The prospect of a comfortable retirement has, unfortunately, become an increasingly elusive dream and it is Downhill from Here.

In 2017, less than half of US employers provided a company-sponsored retirement plan. Even employees who thought they were covered have lost their retirement to bankruptcy and recent changes in the law allowing companies to renege on their agreements. Employees must increasing rely on their own 401(k) investments and the uncertain future of social security.

While Downhill from Here does look at how other countries deal with retirement, there are no non-socialist solutions presented in the book. Also, the book only skims over how much worse the retirement prospects are for generation Y, millenials and older Generation X employees. Between no pensions and ballooning student debt, the author could write an entire book focusing on them.

Working for county government, many of the takeaways described in the book have already been done to us. We have a two-tier retirement system. We were forced to pay more of the employer’s share for the same benefit about ten years ago. However, I’m just grateful we have a pension at all.

Downhill from Here explores an important subject. It is recommended reading for those within 5-15 years from retirement. 4 stars.

Thanks to Metropolitan Books and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Once upon a time, in the United States, pensions guaranteed people could retire secure in the fact their income would cover their living expenses. As a result of policies over the last 40 years, that shifted wealth away from the working classes and toward the most affluent, reliable retirement income is now merely a fairy tale. The poor fare even worse. This book traces the decline in pensions and retirement programs for union, blue-collar, and local/state government workers, and looks at the living conditions of our poorest citizens in older age. Ensuring a safe and secure retirement is as much, if not more, a moral dilemma as a financial one. Mindsets about the inherent worth of a people who are poor, only exacerbate the problem. Chapter 6 reports on the abhorrent living conditions of poor citizens in Opelousas, Louisiana, where the income inequality gap is among the widest in the country, where 28% older citizens live in poverty. As the author reflects, “’Coddling the poor,” is not the Louisiana way.” An important read!

Downhill From Here, written by Katherine Newman, most famous for the outstanding (though now extremely outdated) No Shame In My Game, is a nonfiction/"popular sociology" book about the increasing financial perils faced by retired Americans.

It does a good job of painting the grim life many current retirees face, highlighting, in particular, the way former Detroit municipal, United Airlines, and Verizon employees have suffered due to employer/city bankruptcy and/or corporate buyouts and subsequent restructuring, but the material presented on the even grimmer retirement future of Generation X is scant, and there is nothing presented on the abyss millennials are facing at all.

Indeed, anyone with a passing interest in their own retirement, or future retirement, is not going to find anything new here--it is, I think, common knowledge that older Americans can no longer hope for pensions (those largely disappeared with my grandparents' generation), can often no longer save enough for retirement, and even if they do, must hope that they have no serious health problems and expect that they may receive, at most, minimal social security benefits (the current funding of social security is precarious, as there is not enough money to fund it and the easy solution* shows no signs of being implemented,

As a picture of the all too familiar face of impoverished senior citizens is painted, Downhill From Here tries to address future retirees but offers up a sliver of information about the basically nonexistent retirement possibilities for Generation X, and doesn't discuss how millennials, who are facing a retirement laden with likely no social security at all and college loan repayments, seem to have the best grip on retirement savings of all (the millennials I know who save for their retirement do it, as far as I can tell, extremely aggressively (and kudos to them for being so, so smart about it!))

Downhill From Here is a bit drier than one expects to find in a popular sociology book, and the lack of interest and information on the retirement prospects of Generation X, as well as the total exclusion of Millennials, is disappointing. Those who really need to read Downhill From Here (those who insist that older Americans don't have it that bad) are unlikely to read it, and for readers like me, who are concerned about the future and are aware of the immense challenges, there is simply nothing new.

Overall, Downhill From Here presents a sad, true, and all too familiar portrait of how retirement has shifted into a landscape where those over 65 now frequently work in low-paying jobs fulltime simply to afford things like housing, food, healthcare, etc.

In short, there is no retirement anymore unless you are wealthy.

(* An easy way to fund social security would be to close the loophole that exempts the extremely wealthy from paying more than a certain amount in taxes to social security, etc.)

"Here be dragons."

Well, apparently the maps didn't actually say that; nor does this book. But Newman may as well, as she painstakingly researches and presents multiple forces conspiring to create precarity for those seeking to retire in the US.

As a person approaching retirement age but working on a new career, I feel vindicated in doing so. If a bit depressed about the dim prospects for current and prospective retirees.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I was shocked at the level of crookedness that has existed in companies in regards to the pension funds.
I loved that the author covered blue collar, white collar, and professional careers in her study of pension funds and or retirement accounts.
I read through the stories of the Teamsters, airline employees, city employees, and the yellow Pages employees with shock, awe (that they can overcome) and outrage for them.
This book is a needed wake up call for anyone who still has a pension.
The very last few pages include what other countries are doing to combat elder poverty.
This book should be mandatory reading for every single baby boomer nearing retirement!

The United States ranks 17th (of 30) in provision for retirement, at about the level of Colombia or Chile. This scandal leaves millions upon millions scrambling to have enough food or meet monthly overhead. But the book Downhill From Here isn’t really about that. It’s mostly about people who contributed to pension funds all their working lives, only to have the pensions slashed, changed from defined benefit to defined contribution, or just eliminated completely. There are even cases of clawbacks, where employers change the rules and force retirees to pay back what they already received. Katherine Newman has made poverty her specialty, and this latest attempt get out the truth is very sad. It is a depressing read, which devolves to infuriating when it becomes obvious it all can be avoided.

Instead, it gets worse. One third of US retirees have no savings at all. Most Americans are forced to take social security at 62, leaving 60% of their check on the table. And an ever-decreasing minority gets any kind of company pension at all. Newman calls it pension erosion, but that’s like calling WWII a bit of a scrap.

The book breaks into chapters of method of pension destruction:
-There is bankruptcy, as in the city of Detroit, where civil servants simply lost their contributions and most of their pensions to Wall Street finagling and skimming. Blacks in particular, looked on the civil service as their ticket out of poverty and precarity. They, of course, suffered the most, as their homes became worthless too.
-There is corporate malfeasance, such as Verizon spinning off its Yellow Pages into its own company, which declared bankruptcy less than two years later, crippling the retirements of everyone (below a certain level). This allowed Verizon to avoid paying these (former) employees their pensions. The deviousness is shocking, as more companies find ways to raid the pension fund, fail to make contractual contributions, or invent creative ways of not paying out. One worker said “If I had made such a suggestion, I would have been terminated on the spot.” But when it comes from the top, it’s sound management.
-There is government–forced restructuring, as in deregulating trucking and airlines, where competition suddenly mushroomed into a race to the bottom, forcing employers out of providing pensions. At first, employees were asked to make the sacrifice of lower wages, which they would recoup in a solid retirement plan. Then the plan collapsed – double jeopardy.
-There is the precarity of the right-to-work states, where hours, wages and benefits are minimal, and state governments are stingy – even with (free) federal money. It all adds up to a sad litany of suffering , as Newman profiles people from coast to coast, from all walks of middle class life. What most have in common is an inability to make ends meet just living day to day. When they can retire at all.

-Verizon comes in for particular criticism for its extraordinary callousness towards it employees. They thought they had careers for life, working at the phone company. Instead, they found Verizon transferring them all over its territory for what turned out to be just a two month stint. Not enough to settle in. Then they’d be sent back, only to be transferred out again – for another couple of months. Eventually, people quit this torture, and forfeited their pensions. Verizon avoided paying and got to hire cheaper labor.
-United Airlines employees became ashamed of what became of their company. They actually bought it out of bankruptcy. But it screwed them anyway.
-The gig economy, outsourcing, and perma-temps all contribute to an inability to put away savings, to provide for retirement, or have any kind of job security.
-The forced decline of unions leaves workers with low pay, no benefits and no recourse. Management has a free hand, and clearly relishes it.

The chapter on welfare is also very disturbing. Government, the final backstop and the bargain everyone makes in living in a cohesive nation, fails to help. Worse, it is actually behind much of the damage. And it doesn’t support the people it damages. Newman talks to people who receive ten dollars a month in food stamps, and whose states put all kinds of bureaucratic barriers in the way of applying for anything at all. They make their lives miserable for being clients of the state.

Again and again, Newman narrates stories of people who worked and planned al their lives to live carefully within their means. They sacrificed during their working years, in order not to be destitute in their retirement years.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. Newman examines the top three pension-providing countries, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Australia, which all have remarkably different systems and approaches. But they do have one thing in common: citizens do not worry about poverty or healthcare in retirement. Being a citizen has its rewards as well as sacrifices. Not so in the USA.

There are things even the US government could do, such as forcing companies to put retirement plans beyond their own reach, assuring payouts. Lifting the extraordinarily low maximum for social security taxes would make the whole system solvent (according to economist Paul Krugman). Lowering the eligibility age for Medicare to 55 would bridge a huge, expensive gap that laid-off middle-aged workers face when they are unable to find new work - because of their age. Even the city of Las Vegas has lessons for the country, as the gambling industry protects its own investment by investing in the wellbeing of its employees.

Sadly, the political will is not there. America is all about everyone for themselves. Being American confers no thanks for a life of hard work. Any help via labor protection laws or income supplements is classified as Socialism, un-American and out of the question. Newman says a lot of states are mean. She singles out Louisiana in particular. But it’s much more than that. It’s a mean, nasty country for 99% of its people.

The book suffers from a depressing sameness. Everyone has a similar story, it seems. Hard work and, sacrifice, to have a worry-free retirement. Then betrayal. And no recourse. Only the sources of the betrayal are different. There is a hopelessness to it in the American political context. Unfortunately, Downhill From Here is a truth that needs this kind of exposure.

David Wineberg

A sad eye opening state of our retirement system today.People who have worked hard all their lives looking foward to their yrpears of retirement their pension check our now being stripped of this dream .In a intimate look at people whose after working hard their whole lives living happy but simple lives finding now to survive they either have to go back to work even though they are seniors cut back on everything sell homes.This is not the American dream.An important book a must read as we approach the age of retirement politician should read this so they understand what the laws they inact due to hurt all citizens. #netgalley #henryholt