patients on board what was effectively a flying ICU. The “lung team” in Landstuhl could fly to KAF to start patients with severe respiratory failure on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and then fly them out on maximal support.NATO civilian contractors would receive comparable care, although the exact details of how they would be transported out of theater would depend on their home countries and the nature of their contract. We cared for one civilian contractor with newly-diagnosed HIV infection whom we were able to stabilize on the ventilator, get him extubated, start on initial antiretroviral therapy, and transport him home with a referral to his local HIV care program.Afghan soldiers were part of the coalition, but there was no distant home country where we could transport them. They were home. After their resuscitations and surgeries, we would arrange transfer to the Kandahar Regional... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Living with Blindness and Fibromyalgia while Occupying AgingKatherine SchneiderI’m blind from birth and in middle age developed fibromyalgia. I’ve retired from a thirty year career as a clinical psychologist and am working on my third book tentatively titled “Occupying Aging: Delights, Disabilities and Daily Life.” My relationship with medical professionals includes gratitude (without good care I would not be alive) and also frustration for assumptions often made about my (...) abilities. I write from the perspectives of an impatient patient, woman living in the United States, former provider of mental health services, person with both invisible and visible disabilities, and boomer moving into the world of the aged. My stories are mine of course, but when I swap medical stories with blind friends, similar happenings abound.When my mom fell down the stairs at a friend’s house, five months pregnant with me, she was told to go to bed for the next four months to save the pregnancy. Thus began the impact of health care professionals on me. I was born a month premature and spent my first month in an incubator. In 1949 it wasn’t known that the enriched oxygen atmosphere in an incubator would cause blindness. At least one lawsuit was filed against physicians and a hospital by a person blinded in this way. A large out–of–court settlement was received. The way I look at it, the health care community did the best they knew and without enough oxygen, I would have died.Early in my life, my parents took me to several ophthalmologists to see what could be done for my vision. Family folklore has it that I could smell a hospital as we entered and would begin howling. These early traumatic experiences may have led to my current healthy lifestyle so I don’t have to go to doctors much now. By about age five, it was clear that nothing could be done about my vision. For the next twenty years my forays into the health care system were for tonsillitis, sprains, and the usual childhood ills.In my early twenties, I developed acute glaucoma in one eye—caused, I’m convinced, by birth control pills. In seeking treatment for this condition, I encountered the first truly insensitive physician I’d met, who said, “Your eyes aren’t doing you any good; let’s take them out.” I was horrified! They were my eyes. I was attached to them, psychologically as well as physically. It turned out that a simple operation relieved the pressure and allowed me to keep my eyes. True, they are not the best looking big brown eyes around, but they did come with the package.Life with blindness seemed quite straightforward until my early forties, when I developed extreme fatigue and pain all over. I was worried. I knew a blind woman who had developed multiple sclerosis and I admired her, but I did not want to walk in her brave footsteps. Then a college student came to see me with the same symptoms and said that she had recently been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I am often very empathetic with people’s concerns, but this time she complimented me by saying, “You’re great! You seem to know just how I feel.” I sagely counseled her about portioning out her energy carefully, prioritizing, using short cuts, and taking elevators when possible. Being an adult [End Page 216] student used to overachieving, she did not like what I was saying, but said she’d try to follow my advice because she could no longer do it all.What finally broke through my own denial was the day coiling up a hose and dragging it to the basement for the winter took me an hour. It left me totally exhausted and I figured that even being middle aged couldn’t account for feeling that awful.After a thorough physical and plenty of blood work to rule out Lyme disease and multiple sclerosis, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and placed on low doses of antidepressants to help me sleep through the night. The medication worked and I began to feel like myself again. My battle to accept that... (shrink)

Rawlsian justice as fairness is neither fundamentally luck egalitarian nor relational egalitarian. Rather, the most fundamental idea is that of society as a fair system of cooperation. Collective pensions provide a case study which illustrates the fruitfulness of conceiving justice in these latter terms. Those who have recently reached the age of majority do not now know how long they will live in retirement or how well any investments they try to save up for their retirement would fare. (...) From the perspective of the beginning of their working lives, it is therefore rational for each to enter into an agreement with others, who also do not yet know their fates, that, if one turns out to be among the unfortunate whose private pension pots would not have yielded enough for one’s retirement, one will receive much more in retirement, whereas those whose pension pots would have overflowed their retirements will receive somewhat less. These terms are to each person’s expected advantage, which is made possible by a fair sharing of the fruits of social cooperation which arise through the efficiencies reaped by the pooling of the risk of outliving what one could save for one’s retirement on one’s own. It is rational for each to agree to share one another’s fates by pooling risks across both space and time, on fair terms of social cooperation for mutual advantage. Even when collective pensions arise from, and are proportional to, a baseline of unequal income, they can be defended on grounds of reciprocity involving regard for one another as equals. (shrink)

Development and strengthening of private pension funds market is impossible without a thorough analysis of its current state, identify unresolved problems in operation. Given the results of the analysis of investment of a fund can be identified difficulties in development funds: - negative impact of the crisis on the financial system as a whole, so that was undermined public confidence in all financial institutions; - reduce solvency population as rising prices, utility costs, and wages almost "frozen", save for retirement (...) is becoming increasingly difficult; - coagulation participation of employers in pension programs for their employees, because in times of crisis, many companies find themselves in dire financial straits and limited amounts of pension contributions; - negative signal to the scheme as slowed down compared to the pre-crisis period of growth by pension funds; - need to improve pension schemes and improving the investment of pension funds; - data reporting of private pension funds show a decrease yields of most funds. Private pension funds should be able to use options, but only to hedge risks on stocks, as most other assets, placing the premiums of private pension funds - a fixed income. Application options would allow private pension funds to hedge against decline in the market value of the shares. Of course, the use of options will decrease the yield of pension funds, but they will be no significant damage. (shrink)

This volume of Burke's writings and speeches is divided into two parts. The first covers the period between the time of his retirement from the House of Commons in 1794 and his death in 1797. His main preoccupation during this period was, of course, the French Revolution and the progress of the war against France. Surveying developments with dismay and apprehension, he produced a critique of the Revolution which expressed much of his mature thinking on political and social life, (...) and issued a clarion call for a European crusade to save civilization. Part II contains Burke's writings and speeches relating to Ireland. From his entry into political life, he was intensely interested in Irish problems, religious, economic, and constitutional, and in Anglo-Irish relations. Fervently believing that Great Britain and Ireland should be partners within the Empire, in his last years he was deeply disturbed by the influence of the French Revolution on Irish politics. (shrink)

Despite its oft-noted ambiguities, critical reception of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner ; Director's Cut ; Final Cut ) has tended to converge upon seeing it as a futuristic sci-fi film noir whose central concern is what it means to be human, a question that is fraught given the increasingly human-like replicants designed and manufactured by the Tyrell Corporation for human use on off-world colonies. Within the terms of this way of seeing things a great deal of discussion has been devoted (...) to putative criteria of being human and the question whether the once-retired blade runner, Rick Deckard, is or is not a replicant. I aim to explore a radically different course of interpretation, which sees the film in fundamentally moral and religious terms. Put in the starkest light, the film is not about what makes us human but whether we can be saved from ourselves, from our terrifying inhumanity, our moral blindness. (shrink)

The traditional view of tax holds that consumption taxes fail tax the yield to capital, whereas income taxes do, leading to John Stuart Mill's criticism of the income tax as a "double tax" on wealth that is saved. A better analytic understanding illustrates that there are two types of consumption taxes. A prepaid consumption or (equivalently) wage tax indeed ignores the yield to capital. But a consistent progressive postpaid consumption tax gets at such yield, at the individual level, when but (...) only when the returns to capital are used to elevate lifestyles in material terms. Such a tax allows "ordinary" savings that move around labor earnings, in constant dollar terms, to different periods of an individual's life, such as times of retirement or heightened medical or educational needs. Because a progressive postpaid consumption tax falls on the yield to capital at the right time-when its use at the individual level becomes manifest-all other taxes on capital, such as capital gains, gift and estate, and corporate income taxes, can and should be repealed, in the name of fairness. Footnotesa I thank the editors, my research assistants Alex Baskin and Nina Kang, and the other contributors to this volume for their helpful comments. (shrink)

Lawyers in many jurisdictions are ageing, and yet there is little information concerning the age profile of the legal profession. This paper presents the first consideration of the age profile of lawyers outside of the US, showing that Australian lawyers are ageing and delaying retirement. These findings have serious implications. Problems associated with a growing proportion of older lawyers include an increasing risk of lawyers suffering from age-related cognitive and physical impairment, and the related rise of complaints and malpractice (...) claims against older lawyers. It is also clear that the Australian legal profession is unprepared to address these problems. The legal profession has ignored important gender-specific implications of ageing, such as female lawyers experiencing menopause and the lower savings of female lawyers moving into retirement. Regulatory regimes have not considered the impact of the profession's ageing profile, and there is no mandatory reporting of lawyers suffering from age-related impairment or provisions should a lawyer die. The profession also has not provided strategies to positively transition lawyers into retirement, and there is a lack of flexible working arrangements and succession planning, especially in firms located outside urban centres. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 145-147. Here I accoutred myself in my new habiliments; and, having em- ployed the same precautions as before, retired from my lodging at a time least exposed to observation. It is unnecessary to des- cribe the particulars of my new equipage; suffice it to say, that one of my cares was to discolour my complexion, and give it the dun and sallow hue which is in most instances characteristic of the tribe to which I assumed to belong; (...) and that when my metamorphosis was finished, I could not, upon the strictest ex- amination, conceive that any one could have traced out the per- son of Caleb Williams in this new disguise. William Godwin Caleb Williams (352). Giorgio Agamben. Nudities . Trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. 144 pp. | 10 illustrations. | ISBN: 9780804769501 | $16.95 A. The Protective Overcoat. The most pervasive, resilient, robust, sneaky, and significant concept in all of Giorgio Agamben’s essays is that of separation. This is not the same as alienation. Separation is more nostalgic, for Agamben valorizes an ancient world in which human society and its beings were not subject to such separation. He implies that these separations are damaging to human beings, crippling them at the very level of their identities. $4.99 B. The Handsome Gloves. Giorgio Agamben’s Nudities , like Profanations before it, employs a wide range of subjects in order to establish separation as a metaphor, in much the same way that interdisciplinary scholars have adopted Michel Foucault’s concepts in order to rethink societies and texts. The longest essay from Profanations, entitled “In Praise of Profanation,” laments humankind’s inability to profane as the result of what Walter Benjamin has called “the capitalist religion.” Likewise, “Nudity” adopts a pessimistic stance on the Christian theological tradition’s perverse asphyxiation of the unclothed body. $2.50 C. The Hoop Earrings. Religion separates humans from things by procuring for itself items as “sacred,” thus taking them out of common use. In this state, human beings are unable to play with them, unable to change their use-value. They become off-limits, museified. $1,499.00 D. The Uncomfortable Shoes. Biometrics polices identity, replacing meaningful metrics of identity. It is a deplorable situation that leaves human beings in danger of, and indeed already victims of, mass persecution. $111.75 E. The Prince Albert. One could characterize Giorgio Agamben’s desire to catalogue a history of ignorance as a recognition that human beings are separated from knowledge by language. Where then is the prophet, and how shall we be saved? $49.50 + tip F. The Corset. Franz Kafka’s character of Joseph K. has put himself on trial, as in Roman trials when the Kalumniator was marked with the letter K. The torture he undergoes is meant to elicit a confession of the truth. It is possible that Giorgio Agamben perceives his role as a philosopher to be confined to self-trial, and that with every passage he flays the unclothed page with prophetic intent. $27.00 G. The Derby. Giorgio Agamben himself tries to bridge various separations through exploratory play. He is not a performative writer semantically, but his exploratory style is rooted in the play spirit. His strategy of numbering points is almost comical, yet it is not misleading. It is play, after all, not ruse. He denudes with pecks, like carrion on a tattered corpse. $11.00 H. The Trousers. Although Giorgio Agamben is elsewhere concerned with the profanation of religion’s apparatuses, in essay nine he would like to consider what is consumed during days of inoperativity, how religion governs these, and how to account for our binges and purges. Inoperativity is inextricably bound to feasting, to the festival. $24.50 I. The Stylish Belt. The only essay in Nudities to contain photographs is the essay entitled, “Nudity.” All of these photographs project human bodies. $.01 I The aim here is not to tap into an original state prior to the separation but to comprehend and neutralize the apparatus that produced this separation. (66) II The contemporary is he who firmly holds his gaze on his own time so as to perceive not its light but rather its darkness. (13) III We can therefore only experience nudity as a denudation and a baring, never as a form and a stable possession. (65) IV Just as genius and talent originally distinct and even opposite—are nevertheless united in the work of the poet, so the work of creation and the work of salvation, inasmuch as they represent the two powers of a single God, remain in some way secretly conjoined. (6) V In our culture, the face-body relationship is marked by a fundamental asymmetry, in that our faces remain for the most part naked, while our bodies are normally covered. (88) VI Every man initiates a slanderous trial against himself. (21) VII The glorious body is not some other body, more agile and beautiful, more luminous and spiritual; it is the body itself, at the moment when inoperativity removes the spell from it and opens it up to a new possible common use. (103) VIII As Kleist understood so well, the relationship with a zone of nonknowledge is a dance. (114) IX The deactivation of this apparatus retroactively operates, therefore, as much on nature as on grace, as much on nudity as on clothing, liberating them from their theological signature. (90) X At any rate, whether festive inoperativity precedes religion or results from the profanation of its apparatuses, what is essential here is a dimension of praxis in which simple, quotidian human activities are neither negated nor abolished but suspended and rendered inoperative in order to be exhibited, as such, in a festive manner. (112) XI This is just how much [of] the land [the] surveyor is allowed to catch a glimpse. (36). (shrink)

The subject of this paper is to analyse the reconstruction of the pension system resulting from legislative changes introduced in 2011, the most important being the transfer of part of pension contributions from the open pension fund (OFE) to a newly set up special subaccount managed by the Social Insurance Institution, modifications in administrative regulation of open pension funds investment policy and introduction of tax incentives for making additional savings for retirement purposes. These transformations result from assumed financial goals (...) such as reduction of public debt growth by reducing the cost of introducing the second capital pillar in 1999. However, given the social importance of pension insurance the changes should be assessed against assumptions of the pension reform of 1999 and constitutional principles. Key words. (shrink)

Lawyers in many jurisdictions are ageing, and yet there is little information concerning the age profile of the legal profession. This paper presents the first consideration of the age profile of lawyers outside of the US, showing that Australian lawyers are ageing and delaying retirement. These findings have serious implications. Problems associated with a growing proportion of older lawyers include an increasing risk of lawyers suffering from age-related cognitive and physical impairment, and the related rise of complaints and malpractice (...) claims against older lawyers. It is also clear that the Australian legal profession is unprepared to address these problems. The legal profession has ignored important gender-specific implications of ageing, such as female lawyers experiencing menopause and the lower savings of female lawyers moving into retirement. Regulatory regimes have not considered the impact of the profession's ageing profile, and there is no mandatory reporting of lawyers suffering from age-related impairment or provisions should a lawyer die. The profession also has not provided strategies to positively transition lawyers into retirement, and there is a lack of flexible working arrangements and succession planning, especially in firms located outside urban centres. (shrink)

T. C. Boyle’s A Friend of the Earth (2001), tells the story of Tyrone Tierwater, a one time monkeywrencher and environmental avenger for “E. F.!” (Earth Forever!) who we first meet in 2025 in his mid-seventies. Tierwater is now working for a character based on Michael Jackson, who in his semi-retirement has employed the elder eco-warrior to help save some of the last remnants of a few dying species – warthogs, peccaries, hyenas, jackals, lions and what is likely the (...) last Patagoninan fox. The not too distant environmental future painted by Boyle is a disaster. Global warming has finally caught up to us with a vengeance and even the secure shores of the U.S. are wracked by unmitigated cycles of flooding and drought seriously degrading most semblances of life as we know it. To be sure, though, people, and some versions of progress, go on. While most affordable food and drink is limited to some combination of catfish and sake (very little else having survived decades of disastrous weather and a series of crop blights), and there are constant threats of new strains of life-threatening and highly contagious diseases, suburban development continues and new humans come into existence with the promise, at least in the developed world, of longer life spans. But Boyle does not give us anything like the overly optimistic views expressed by some conservative columnists who dismiss the need for global climate treaties; this is not an environmental future that is only felt with difficulty in the underdeveloped south requiring simpler economic readjustments for Americans without a substantial shift in lifestyle. The world.. (shrink)

The contemporary physical description of the universe reflects the inanimate world only. Broadening this description by including life may limit the application of well?established physical laws and may find new forces of the universe governing living organizations. This may also require adoption of some new assumptions and methodological principles, such as a broader principle of uncertainty, and recognition of the fact that humans? ability to manifest biofield communication is distributed very unevenly in the population. Based on available body of scientific (...) literature it is suggested that at this time, before the theoretical basis of the biofield is developed, it is important to conduct a broad experimental study of highly psi?gifted individuals in order to accumulate scientific knowledge of humans? ability to interact with matter, i.e., known physical fields and living organisms by intent. One can expect that current studies of organisms? genomes and attempts to utilize stem cells in medicine will call for the recognition of the biofield and its operative control function in organisms. However, developing a from?the?top?down view on the organism by the suggested approach will shorten this process and it deserves appropriate investment of social resources. (shrink)

With few exceptions, the literature on withdrawing and withholding life-saving treatment considers the bare fact of withdrawing or withholding to lack any ethical significance. If anything, the professional guidelines on this matter are even more uniform. However, while no small degree of progress has been made toward persuading healthcare professionals to withhold treatments that are unlikely to provide significant benefit, it is clear that a certain level of ambivalence remains with regard to withdrawing treatment. Given that the absence of (...) clinical benefit means treating patients is not only ethically questionable but also taxing on resources that could meet the needs of others, this ambivalence is troubling. Equally, the enduring ambivalence of professionals might be taken to indicate that the issue warrants further attention. In this paper, we review the academic literature on the ethical equivalence of withdrawing and withholding medical treatment. While we are not in outright disagreement with the arguments presented, we suggest that asserting theoretical and decontextualized claims about the ethical equivalence of withdrawing and withholding life-saving treatment does not fully illuminate the moral questions associated with the relevant clinical realities. We argue that what is required is a broader perspective, one rooted in an understanding that withdrawing and withholding life-saving treatment are different practices, the meanings of which are fully comprehensible only through an appreciation of their place within the practice of healthcare more generally. Such an account suggests that if one is to engage with the inappropriate protraction of life-saving treatment resulting from healthcare professionals’ disinclination to withdraw it, then the differences between these practices should be taken seriously. (shrink)

In the recent literature across philosophy, medicine and public health policy, many influential arguments have been put forward to support the use of randomization procedures to allocate scarce life-saving resources. In this paper, I provide a systematic categorization and a critical evaluation of these arguments. I shall argue that those arguments justify using RAND to allocate SLSR in fewer cases than their proponents maintain and that the relevant decision-makers should typically allocate SLSR directly to the individuals with the strongest (...) claims to these resources rather than use RAND to allocate such resources. (shrink)

A large part of the debate around the right to refuse life-prolonging treatment of anorexia nervosa sufferers centers on the issue of competence. Whether or not the anorexic should be allowed to refuse life-saving treatment does not depend solely or primarily on competence. It also depends on whether the anorexic’s suffering is bearable or tractable, and on the degree of involvement of the family in the therapeutic process. Anorexics could be competent to refuse lifesaving treatment (Giordano 2008). However, the (...) anorexic’s refusal of life-saving treatment should not be respected purely because it is a competent decision. In fact, anorexia has two characteristics that weaken the strength of the principle .. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore how children learn to form new relationships with nature. It draws on a longitudinal case study of children participating in a stewardship project involving the conservation of salamanders during the school day in Stockholm, Sweden. The qualitative method includes two waves of data collection: when a group of 10-year-old children participated in the project (2015) and two years after they participated (2017). We conducted 49 interviews with children as well as using participant (...) observations and questionnaires. We found indications that children developed sympathy for salamanders and increased concern and care for nature, and that such relationships persisted two years after participation. Our rich qualitative data suggest that whole situations of sufficient unpredictability triggering free exploration of the area, direct sensory contact and significant experiences of interacting with a species were important for children’s development of affective relationships with the salamander species and with nature in an open-ended sense. Saving the lives of trapped animals enabled direct sensory interaction, feedback, increased understanding, and development of new skills for dynamically exploring further ways of saving species in an interactive process experienced as deeply meaningful, enjoyable and connecting. The behavioural setting instilled a sense of pride and commitment, and the high degree of responsibility given to the children while exploring the habitat during authentic situations enriched children’s enjoyment. The study has implications for the design of education programmes that aim to connect children with nature and for a child-sensitive urban policy that supports authentic nature situations in close spatial proximity to preschools and schools. (shrink)

Neste livro, os territórios e as territorialidades foram enfocados por diferentes prismáticas - a ambiguidade e a multidimensionalidade do conceito de território que transcende a ciência geográfica; a diáspora que engendra territorialidades múltiplas e espaços móveis da vida entre-territórios efetivada na mobilidade; a governança e a regulação como mecanismos da configuração territorial em que estados, empresas, redes se combinam; a relação espaço-território e as trajetórias e categorias construídas pelas pessoas; o conceito de território na obra de Jean Gottmann; a relação (...) entre geografia, cartografia, a co-relação espaço-território e os processos de contenção territorial com a dialética tempo; e outros temas. Isso revela a existência de diferentes perspectivas de abordagens, concepções e geografias que se constituem a partir das escolhas filosóficas, ontológicas e políticas dos autores e grupos de estudos, caracterizando um momento-período de expansão e diversificação da geografia. A principal contribuição desse livro é mostrar ao leitor traços dessas perspectivas. (shrink)

Goodman and Lederman (2020) argue that the traditional Fregean strategy for preserving the validity of Leibniz’s Law of substitution fails when confronted with apparent counterexamples involving proper names embedded under propositional attitude verbs. We argue, on the contrary, that the Fregean strategy succeeds and that Goodman and Lederman’s argument misfires.