Photo by Karen Roach/via Adobe

Editor’s Note: Journalist Philip Moeller is here to provide the answers you need on aging and retirement. His weekly column, “Ask Phil,” aims to help older Americans and their families by answering their health care and financial questions. Phil is the author of the new book, “Get What’s Yours for Medicare,” and co-author of “Get What’s Yours: The Revised Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security.” Send your questions to Phil.

It’s heartburn time for the hold-harmless crowd, thanks to the seemingly routine announcement by Social Security last week that its annual cost of living adjustment for 2018 will boost benefits by 2 percent.

Thanks to the convoluted rules brought to you by the folks who run Social Security and Medicare – not to mention their overseers in Congress – it will take me some time to explain why this news means that millions of people receiving Social Security and Medicare will suffer next year from financial indigestion.

READ MORE: 4 tips for making the most of Medicare’s open enrollment

Medicare recipients also receiving Social Security must have their monthly Part B Medicare premiums deducted from their Social Security payment. About 70 percent of Medicare enrollees are in this boat. The rest are either new to Medicare, earn enough to trigger Medicare’s high-income surcharges, or earn so little that Medicaid pays their Medicare premiums.

Social Security’s “hold harmless” rule says that Social Security benefits cannot decline from one year to the next. This means that higher Part B premiums can’t cause a reduction in a person’s net Social Security benefits.

Historically, increases in Social Security’s annual cost of living adjustment (COLA) have been large enough to cover any boosts in Part B premiums and still produce a net gain in Social Security payments.

However, the rate of inflation used to determine the COLA has been so small in recent years that the COLA was zero in 2016 and only three-tenths of one percent this year. With medical costs continuing to rise, Medicare had no choice but to raise its Part B premiums. Even with a one-time government bailout in 2016, the Part B premium went up to $121.80; this year, it rose to $134.

(These premiums, by the way, remain a great health care bargain for Medicare recipients. Medicare only charges enough for Part B to cover about 25 percent of program costs; taxpayers foot the other 75 percent.)

Those higher premiums were paid only by people who were not held harmless. For the larger group that was protected in 2016, their premiums remained at $104.90 a month, while those not held harmless had to pay $121.80. The 0.3 percent COLA this year boosted benefits a bit, but virtually all of these gains went to pay higher Part B premiums.

People not held harmless this year are paying $134 a month for Part B. People who have been held harmless, in most cases, had to tack 0.3 percent of their 2017 Social Security payment onto either $104.90 or $121.80 for their Part B coverage. Because everyone’s Social Security benefits are different, this meant that everyone’s Part B premium would be different as well.

Here are a couple of examples to illustrate the range of different Part B premiums.

Take someone who was held harmless in 2016 and receives only $1,000 a month from Social Security (before Part B premiums are deducted). They were paying $104.90 for Part B in 2016, and received a $3 monthly boost in 2017 Social Security benefits (0.3 percent of $900). All of this paltry increase would go toward higher Part B premiums, raising their monthly premium to $107.90.

Now, consider a higher earner who began Medicare in 2016 and had to pay $121.80 a month for their Part B. If their gross Social Security benefit was $2,500 a month, they would have seen it rise by $7.50 a month this year (0.3 percent of $2,500). They would have been held harmless this year from the full $134 monthly Part B premium. But all of their COLA gain would have gone to paying Part B, and their monthly premium would have increased by $7.50, from $121.80 to $129.30.

Congratulations if you are not totally confused by now, and many thanks if you haven’t simply stopped reading! But if you’ve stuck it out this long, I am betting you also have figured out that the impact of a 2 percent COLA will be much higher Part B premiums for lower earners who have been held harmless.

Medicare has not yet announced the 2018 premium for Part B, although it was earlier projected to remain stable at $134 a month. Even if this good-news projection comes to pass, many of those folks held harmless in 2016 and 2017 will not receive any of their 2 percent Social Security boost. For people receiving modest Social Security benefits, all of the increase will go toward higher Part B premiums.

Using the earlier examples, our lower-earning recipient would see their $903 monthly benefit boosted by about $18.06. All of this would be tacked onto their Part B premium, increasing it from $107.60 to roughly $125.66. This is less than $134, of course, but I doubt that anyone in this situation would consider themselves fortunate to be receiving no effective Social Security increase, even though the 2.0 percent COLA is the program’s largest in five years.

And our higher earner? Their $2,507.50 benefit would rise by $50.15 to $2,557.65. Remember that they were already paying $129.30 each month for their Part B. If the Part B premium does stay at $134 next year, their premium would rise by only $4.70 a month, allowing them to keep more than 90 percent of their COLA increase.

Let the complaints begin!

Next week, I will resume answering your questions, as well as taking a further look at changes in Medicare plans that might cause you to consider 2018 changes to your coverage during this year’s Medicare open enrollment period, which began October 15 and extends through Dec. 7.

The post Why this Social Security boost is no boon for lower earners appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

When you respond to a tantalizing job ad, you’re on your own — and that can lead to trouble. Photo by Getty Images

Nick Corcodilos started headhunting in Silicon Valley in 1979 and has answered over 30,000 questions from the Ask The Headhunter community.

In this special Making Sen$e edition of Ask The Headhunter, Nick shares insider advice and contrarian methods about winning and keeping the right job, on one condition: that you, dear Making Sense reader, send Nick your questions about your personal challenges with job hunting, interviewing, networking, resumes, job boards or salary negotiations. No guarantees — just a promise to do his best to offer useful advice.

Question: My son interviewed with a sales company. There were six applicants all interviewed at the same time. He was one of two offered a job on the first interview. When he questioned them on benefits, he was told that it would be discussed in training.

He showed up for his first day at work, where he was supposed to start training, and he asked again about benefits. He was told that no one was officially hired the first week, and that there were no benefits.

READ MORE: If you’re expected to jump through hoops to get an interview, here’s what to say

These people are a scam with deceptive hiring practices. I want to pursue some kind of action on this and I do not know where to go. They promised him the world and now his world is crushed!

Nick Corcodilos: If I published nothing but readers’ stories about job scams, I could do a daily column on the subject and keep it going month after month. The loosey-goosey behavior that online “recruiting” tools promote and enable has turned online job hunting into a very risky proposition.

You have no idea whom you’re dealing with.

When you respond to a tantalizing job ad, you’re on your own. And that can lead to trouble. It’s up to you to verify that you’re dealing with a legitimate job opportunity. Do not assume that because it’s on some job board it’s real — and that it’s not a scam.

Here are some clear signals that may reveal problems.

A company with no people
Do basic research. Look up the company or the recruiter. Does the website “About” section list the names of people who run the company or recruiting firm? Can you verify those people by looking them up on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other common social media sites? If the site lists no people’s names that you can verify, run.

Any legitimate business is proud of its owners, managers and employees and will feature biographies that are easily verified elsewhere online. Some of the biggest employment scams I’ve found online were readily identified this way.

Group interviews
Does the employer or recruiter tell you you’ll be interviewed along with several other applicants at the same time? Run.

A legitimate job interview is between you and a hiring manager. If a group of applicants are interviewed together, that’s usually a sales pitch. The “company” wants to efficiently do its pitch to as many people as possible at the same time. This is what happened to your son.

One-sided interviews
Does the interviewer spend the entire meeting talking about the business without ever asking you good, relevant questions to assess your skills and abilities? Run.

It’s a sales pitch. They don’t need to assess you because they don’t need workers. They need suckers who will “qualify” to part with their money when the “interviewer” gets around to explaining that you have to pay for training, special materials, or for the “opportunity to proceed.”

Oral offers
They like you and want to hire you and tell you you’re hired — without giving you a written, signed offer that includes full details about the job, the title, the pay and benefits? Run.

I can’t tell you how many people report they got an oral offer and assurance of employment, quit their old jobs, cancelled the lease on their apartment, and moved — only to learn the job offer was never finalized. See “Get it in writing.”

What your son should do

Even legitimate companies are sometimes guilty of promoting jobs without fully disclosing the job, the compensation or the benefits. It’s up to the applicant to check and verify each step of the way. If something doesn’t seem right, ask questions. If the answers are inadequate or don’t make sense, walk away. The suggestions above apply to any job situation—not just to obvious scams. Your son should have done due diligence. See “When job offers are bad for you.”

READ MORE: How to spot a job recruiter without standards

There are two legal approaches you can pursue for your son. (Mind you, I’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.) Contact your state attorney general’s office and the department of consumer affairs to file a complaint. Or, hire a lawyer who specializes in consumer fraud.

My advice is to talk to the authorities, because I think you’re going to have a heck of a time getting a legal remedy for your son’s poor judgment. In the future, please tell your son to use his best judgment, and to run when he encounters the tip-offs listed above.

Dear Readers: These are just a few tip-offs to job scams. Have you been scammed into an interview that turned out not to be what you expected? Did you bail out of an “opportunity” because you smelled a rat? Please share your job-scam stories and signals so we can all learn what to look for to avoid getting ripped off.

Nick Corcodilos invites Making Sense readers to subscribe to his free weekly Ask The Headhunter© Newsletter. His in-depth “how to” PDF books are available on his website: “How to Work With Headhunters…and how to make headhunters work for you,” “Keep Your Salary Under Wraps,” “How Can I Change Careers?” and “Fearless Job Hunting.”

Send your questions to Nick, and join him for discussion every week here on Making Sense. Thanks for participating!

Copyright © 2016 Nick Corcodilos. All rights reserved in all media. Ask the Headhunter® is a registered trademark.

The post Ask the Headhunter: 4 signs that you should run from a job scam appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

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This is part of an ongoing series of reports called ‘Chasing the Dream,’ which reports on poverty and opportunity in America.

By Megan Thompson and Mori Rothman

MEGAN THOMPSON: Nancy Kukay works at a community college in Maryland, coordinating technical education programs. She’s worked in education most of her career and loves her job. But at 65-years-old, she had imagined retiring by now.

NANCY KUKAY: I can’t afford to retire. I could never make the payments.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Payments for student loans she took out for her son Andrew about a decade ago. She pays around $500 a month on the nearly $75,000 she owes on loans she took out, and others she co-signed with her son. By her math, she’ll probably be paying on her loans alone for another 11 years.

NANCY KUKAY: Even if I started drawing on my retirement and Social Security together, I still wouldn’t have enough monthly to make those payments.

It’s certainly not where I hoped to be at this stage in life.

MEGAN THOMPSON: The number of Americans age 60 and older with student loan debt quadrupled between 2005 and 2015 to nearly 3 million. And the average amount they owe has nearly doubled from 12-thousand dollars to almost 24-thousand.

PERSIS YU: There’s a number of factors that contribute to why the number of older borrowers is increasing.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Attorney Persis Yu directs the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center in Boston.

PERSIS YU: Student loans are structured to be paid over a very long period of time. They have no statute of limitations, which means that they follow you. They can follow you till you die, literally. And so there are a lot of borrowers who are out there who still have their own student loan debts from the ’70s, from the ’80s.

ANNETTE PELAEZ: I think originally it was, like, 27,000 dollars…

MEGAN THOMPSON: 64-year-old Annette Pelaez of Boston is still paying about 300 dollars a month for the loan she took out 20 years ago to pursue graduate degrees in American Studies, a loan she expects to be paying for another 10 years. She worked for nonprofits serving children and the elderly, but her income never reached the level she had hoped.

ANNETTE PELAEZ: I’m making now what I made in the ’80s. I’m making about $42,000 a year.

MEGAN THOMPSON: So when you went back to grad school, you assumed you’d be making a lot more money than that?

ANNETTE PELAEZ: Oh, yes. Absolutely. I mean if I was making that money with a bachelor’s degree in the ’80s, I assumed that, you know, with a Master’s I’d do a little bit better.

PERSIS YU: Folks with student loan debt typically save less than folks without student loan debt. And then, once they’re in retirement, if they are repaying loans, certainly that is a liability that they wouldn’t otherwise have to pay for when they’re on a fixed and limited income.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Because of her debt and the high cost of living in Boston, Pelaez says, she has little retirement savings. She recently retired but can’t afford to keep living in Boston – so she moved New Mexico, where it’s cheaper to live. But even still, her expected 1,000 dollar a month social security check won’t cover her expenses.

ANNETTE PELAEZ: Rent will be $620 plus utilities, and then there is the school loan, and there goes the $1,000. So I will be doing some part-time work.

MEGAN THOMPSON: How do you feel about that? I mean, is this what you pictured retirement being?

ANNETTE PELAEZ: Well, you know, at this point, I’m not so terribly concerned, because I’m still young enough to do so. What concerns me is that when I’m in my 70s or 80s, hopefully, if I get there, I may not be able to do that.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Like Pelaez, 27 percent of older Americans with student loans borrowed for their own education. But most, more than 70 percent, borrowed for their children’s or grandchildren’s education. People like Nancy Kukay. Kukay, who’s divorced, took out about $46,000 in her name and co-signed for around $34,000 more with her son Andrew, who graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2008.

NANCY KUKAY: I entered into that, now as I, in hindsight, without nearly enough information. And didn’t know what I didn’t know about– financial aid. It’s vastly different from when I went to school. I didn’t have to borrow to go to school.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Kukay obtained about half of the 46-thousand dollars she borrowed for her son’s education through a federal loan program called “Parent Plus.” The number of Parent Plus borrowers has grown by 60 percent since 2005 to three-and-half million Americans.

The National Consumer Law Center says some families can borrow more than they can afford under parent plus because the program lets them borrow as much as a college says they need without verifying their income.

PERSIS YU: At no point is the school or the federal government seeing if the family can afford to repay this loan.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Is anyone along the way saying, ‘Hey, if you take out this amount of money, this is what it’s gonna mean for you.’ Is anybody kind of giving a warning to families?

PERSIS YU: So, you know, there is some very minimal counseling that is required– when folks take out federal loans. The other component is a lot of these families don’t have a lot of other options. Because education is expensive. So a lot of families feel trapped, and they feel like they have to take out this, because they want to provide for their kids. And they want their kids to have a better future.

MEGAN THOMPSON: And that’s exactly what Nancy Kukay wanted for her son. Kukay says she wasn’t too worried about his ability to pay off his loans once he graduated.

NANCY KUKAY: I kept telling him, and I thought this would be true, is, “This degree will give you a career that you can pay that off. Turns out not to be the case. He graduated in 2008 in the depths of the Great Recession. And jobs were hard to come by.

MEGAN THOMPSON: After graduating with a degree in sports management, Andrew has worked steadily — even taking on second jobs at night and on the weekends. But his earnings haven’t been enough to keep up with the 4-and 5 hundred dollar payments on the roughly 45-thousand dollars he took out, so Nancy’s been paying the loans she co-signed. I spoke to Andrew over Google Hangout.

ANDREW KUKAY: I did not think that you would be this hard to pay student loans. I definitely went in to school thinking I’ll get a decent paying job.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Andrew recently landed a higher-paying job and wants to help pay the loans his mom co-signed.

ANDREW KUKAY: I don’t want her to be suffering for any longer than she has to just for doing the nice thing and cosigning on a loan. Would I do it all over again? No. I would not do it again. I would stick around and stay home for a couple of years. And go to a community college. Near my house.

MEGAN THOMPSON: In the meantime, Nancy says, the loan payments are weighing her down.

NANCY KUKAY: It governs everything I do, every decision I make. It all revolves around making sure that I have that money to make that payment every single month.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Nancy has consolidated, and has gotten slightly lower interest rates, on some of the loans. But she expects she’ll need to work part-time after she retires. And she’s also considering moving to Montana, where the cost of living is cheaper.

NANCY KUKAY: My life isn’t going to be the way that I’d hoped that it would be. It just simply isn’t going to be.

MEGAN THOMPSON: There’s also this catch with federal loans, and older borrowers who can’t pay them off. The U.S. treasury can garnish their Social Security benefits.

In fact, between 2002 and 2015, the number of Americans having social security disability and retirements garnished because of unpaid loans increased almost 500 percent to 173-thousand.

MANUEL ROBERTS: Who do I go and get this money back from?

MEGAN THOMPSON: It happened to 55-year-old Manuel Roberts of Brooklyn, New York.
He paid off most all of the 13,000 dollars he borrowed to attend the University of Southern California in the 1980’s. But after losing a job, he defaulted on the last three thousand dollars and then sustained a severe head injury in 2002.

MANUEL ROBERTS: Then I was injured- street violence. I was a victim of a violent crime. I was in a coma for two weeks or so.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Roberts received Social Security disability checks for 1,300 dollars every month. But the government began deducting 200 dollars from every check for the defaulted loan.

MANUEL ROBERTS: I was already in a bad situation. It’s plain to see they just made it worse.

MEGAN THOMPSON: The Social Security deductions pushed Roberts to the verge of the federal poverty line. It turns out, there’s a program for people disabled like Roberts to get their loans eliminated. But many people don’t know about it.

MEGAN THOMPSON: So no one ever said, ‘Hey, we notice you’re getting disability income. You might be also eligible for a disability discharge. This could stop.’

MANUEL ROBERTS: No, that never- that was never brought to me by anybody.

MEGAN THOMPSON: Roberts’ attorney helped him get the disability discharge…and is also helping him and six people with similar stories sue the heads of the federal Department of Education, Treasury, and the Social Security Administration- alleging that they don’t do enough to let people know about the Disability Discharge program.

The federal Department of Education declined an on-camera interview with PBS NewsHour Weekend and did not respond to written questions. The Social Security administration and Treasury Department also did not comment.

MEGAN THOMPSON: US senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sherrod Brown of Ohio are sponsoring legislation to eliminate the practice of garnishing social security benefits for unpaid loans… but the bill’s gone nowhere so far.

Nancy Kukay’s Social Security checks are not at risk, because she keeps kept up with her monthly student loan payments. For other parents trying to figure out how to pay for college now, she has this advice.

NANCY KUKAY: I would strongly encourage them to become educated in the– in every aspect of financial aid. Talk to the college financial aid people. I didn’t do that. That’s a huge mistake. I made assumptions that turned out not to be true. And mine is a cautionary tale.

Chasing the Dream: Poverty and Opportunity in America is a multi-platform public media initiative that provides a deeper understanding of the impact of poverty on American society. Major funding for this initiative is provided by The JPB Foundation. Additional funding is provided by Ford Foundation.

The post More older Americans than ever are struggling with student debt appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

The amount that people aged 60 and over owe in student loans is growing. Illustration by Getty Images

People aged 60 and older are the fastest growing segment of the student debt market. The number of people in this age range with student loan debt has quadrupled in the last decade from approximately 700,000 to 2.8 million, and the average amount they owe has almost doubled to approximately $23,500.

But how did we get here, and what can senior citizens do about student debt?

To answer those questions, the PBS NewsHour Weekend will be joined on Twitter on Oct. 14 at 1 p.m. ET by Ashley Norwood, consumer and regulatory advisor at American Student Assistance (@cca_asa); Anthony Orlando, assistant lecturer at the University of Southern California Price School of Public Policy (@AnthonyWOrlando); and Rohit Chopra, senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America (@hitchop).

Have questions? Tweet them to #NewsHourChats.

The post Twitter chat: How senior citizens can address student debt appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Journalist Philip Moeller urges current Medicare enrollees to take advantage of this opportunity to evaluate their Medicare coverage and decide if they wish to make any changes next year. Photo by Troels Graugaard/Getty Images

Editor’s Note: Journalist Philip Moeller is here to provide the answers you need on aging and retirement. His weekly column, “Ask Phil,” aims to help older Americans and their families by answering their health care and financial questions. Phil is the author of the new book, “Get What’s Yours for Medicare,” and co-author of “Get What’s Yours: The Revised Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security.” Send your questions to Phil.

Medicare’s annual open enrollment season begins Oct. 15 and extends through Dec. 7. So, once again, I will mount my little soapbox and urge current Medicare enrollees to take advantage of this opportunity to evaluate their Medicare coverage and decide if they wish to make any changes next year.

I will be returning to this topic in future installments of Ask Phil. For now, here are a few preparatory pointers.

1. Don’t be in a rush.

Open enrollment decisions – even those made in December – will take effect Jan. 1. You can and should take time to understand how your current Medicare policies will change next year, and whether you can improve coverage, save money, or both, by changing your mix of policies.

2. Carefully study the details like costs changes and provider network.

If you have private Medicare insurance policies – Medicare Advantage, Part D drug plans, or state-regulated Medigap supplement plans – you should already have received annual notices explaining how the prices and coverage terms of these plans will change in 2018.

I urge you to spend some time with these documents. Look not only at how premiums will change but also at co-pays, deductibles and other costs.

In particular, pay attention to how your drug plans are pricing your prescription drugs. These plans feature multiple pricing tiers, with the most common structures having five tiers – preferred generics, other generics, preferred branded drugs, other branded drugs, and expensive specialty medications. Look for pricing changes within tiers and also to see if any of your medications have been moved from one tier to another.

If you have a Medicare Advantage plan, make sure your current health care providers are still in the plan’s provider network in 2018. It wouldn’t hurt to call the offices of your primary doctor and key specialists to ask them if they are making any key changes for Medicare patients next year.

3. Use Medicare’s online tools if you have concerns.

If your review of 2018 changes in your existing coverage raises any red flags, you can use Medicare’s online Plan Finder to review other Medicare Advantage and Part D plans available where you live. There is a separate Medigap Policy Search tool.

READ MORE: A procrastinator’s guide to navigating Medicare open enrollment

There are tutorials explaining how to use these tools. If this work is too daunting for you, enlist a family member to help. If you still have questions, contact a local office of the State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP), which offers free Medicare counseling. Its representatives spend a lot of time with Plan Finder and other Medicare insurance tools.

4. Some switches are easy; others not so much.

Open enrollment allows you to freely switch among Medicare Advantage and Part D plans. You cannot be denied coverage or charged more money because of your age or pre-existing conditions. (There are exceptions for people with End-Stage Renal Disease.) You also can switch from basic Medicare (Parts A and B) to a Medicare Advantage plan, and vice versa.

However, you may not be able to switch easily among Medigap plans or buy a new plan. When a person enrolls in Medicare for the first time, they usually enjoy what are called “guaranteed issue rights” that require insurers to sell them Medigap plans on favorable terms. These rights normally expire six months after this initial Medicare eligibility period. Afterwards, Medigap insurers may be permitted to charge higher rates or even deny coverage to a person based on their age and pre-existing conditions. Depending on where you live, this may not ever be a problem, but it’s something you should explore carefully before making related open enrollment decisions.

Look for more detailed reports in coming weeks, including answers to your open enrollment questions.

Here are this week’s reader questions:

Ron – Ore.: When my wife and I both turned 66 in 2014, she applied for full Social Security benefits and I filed a restricted application to receive spousal benefits. I plan to file for my own benefits when I turn 70 in 2018. We both currently have Medicare Part B premiums deducted from our Social Security benefits.

When I apply for my full benefits at age 70 will my Medicare Part B premium be set at the then current “new enrollee” rate or will I continue to be “held harmless” since I have been paying Medicare Part B premiums from my spousal benefits since 2014?

Phil Moeller: Ron is among several readers who have asked whether taking a new Social Security benefit can “reset” their Part B premium, even if they have been held harmless against previous Part B premium increases. The simple answer is yes, but there is little that is simple about Social Security’s hold harmless rules. Inasmuch as Social Security will soon be announcing its 2018 annual cost of living adjustment (COLA), it’s a good time to review this issue.

The principle behind the hold harmless rule is that Social Security rules prevent the agency from reducing the size of a person’s net benefit from one year to the next. This is the amount of money a person actually receives, and reflects any deductions from the benefit. By law, anyone on Medicare who is receiving Social Security benefits must have their Part B premium deducted from their Social Security payment.

Rising health expenses have caused a regular boost in Part B premiums in recent years. Normally, rising inflation creates a Social Security COLA that is big enough to pay for higher Part B premiums and also raise the net benefit paid to Social Security recipients.

In recent years, however, rates of inflation have been very low. The Social Security COLA was zero for a couple of years and very small last year. As a result, higher Part B premiums would have actually reduced net Social Security benefits. To avoid this, people who had Part B premiums deducted from their Social Security benefits were held harmless. As a result, their Part B premiums either did not rise at all, or else rose only by an amount that would avoid an actual decline in their Social Security payments the following year.

This situation confuses even me, and I’ve been writing about it for years! Here’s a longer take on the topic.

The takeaway in terms of answering Ron’s question is to return to the core purpose of the hold harmless rule, which is to prevent a person’s Social Security benefits from declining from one year to the next.

Following the money, so to speak, the issue for Ron and others with similar questions is whether the new benefit they are claiming will result in higher Social Security payments. Of course, this is what would happen, or else why would Ron and others want to file for an additional benefit in the first place?

But when people’s benefits rise in this manner, then it also means they might be able to pay the current level of Part B premiums – now $134 a month – without causing a reduction in their net Social Security benefits. So, even though Ron has been held harmless in the past, Social Security is correct in assessing him a higher Part B premium as a result of his new benefit entitlement.

This reply does not address the broader issue of how higher Part B premiums affect the roughly 30 percent of Social Security recipients who aren’t held harmless. I will address this late this fall after Social Security has announced the 2018 COLA and Medicare has set next year’s Part B premiums.

Karen – Pa.: I will be 62 in February. My husband died in 2008 at age 55. I won’t get much Social Security because I didn’t work much in the United States, and when I did, I was a teacher. His benefits are better. If I take my Social Security at 62 and then take his at 66, will mine then stop? If I don’t take them before I start taking his at 66, will I lose mine?

Phil Moeller: Taking your own benefits at 62 and then claiming a survivor benefit when you reach full retirement age is your best option. Because you were born in 1956, your full retirement age is not 66 but 66 and four months of age. When you reach that age and file for your survivor benefit, you should receive an additional payment each month equal to the amount by which that benefit exceeds your own retirement benefit.

READ MORE: Can I work and still collect my late husband’s Social Security benefits?

Make it clear when you file for your own retirement benefit that you are filing only for that benefit right now, and that you will file for your survivor benefit when you have reached your full retirement age.

Lastly, because your survivor benefit is greater than your own retirement benefit, failing to claim your own retirement would result in you receiving no benefits on your own work record. Social Security, by the way, never pays the full amount of two benefits at the same time, but rather an amount that is roughly equal to the greater of the two.

Ron: My wife is nearly 67 and has had Medicare since age 65. She feels that her choices are sometimes limited because she has to choose a doctor who accepts Medicare. Sometimes, she feels like this may not give her access to the most qualified doctor or health care provider. She also has a Medigap supplement F plan that pays all the deductibles and copayments. I realize that Medicare is usually the primary payer, but aren’t there times when a different individual health policy in addition to Medicare could be beneficial?

Phil Moeller: At last count, more than 90 percent of all doctors accept Medicare, so I’d think your wife should be comforted that there is a qualified doctor who accepts Medicare who can meet her medical needs. However, good doctors often have practices that are completely filled, and it can be hard to find a good doctor, whether he or she accepts Medicare or not.

As for another private insurance policy, I don’t hold out high hopes that she could even find such a policy, let alone be able to afford the premiums.

READ MORE: How do I know if my doctor accepts Medicare?

It could be that your wife’s best solution would be to find a doctor in a concierge practice. These practices enroll a limited number of patients, charge patients an annual fee, and usually work with Medicare and other insurers. Patients can get access to these doctors on a regular basis. Of course, you pay for this access, but if your finances can handle the expense, perhaps this is a route your wife would like to take.

It seems to me your wife’s first step would be to locate the doctor or doctors she would ideally like to see. Do they accept Medicare? If not, what do their offices say about insurance? I realize this could be a time-consuming process, but I really don’t know of any short-cuts here.

The post 4 tips for making the most of Medicare’s open enrollment appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Some employers think what they’re doing a clever “pre-assessment” of job applicants, laying the burden on you while avoiding putting their own skin in the game, explains Ask the Headhunter columnist Nick Corcodilos. Photo by Getty Images

Nick Corcodilos started headhunting in Silicon Valley in 1979 and has answered over 30,000 questions from the Ask The Headhunter community.

In this special Making Sen$e edition of Ask The Headhunter, Nick shares insider advice and contrarian methods about winning and keeping the right job, on one condition: that you, dear Making Sense reader, send Nick your questions about your personal challenges with job hunting, interviewing, networking, resumes, job boards or salary negotiations. No guarantees — just a promise to do his best to offer useful advice.

This is my 250th Ask The Headhunter column for NewsHour, which debuted five years ago in October 2012. Thanks to all our readers for your provocative questions and comments about job hunting and hiring!

Question: I really enjoy your direct and honest feedback to job hunters each week. I’d like to get your thoughts on jobs that make you do “assessment tests” to prove you are qualified.

My favorite was for a company in the San Francisco Bay Area that needs to fill a marketing and web content position. Two hours before the phone interview, the marketing director sends me an email saying that I need to prove my research skills and she will send me a question 10 minutes before our interview time. I have to research the question and have it submitted before the interview.

I was ready to walk but did it just to see if I could. (I succeeded). After the talk, I was unimpressed with her abilities and withdrew my application.

READ MORE: Why employers can afford to be rude to you

Recently, during my first in-person interview for another job, I was asked to write a five-page press release by the next day. I politely told the manager that my extensive work experience speaks for itself and I would be happy to send links to my previous press releases. She said that wasn’t good enough and I said, “I’m withdrawing my application.”

As you can tell, I’m ready to walk away from imposing situations like this, that, for the most part, waste your time. What is the proper way to say “no” to these assessments? Thanks!

Nick Corcodilos: My compliments for walking away from these kinds of abusive hurdles. Such employers undoubtedly think what they’re doing is a clever “pre-assessment” of job applicants. That is, they want to assess whether it’s worth their time to meet and assess you. They lay the burden on you, while they avoid putting their own skin in the game.

READ MORE: 5 tips for avoiding terrible employers

My guess is they add this step because some HR consulting firm charged them a bundle for “best methods” in recruiting. But there’s nothing “best” about abusing the job candidates those same employers complain are in short supply! Talk about trying to appeal to a candidate!

Assessment tests are often bogus
Job assessment tests come in many flavors. Tests and assessments can be useful tools for employers and job seekers. But more often than not, they’re misused. Some assessment methods are transparently ridiculous and unreasonable — and they’re not assessments at all. They’re bogus. (See “An insider’s biggest beefs with employment testing.”)

I think the way you’re dealing with unreasonable demands is just fine. And I don’t think anything you say to employers or recruiters is going to make them stop insisting that you jump through hoops, participate in totally one-sided “interviews,” and do free work. These employers have established a policy and a process. You’re not likely to change any of it. But it may be fun to make a point to them — a point that may hit home after they lose lots of good job applicants to their competitors.

(For an in-depth look at this topic, see Dr. Erica Klein’s short book, ”Employment Tests: Get The Edge”.)

READ MORE: How to win any job

I love your story about the marketing director. I wonder if she instructs her company’s salespeople to pre-assess potential customers by making them submit a five-page statement about “Why I’m worthy to listen to your sales pitch.”

It gets worse
Readers recently shared stories of pre-interview demands for all kinds of extensive “screening” — all to be done by the job seeker on their own time with no pay while the employer does nothing.

• One employer tries to cajole applicants with this phony challenge, “to help us find the top 1% of talent,” then tells the job seeker to spend ”8 to 10 hours” on a “sample project” prior to moving on to the next step of the selection process. When the applicant fails, they are directed to a “partner company” that will sell them “training” to bring them up to the 1 percent level.
• Another job ad — for an administrative assistant — requires you to spend an entire week performing sample tasks to qualify for interviews. With no pay.
• Yet another reader got suckered into producing several pieces of sample work that required several hours of her time. She had never even had a real interview — just three phone calls. She was ready to do even more to get the highly prized “in-person interview.”

But you asked me how to say no to these “assessments.”

When you’re asked to jump through hoops that you think are unreasonable, be ready to respond. Here are my suggestions about how to say it, ranked by snarkiness. Decide how far you want to go.

Meet, or beat it.

How to say it:

“I’d be happy to invest my time to meet with you so we can determine whether we should work together. If there’s serious mutual interest, I’d be glad to show you how I’d do the job profitably. But without a corresponding investment of time from a serious employer, it’s just not prudent for me to do what’s essentially a one-sided assessment. I’m currently in discussions with three other employers and I expect to choose one in the next X days. If you’d like to meet to explore working together, I’d be glad to come in on one of these dates and times: [list 2 or 3 dates]. If those are not convenient, please suggest some others and I will look forward to talking shop.”

That’s pretty assertive, but so is an employer’s demand that you do work before just a phone interview. I’m a big believer in showing how you’ll do the work to win the job — in a face-to-face meeting. But if the employer isn’t investing its own time and effort, it’s presumptuous of them to expect you to do so.

Pay me for the work.

Sometimes it helps to put a price on what the employer is demanding. (See Why employers should pay to interview you.)

How to say it:

“Just as I’m sure you don’t charge prospective customers to do a sales call, or to provide product samples for their evaluation, I don’t charge for interview meetings or samples of my work. I’d be more than happy to meet with you. But if you want me to work solo while you attend to other matters, my hourly rate is $X. If you’re willing to invest a couple of hours of your time, I’ll invest mine, too — no charge.”

Don’t do free work.

I’ll do it if you’ll do it.

Sometimes it helps to put the shoe on the employer’s foot. You’ll win only the most honorable fans with this, but please understand that this is the shoe the employer is trying to get you to walk miles in.

How to say it:

“Attached is a psychological assessment test to be completed by the manager I’d be working for if your company were to hire me. If you’ll please have him or her complete it, to help me ensure I’d be working for a properly qualified manager, then I’d be glad to take your assessment, too. Since you already have my resume, kindly forward a copy of the manager’s resume so I can review it. Since time is of the essence, please be aware that I’m at the offer stage with two of your leading competitors.”

I don’t perform tricks.

This one’s pretty snarky but, hey, would you go on a blind date with someone who’s not going to show up?

How to say it:

“An interview is called that because ‘inter-‘ means between, mutually, reciprocally, together — not one-sided. I’m looking for a good employer, and that means one that respects me enough to invest time together and reciprocally. I don’t jump for treats. Do you really have so many great candidates that you can afford to ask them all to do tricks before you’ll interview them? I’m ready to interview you if you’re ready to interview me.”

You’re not worth my trouble.

This one requires no explanation.

How to say it:

“Talk to the hand.“

Why do employers do this?

You know such jump-through-the-hoop job assessments are inappropriate and usually offensive. So do I. Why don’t employers know it?

It’s pretty simple. These are employers who don’t know how to recruit job candidates. They want you to do the work, preferably with no investment on their part. These employers want you to incur costs before they do. They want you to pay for hiring managers’ (and HR’s) ineptitude. They’re all telling you one thing: “You don’t want to work here because we have no idea how to hire.”

Dear Readers: What are the most ridiculous or offensive “pre-interview” hurdles you’ve been asked to jump? How have you responded?

Nick Corcodilos invites Making Sense readers to subscribe to his free weekly Ask The Headhunter© Newsletter. His in-depth “how to” PDF books are available on his website: “How to Work With Headhunters…and how to make headhunters work for you,” “Keep Your Salary Under Wraps,” “How Can I Change Careers?” and “Fearless Job Hunting.”

Send your questions to Nick, and join him for discussion every week here on Making Sense. Thanks for participating!

Copyright © 2016 Nick Corcodilos. All rights reserved in all media. Ask the Headhunter® is a registered trademark.

The post Ask the Headhunter: If you’re expected to jump through hoops to get an interview, here’s what to say appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Now a look at the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in economics, announced today.

Richard Thaler is a professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. The award acknowledged his groundbreaking work in establishing the field of behavioral economics, which blends psychology with economics to better understand human decision-making.

We start with a little bit of background from our economics correspondent, Paul Solman.

It’s part of his weekly series Making Sense.

PAUL SOLMAN, Economics Correspondent: In Chicago’s Millennium Park two-and-a-half years ago, Richard Thaler, the academic revolutionary who won this year’s Nobel Prize for insisting, for decades now, that his field, economics, is wedded to distorted view of human behavior.

Economics teaches that we’re all rational maximizers, mathematical machines, who use our big, brainy heads to carefully calculate every decision as we strive to reach concrete objectives, creating.

But look, Thaler explained:

RICHARD THALER, 2017 Nobel Laureate in Economics: After the ’87 crash, when the market fell 20 percent in a day, and the Internet bubble, when the Nasdaq went from 5000 to 1400, and then the real estate bubble, which led to a financial crisis from which we’re still trying to extricate ourselves, the idea that markets work perfectly is no longer tenable.

PAUL SOLMAN: Thaler has been running his revolution from inside the belly of the beast, the University of Chicago, which boasts 28 other Nobel laureates practiced in traditional economics.

Collectively, they have created what’s known as the Chicago School, predicated on the perfect efficiency of markets, in which prices rationally reflect all available information.

But Thaler started noticing market irrationality early in his career as an economist.

WATCH: How economists think differently from other humans

RICHARD THALER: The market would be up in January. It would go up on Fridays, down on Mondays. It would go up on the day before holidays. None of this made any sense.

PAUL SOLMAN: But it was only when Thaler began doing experiments and publishing them that doctrinaire economists, whom he calls e-cons, began to admit some of the error of their ways.

Take the concept of sunk costs, time and money already spent. An e-con assumes everyone knows when to quit, cut their losses, move on. This group of Cameroonian students at first seemed to just as economics would predict.

RICHARD THALER: Let’s suppose you bought tickets to go to a concert over here at this fancy bandshell 40 bucks each. And the group is OK, but then it starts to rain. How long do you think you’re going to stick around this concert?

MAN: Not much.

PAUL SOLMAN: Not much?

RICHARD THALER: Not much.

PAUL SOLMAN: But what if the sunk costs had been much higher?

How many of you would have a different decision about staying or leave leaving, if it was $500, as opposed to $40? Every single one of you.

MAN: I have to make my money worth it.

PAUL SOLMAN: You have to make your money worth it.

MAN: Yes.

PAUL SOLMAN: And your point here?

RICHARD THALER: Well, economists would say how much you paid for the ticket, tough luck, if it’s $40 or $500.

PAUL SOLMAN: Doesn’t matter.

RICHARD THALER: You should just decide whether the music is worth the annoyance of the rain.

PAUL SOLMAN: In the past few years, Thaler’s behavioral economic insights have been applied by governments around the world, including ours. And how did he feel about being called the inventor of behavioral economics?

RICHARD THALER: One guy can’t create a field, but you can get people thinking.

PAUL SOLMAN: And so he has.

This is economics correspondent Paul Solman.

JUDY WOODRUFF: For more, we turn to Richard Thaler himself.

He got the call that he won the Nobel at 4:00 a.m.

I spoke to him just a short time ago and began by noting, as we just heard, that he has been honored for recognizing that people don’t always act rationally when making economic decisions, and asking if that is the way he sees his contribution.

RICHARD THALER: Well, yes, although pointing that out is kind of obvious to everybody, except economists.

(LAUGHTER)

RICHARD THALER: So, in some ways, it’s pointing out the obvious.

But I think the contribution that I have made, and the young economists following in my footsteps have made, is saying, OK, what follows from there? How should we do things differently if people aren’t perfect? And there’s a lot of things we can do better.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you think the main consequence of your research has had on economics and on policy?

RICHARD THALER: Well, on economics, I think it’s made especially young economists more open to thinking outside the box.

I coined the phrase supposedly irrelevant factors for the kinds of things that economists are sure don’t matter, like the way a letter is worded or what the default option is.

And these kinds of things are supposedly irrelevant because they’re actually really important. So I think, on the professional side, that’s the most important thing.

On the policy side, the work I did with Cass Sunstein, my former colleague, now Harvard law professor, in our book “Nudge” really shows how you can help people if you grant that they’re not saving enough for retirement or they’re overweight or they’d like to do more to save the environment, but aren’t sure how to do it. What are the steps you can take to help people make better decisions?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Was your finding or set of findings as much a psychological-sociological observation as it was an economic one?

RICHARD THALER: Well, I was borrowing findings from psychology and trying to incorporate them into economics.

So, economic models are pretty sterile, and there are these agents that really could be robots that calculate at lightning speed and aren’t absent-minded and never eat too much or drink too much, kind of just like you and me.

But by fleshing out the way real people behave and our weaknesses, as well as strengths, people are nicer than economists give us credit for. We’re more likely to contribute to charity. Or look at all the volunteers in these are hurricanes and other natural disasters. Economists have no explanation for why people would work for days trying to clear away rubble in an earthquake.

So, that’s the nature of humans. I guess we call it human nature. And incorporating human nature into economics is what I have been trying to do for 40 years.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Someone said to me that part of what you have done is take the fringes of economics and make it respectable, bring it into the mainstream.

RICHARD THALER: Yes, a lot of team have thought of me as a fringe player.

(LAUGHTER)

RICHARD THALER: But, yes, I think — I often say I work in the gap between economics and psychology.

Psychologists know a lot, but most of them aren’t very interested in public policy problems, and certainly wouldn’t have a clue what to say about Federal Reserve policy or taxes or any of the other bread-and-butter issues that economists think about.

And most economists don’t have any interest in psychology. So, there was a lot of ripe fruit for the plucking.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, I’m going to take advantage of having you here.

Everybody’s watching the stock market shoot up over the last several months. If you could spend a few minutes with every family in this country right now trying to make tough decisions about spending and saving and investment, what would you say to them about the market and about the economy in general?

RICHARD THALER: Well, look, I think that the economy is strong. We have been on a nice ride since the depths of the great recession.

As far as the stock market goes, personally, I’m a little worried about it. There’s no real explanation for why it keeps going up, other than interest rates are low and people aren’t sure where to put their money.

So, if I were giving advice to people, it would be to say not to spend the 10 percent or 15 percent you have made most recently in the stock market, and maybe even take a little of that money off the table, if you’re likely to need it any time soon.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Some advice from the latest Nobel Prize winner in economics.

Professor Richard Thaler, congratulations again. Thank you very much.

RICHARD THALER: Thank you, Judy.

The post Economics Nobel winner Thaler shed light on how real people behave appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

University of Chicago Booth School of Business economist Richard Thaler talks to his “Nudge” co-author Cass Sunstein via Skype from his living room after winning the 2017 Nobel economics prize, at his apartment in Chicago, Illinois. Photo by Anne Ryan/University of Chicago via Reuters

The 2017 Nobel prize in economics has been awarded to University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler for his work in behavioral economics.

The Nobel committee called Thaler a “pioneer,” paving the way for a new field of study that looks at the intersection of economics and human psychology. Simply, the committee said Thaler “made economics more human.”

“Thanks to his contributions and discoveries this new field has gone from being sort of a fringe and somewhat controversial part of economics to being a mainstream area of contemporary economic research,” Per Stromberg, the chairman of the Nobel Economics Sciences committee, said while announcing the prize Monday.

Thaler was born in New Jersey in 1945 and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Rochester. He has taught at the University of Chicago for the past 22 years.

In a phone call immediately following the announcement, Thaler said “to do good economics you have to keep in mind that people are human.” He added the most important impact of the prize is “the recognition that economic agents are human, and that economic models have to incorporate that.”

“The idea that markets work perfectly is no longer tenable,” Thaler said in a 2015 interview with the Newshour.

He used the example of his 2015 book, “Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics.” Traditional economists would argue if someone makes the decision to buy Thaler’s book, that is proof enough they want it at the given price. But Thaler said when his book is “on sale” for 30 percent off, people are more likely to buy it, even if they would not pay that price for it normally.

“People love deals. They can be driven to purchase things that they don’t really want if the deal is good enough,” Thaler said.

In economics, a theory has long prevailed that markets are based on people making rational choices. But behavioral economist Richard Thaler is seeking to prove that there is far more randomness to our financial decisions. Economics correspondent Paul Solman talked to Thaler to find out why we buy and to discuss Thaler’s new book, “Misbehaving.”

The Nobel committee highlighted three of Thaler’s theories on human behavior: the limit of human rationality, the desire for fairness, and the lack of self-control in financial decisions.

The first pattern, known as “bounded rationality,” builds on the theory that even if humans attempt to make rational decisions, they have limited cognitive ability and do not always make the most efficient economic decisions.

The second pattern notes that even if people are guided by self-interest, they also have a social bias toward fairness.

The third pattern is the belief that humans sometimes suffer from a lack of self-control.

Thaler devised the “planner-doer model” for how economic models, which often assume people will make the most rational choice, can account for that lack of self-control.

Thaler theorizes that both the “planner” and “doer” exists within all humans.

To resolve the conflict between the long-term concerned “planner” and the short-term concerned “doer,” the planner can impose rules that limit the doer’s choices, such as only buying one pack of cigarettes at a time.

Thaler has also advocated a concept he and his colleagues call “libertarian paternalism,” or economic policies that nudge people into making better economic decisions.

One system Thaler designed for pensions, called “Save More Tomorrow” asks an individual to commit a share of future salary increases to savings. It worked. Those who participated in the program nearly quadrupled their rate of savings.

As part of the Nobel prize, Thaler will receive $1.1 million. When asked how he would spend the money, Thaler joked, “I will try to spend it as irrationally as possible,” he said.

Sweden’s central bank established the economics prize in 1968 in memory of Nobel Prize founder Alfred Nobel. Including Thaler, it has been awarded to 79 laureates since then.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, PBS NEWSHOUR WEEKEND ANCHOR: Hurricane Maria destroyed Puerto Rico’s power grid, but it turns out Puerto Rico’s power company was in deep trouble before the storm struck two weeks ago. “Reuters” reporter Jessica Resnick-Ault has reported on that side of the story. She joins me now from Metairie, Louisiana, where she is already deployed to cover Hurricane Nate.

So, here we are this far out after the storm, and according to the status that the governor’s office in Puerto Rico is saying, 11.7 percent of the power is back?

JESSICA RESNICK- AULT, REPORTER, REUTERS: At this point, you know, you would expect really to be returning close to full power, but you have to assume that in this case, it’s just the low-hanging fruit that’s been brought back online. So this was the 11 percent that was easy to get to, and now, they’re going to have to run power lines across mountains. There are really serious hurdles to getting the rest of the island back into service.

SREENIVASAN: One of the things that’s your report points out is they had kind of a staffing migration of people that’s left the power company. The people who are going to be able to put the grid back together found better jobs on the mainland because of the way the economy is going.

RESNICK-AULT: Puerto Rico has had an incredible emigration out of the island to the mainland, and the power company is no exception to the rule. They’ve lost thousands of employees over the past five years. Some people estimate as many as 4,000 or more employees have left the company.

SREENIVASAN: One of the things that was startling from the report is there is really not a steady stream of revenue. Not everybody pays their power bills.

RESNICK-AULT: Right. Even the government has not paid its own power bills. There are up to $700 million in uncollected bills from government agencies.

SREENIVASAN: I’ve heard that some of the tech companies are trying to start helping. I mean, we saw kind of a Twitter conversation roll out between Elon Musk and the governor yesterday, saying perhaps solar and batteries can be part of your solution, if you’re rethinking this thing from scratch.

RESNICK-AULT: But even before the storm, there had been discussions about solar and renewables. They even made it to the Department of Energy level with Puerto Rican officials meting with the DOE. But those conversations have never materialized in real change in Puerto Rico’s grid because PREPA and its board have such control over the island’s electricity grilled and have been resistant to change that would bring in new utilities.

SREENIVASAN: So, where do you start building and where do you start fixing the infrastructure? I mean, what do the Army Corps of Engineers and what do other forces do? Do you start with, say, the key places, like the hospitals and kind of crucial infrastructure, the power and water?

RESNICK-AULT: So, they have a list of priorities and they’ll start with critical infrastructure, like hospitals, police stations, and go from there. They’re very focused on making sure that any infrastructure that has to do with fuel is restored. So as long as people are relying upon diesel generators, they need to make sure that stations that provide diesel are functioning and accessible.

SREENIVASAN: All right. This is going to be a long, long recovery.

Jessica Resnick-Ault of “Reuters”, thanks so much for joining us.

RESNICK-AULT: Thank you so much for your time.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And in a piece of related news, the White House wouldn’t confirm or deny that President Trump will decertify the Iran nuclear deal before the October 15 deadline. It is being widely reported that he will take that step, and leave it to Congress to consider to reimpose sanctions.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders says Mr. Trump is evaluating what she calls all the bad behavior of Iran.

SARAH SANDERS, White House Press Secretary: Not just the nuclear deal as bad behavior, but the ballistic missile testing, destabilizing of the region, number one state sponsor of terrorism, cyber-attacks, illicit nuclear program. He wants to look for a broad strategy that addresses all of those problems, not just one-offing those.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The president says that Tehran has violated the spirit of the agreement, if not the actual provisions.

Hurricanes Harvey and Irma have dealt a temporary blow to the U.S. job market. The storms shuttered thousands of businesses and forced evacuations in Texas and Florida last month. As a result, the Labor Department reports that the economy shed 33,000 jobs in September.

Even so, the unemployment rate improved. It fell to 4.2 percent, its lowest level since 2001.

A new storm warning is up for Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, ahead of Tropical Storm Nate. It is on track to brush past Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula tonight, and then strike the U.S. late Saturday, as a hurricane. People along the Louisiana shoreline are already stockpiling supplies and trying to protect power lines. Officials are hoping that the storm will pass quickly, limiting its total rainfall.

Vice President Mike Pence got his first up-close look at the hurricane damage in Puerto Rico today, and vowed that more help is on the way. He first toured the destruction in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and then went on to San Juan. He told a church congregation that the federal government is in it for the long haul.

VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: When one part of America cries out for help, we come together. And I believe in my heart that, when the history of this time and this crisis is recorded in Puerto Rico, this will be a chapter when Americans stood by Americans and delivered on that promise.

(APPLAUSE)

JUDY WOODRUFF: President Trump visited Puerto Rico earlier in the week, amid criticism that the federal response had been too slow.

Another U.S. commando has been found dead in the African nation of Niger. The Pentagon says he was killed Wednesday, along with three other special operations troops, in an ambush by Islamist extremists. The Americans were patrolling with soldiers from Niger.

Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl is expected to plead guilty to desertion for leaving his post in Afghanistan in 2009. The Associated Press reports that he will also admit to a charge of misbehavior before the enemy. Taliban militants held Bergdahl hostage for five years, before he was freed in a prisoner swap. He is 31 years old now. He could face life in a military prison.

Las Vegas police say they still don’t know the motive behind Sunday night’s mass shooting that left 58 dead. Today, the county undersheriff, Kevin McMahill, said investigators are having trouble getting a fix on Stephen Paddock.

KEVIN MCMAHILL, Undersheriff, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department: In the past, terror attacks or mass murder incidents, motive was made very clear, very clear in most of those cases, by a note that was left. By a social media post. By a telephone call that was made. By investigators mining computer data.

Today, in our investigation, we don’t have any of that uncovered. I wish we did.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Paddock killed himself as police closed in on his location.

Australia today ended a three-month amnesty for turning in illegal firearms. The government says the public turned in 51,000 weapons to be destroyed, and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says that the country’s gun laws have prevented mass killings. Australia enacted strict curbs after a gunman killed 35 people in Tasmania back in 1996.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions today ordered federal government agencies to put new emphasis on religious freedom, even if it means overriding civil rights protections. Those could include same-sex marriage, transsexual rights and equal opportunity provisions for women and others. Civil liberties groups responded right away, charging that the new rule could lead to discrimination.

Wall Street was little changed today. The Dow Jones industrial average lost one point to close at 22773. The Nasdaq rose four points, and the S&P 500 slipped two.

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Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York on October 4, 2017. Photo by REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

History might not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Robert Z. Aliber, an emeritus professor of international economics at the University of Chicago and expert on financial crises, has noted that an innovation is at the root of every financial crash. In 1987 it was portfolio insurance; for the Great Recession in 2008 it was securitization. The obvious candidate for the next crisis is Exchange-traded funds, or ETFs.

What is an ETF? It is a pool of securities whose shares are traded in real-time on stock exchanges. Buying a share of an ETF is like buying a share of a company. Like mutual funds, ETFs are diversified within an asset class — such as an ETF that mimics the S&P 500 index. Unlike a mutual fund that mimics an index, however, these shares trade during trading hours, while a mutual fund is effectively traded at the close of business each trading day at a price that equals the net asset value (NAV) of the fund. Thus, an investor inclined to time the market will be attracted to an ETF, because waiting until a price at the end of the day might result in a missed opportunity.

Now let’s get into the weeds a bit (more). ETF sponsors do not trade directly with investors. Investors buy and sell only with market makers or authorized participants. Each ETF might have some 30 authorized participants who together create a secondary market for the shares of the ETF, which investors buy on an exchange.

The ease of buying or selling shares of an ETF creates some risks. If orders to buy or sell greatly exceed what the market will bear, the price of the ETF might diverge from the net asset value of the underlying assets. In such cases the authorized participants, in their role as market makers, arbitrage the difference. These efforts could lead to a sudden rise in market orders, which are information-less: they do not result from any specific knowledge of the securities being sold. Extreme situations could result in fire sales.

Two aspects make innovations like ETFs ripe vehicles for mischief that can lead to financial crises. First, they have force: while dumb ideas are quickly discarded, good innovations provide purchase for the imagination, which is fueled by seeing others making money. Second, an innovation is new and untried, so the imagination is unconstrained by adverse experience. Leading up to 1987, for example, portfolio insurance was promoted as the vehicle to protect against stock market losses. It became popular among large investment operations.

But what might work for a single operation might very well become a disaster when many investors act at the same time. In the late 1980s, the idea was that you would sell futures to hedge a declining market. But when everyone tried to do this at once, the market seizes and crashes as it did on Oct. 19, 1987.

Two decades later, the Great Recession was fueled in large part by the widely accepted assumption that the securitization of mortgages made ownership of mortgages less risky. The securities were diversified by including many mortgages within a pool, and diversified geographically. And the rating agents stamped their approval. Congress, likely impressed by this innovation, also put pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase home ownership by issuing questionable mortgages — which were entered on their books as “sub-prime.” At the root of it all was an untested innovation.

Leading up to 2008, investors and policymakers alike lulled themselves into believing that house prices only rise. Mortgage-backed securities were being bought and sold with little attention to the underlying mortgages and no one cared while house prices kept rising. But eventually, house prices not only stopped rising, they declined to the point that the value of a mortgage security depended on the ability of the homeowner to repay. Many couldn’t and the collateral no longer covered the mortgage.

Both the 1987 and 2008 crises exhibited the marks of an experiment many of us did in grade school. Remember mixing a slurry of cornstarch and water? It was easily done, if done slowly. But what happened when you tried to stir too fast? It locked up solid. The stock market is a cornstarch-in-a-water slurry. If trading is moderate the market clears, but if everyone rushes at once for the exit, the market freezes or goes into a freefall search of buyers.

So why might ETFs be the next innovation to go awry? For starters, the concept of an ETF is a sound idea: they offer real-time trading and broad diversification. But it is untested, in the sense that ETFs have yet to be exposed to a real-life stress test. Investors are operating with the belief that they’re liquid and tradable in real-time, and they are well diversified within their asset class. But how liquid are they really?

The billionaire investor Howard Marks has made a persuasive case that an ETF is only as liquid as the underlying assets. What if those underlying assets can’t be readily sold? What happens if investors suddenly find cause to press the sell button on their smartphone? Can those orders be refused? At some point, the authorized participants (market makers) will be forced to liquidate a portion of the underlying assets in informationless trades. In other words: Sell, period. The result is a fire sale.

One might think that an S&P 500 ETF would be less susceptible to sudden illiquidity. But think of October 1987. And then consider that the volume of the S&P ETFs, reportedly, far exceeds the volume one might expect if S&P ETF investors were mainly patient, buy-and-hold, long-term investors. It appears that many institutional investors use these ETFs to hedge positions. What would happen if this trading suddenly dried up or, worse, if these ETF positions were suddenly liquidated forcing the authorized participants to sell heavily the underlying shares? And let’s remember that investors buy ETFs to avoid the need to study many businesses.

My gosh, The Efficient Market Hypothesis has taught us that studying 500 companies is a waste of time; the market knows everything already, so just buy the ETF! But this puts the average investor way outside his or her sphere of competence. We know what happens when investors know little or nothing about the underlying assets. Remember securitized mortgages? How reliable are your decisions when you know little about a matter? We lull ourselves into thinking that diversification gets us off the hook. But can we be sure that the slurry won’t freeze up again under extreme, not-yet-tested conditions? As Mark Twain wrote in his novel “Pudd’nhead Wilson,” “Behold, the fool saith, ‘Put not thine eggs in the one basket’—which is a manner of saying, ‘Scatter your money and your attention’; but the wise man saith, ‘Put all your eggs in the one basket and—WATCH THAT BASKET.’”

Pudd’nhead Wilson is wise. Modern finance and human nature have lead us to confuse volatility with risk of permanent loss. We prize diversification because it reduces volatility, but does that reduce permanent loss, particularly when we know little about the underlying assets? Perhaps we should think of it a little bit more as a marriage: make one good decision, and then LEARN TO HANDLE THE VOLATILITY that arises along the way.

Warren Buffett observed long ago that one should only own a stock if one is prepared to have the price decline 50 percent, because sooner or later it will. Otherwise one risks the urge to sell at the worst time. My guess is that the majority of ETF investors are not prepared for prices to decline 50 percent, or less. The ETF has deluded investors into thinking they are safe— and they can get out by pressing the sell button.

I began by arguing that an innovation is at the root of a financial crash. But remember, innovations aren’t the cause of a crash, they exacerbate them. The economist Robert Aliber notes that crises are often caused by a shift in foreign capital flows into the United States. Aliber thinks that shift has again happened, drying up the capital inflows buoying stock prices, and a significant decline is imminent. Innovation put off the day of reckoning and, in doing so, exacerbate the reversion to the mean.

Recently, billions of dollars have been flowing into all manner of ETFs. Yet there hasn’t been enough attention paid to the potential systemic risk of ETFs. Charlie Munger, the vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, was right when he said that if you haven’t overturned a long-held view in the past 12 months, you haven’t been thinking. It’s time to start thinking. That doesn’t mean we should rush to throw out good ideas; it means we should take the time to examine them properly. A clearer-headed view of the risks of ETFs is a good place to start.

The post Column: This innovation could lead to the next financial crisis appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

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MICHAEL OATES, Welder: I would wake up in the morning and take four pills and snort two. That’s just to get out of bed.

PAUL SOLMAN, Economics Correspondent: Michael Oates, a lifelong welder, is recovering from a 10-year opioid addiction which began when he took Vicodin for pain while working at a steel mill.

Did you lose the job?

MICHAEL OATES: Actually, my job went to China. And that was my excuse to do even more pills.

PAUL SOLMAN: Have you worked since?

MICHAEL OATES: I have had four or five different jobs since then.

PAUL SOLMAN: And what happened to those jobs?

MICHAEL OATES: I lost them all due to being addicted to opiates. They would random drug-test me, and I would be like, well, see you later. I would walk out.

I even got caught one time with synthetic urine in my underwear, because I got pretty slick at using that, you know?

PAUL SOLMAN: Do you stash it in your underpants?

MICHAEL OATES: I would stash it in my underwear, and I would go in, and it’s synthetic urine. It’s got everything in it that you need to make them think it’s your urine.

PAUL SOLMAN: Out of work for three years now, Oates is just one example of how the opioid crisis has decimated the American work force.

Business owner Clyde McClellan has seen plenty of other examples.

CLYDE MCCLELLAN, Owner, American Mug and Stein Co.: We have people that come in on a regular basis looking for employment that are obviously under the influence when they come in.

PAUL SOLMAN: Really? You can tell?

CLYDE MCCLELLAN: Oh, yes. They look like they’re the walking dead. I say, we’re going to send you for a drug test, and what is the drug test going to show us? Most of the time, if it’s pot or booze or anything like that, they tell me. If it’s something other than that, they don’t come back.

PAUL SOLMAN: McClellan owns American Mug and Stein in East Liverpool, Ohio, once known as the pottery capital of the world with dozens of firms. Foreign competition has since wiped out all but two of them.

McClellan owes his survival to his top customer, Starbucks. You would think would-be workers in town might be flocking here. But they’re flocking to drug dealers instead.

CLYDE MCCLELLAN: One day, I was looking out of my office in 2015, and there was two policemen standing in my driveway with rifles. And I went out. I knew one of them. And I said, what’s going on? He said, well, we’re raiding this house that’s next to your building, and — for heroin distribution.

PAUL SOLMAN: And these indelible photos of a couple overdosed in their car with their son in the backseat were snapped just three blocks from here.

You don’t need experience to get a job at American Mug and Stein, but you do need to be clean. Half of applicants are not.

CLYDE MCCLELLAN: I have been an employer in this area since 1983. Drugs were not at the forefront when you were talking to somebody about possible employment. Now the first thing we think of is, are they on drugs? How do we find out? What kind of references?

PAUL SOLMAN: Somebody came in here looking for a job with a reference from one of your other employees?

CLYDE MCCLELLAN: He was using this person as a reference. And when we asked the employee, he said, he’s a dope head. He steals money. He has stolen money from me.

Obviously, we didn’t bring him in.

PAUL SOLMAN: Donna Dibo has been there. A full-time waitress, she was prescribed opioids after a car accident. In time, scoring heroin became her main line of work.

DONNA DIBO, Former Waitress: It is like a job itself, actually. It is.

PAUL SOLMAN: Just trying to find that day’s drugs?

DONNA DIBO: Yes.

And then, once that day is over, your mind’s already going 1,000 times a minute, thinking, what am I going to do for the next day?

PAUL SOLMAN: How long have you been out of the work force?

DONNA DIBO: I have been out of work for about seven years.

PAUL SOLMAN: The prime skill she honed? Shoplifting.

DONNA DIBO: I would go into all the stores. My trunk and my backseat would be full with everything. Sears, I’m no longer allowed on their property. I stole so much from them, I probably own their store.

PAUL SOLMAN: And then there was her daughter’s new cell phone.

DONNA DIBO: We had some people over, and, all of a sudden, it just came up missing. I made it look like it came up missing. I am the one, actually, in fact, that did it.

PAUL SOLMAN: You stole it from your daughter and sold it?

DONNA DIBO: Absolutely.

PAUL SOLMAN: Scott Schwind was a well-paid machinist when his addiction took charge.

SCOTT SCHWIND, Machinist: I was just working to supply myself. I would have people come to my work, deliver stuff to me at work.

PAUL SOLMAN: At the machinist shop?

SCOTT SCHWIND: Yes. I was on third shift, so they would come at night and bring me stuff. But that’s how I messed the job up, is, I wouldn’t show up, or I was doing shady stuff, like having people come there. I would be in the bathroom for half-an-hour.

So, I lost that job. And then I have had other jobs, but I have never been able to keep a job for long because of the addiction.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, how long have you been out of work now?

SCOTT SCHWIND: Since 2011.

PAUL SOLMAN: Schwind, Oates and Dibo are now sober and enrolled at Flying High, a nonprofit program in Youngstown, Ohio, to get those out of the work force back in.

It teaches hard skills, like welding and machining. An urban garden is for soft skills, showing up on time, teamwork.

Jeff Magada says job training is critical to places like Youngstown, its population down more than 60 percent since its steel furnaces last ran full blast.

JEFFREY MAGADA, Executive Director, Flying High: You don’t have a lot of industry coming here because they know there’s not a lot of skilled workers here, and then workers who can also pass a drug screen.

PAUL SOLMAN: That’s a problem for Michael Sherwin’s company.

MICHAEL SHERWIN, CEO, Columbiana Boiler Co.: We have had positions open for a year-and-a-half to two years.

PAUL SOLMAN: Sherwin’s Columbiana Boiler Company has lots of demand for galvanized containers, but figures it’s foregone some $200,000 in business because he can’t find skilled, drug-free welders.

MICHAEL SHERWIN: We probably lose 20 to 25 percent.

PAUL SOLMAN: Because they can’t pass a drug test?

MICHAEL SHERWIN: Mm-hmm.

PAUL SOLMAN: Flying High places ex-addicts in shops like this and pays their salary for six months. But the threat of relapse is always there. That’s why Scott Schwind is taking it slow.

SCOTT SCHWIND: I just want to get a foundation of being sober and dealing with things before I jump into a job and all that stress, and you know what I mean, having a bunch of money in my pocket, to where I’m not tempted to do something that I’m going to regret, because, like, the drugs out there today will kill you.

PAUL SOLMAN: Why would you be tempted if you had money in your pocket?

SCOTT SCHWIND: You forget how to deal with problems. It was a coping mechanism. Something went wrong, and you’re like, I’m just going to get high, and then you don’t have to worry about it. I had a house, I had a car, I had all my stuff taken care of. I was a good father, you know what I mean?

And everything’s gone. And it takes a lot of work to get back to where you were. So, it’s easy to just throw your hands up and be like, you know what? Screw it.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, you could imagine having money in your pocket and going back to drugs?

DONNA DIBO: Absolutely. Absolutely. It takes two seconds for us to get a thought in our head, and we act on it.

PAUL SOLMAN: So, technical instructors like Ivan Lipscomb wear two hats.

IVAN LIPSCOMB, Flying High Instructor: Not only are we welding instructors, but we’re life coaches also. So we can try to talk to them about that also, maybe throw in a little joking in there every once in awhile just to keep their spirits up.

PAUL SOLMAN: Magada says those who complete this program pose much less risk than those who don’t.

JEFFREY MAGADA: We’re not just going to let them go. We’re going to monitor them over the next six months, while they have money in their pocket, and be working with them on those life skills.

PAUL SOLMAN: Life skills absent in those whom opioids have overtaken, says Michael Sherwin.

MICHAEL SHERWIN: Ten years ago, the drug screen wouldn’t have been an issue.

PAUL SOLMAN: At all?

MICHAEL SHERWIN: No.

PAUL SOLMAN: And now you’re losing 25 percent of…

MICHAEL SHERWIN: Of eligible candidates to it. So, for us, it’s a big deal.

PAUL SOLMAN: A big deal for the broader economy as well, says Princeton economist Alan Krueger. He’s found a direct link between opioid use and out-of-the-work-force Americans.

ALAN KRUEGER, Princeton University: For both prime-age men and prime-age women, the increase in prescriptions over the last 15 years can account for perhaps 20 percent of the drop in labor force participation that we have seen.

PAUL SOLMAN: The rate has been falling for years, as the population ages, says Krueger. But opioids are increasingly the story, as the participation rate has hit historic lows.

ALAN KRUEGER: We have had a change in medical practices, which has caused the medical profession to prescribe 3.5 times more opioid medication today than was the case 15 years ago. I think that’s made it harder for some people to keep their jobs and has led them to leave the labor force.

PAUL SOLMAN: Clyde McClellan has seen it happening in East Liverpool.

CLYDE MCCLELLAN: When you drive around town, you see too many young and middle-aged people just out during the middle of the day, when, normally, they’d be at work.

If they’re out on the streets, many times, they’re not looking for work. They’re just out there looking for their next fix.

PAUL SOLMAN: Donna Dibo is on the lookout no longer. Instead, she’s reinventing herself as a welder, Scott Schwind updating his machining skills. Michael Oates hopes to get back to work welding, and to rebuild the links shattered by his addiction.

MICHAEL OATES: It tore my family completely apart. It was stronger than eating. It was stronger than paying bills. It was stronger than going to my kids’ football games. I went from spoiling my kids to barely doing anything for my kids.

PAUL SOLMAN: Will they talk to you?

MICHAEL OATES: My youngest doesn’t talk to me. And that breaks my heart. And my youngest son, he barely ever talks to me. They went without a lot of things over my selfishness, over me wanting to be high every day and not wanting to be sick.

PAUL SOLMAN: And they’re still resentful?

MICHAEL OATES: And they’re still resentful, yes. If it takes me the rest of my life, I will make amends.

PAUL SOLMAN: Here’s hoping he can return to his family, and to the work force.

For the PBS NewsHour, this is economics correspondent Paul Solman, reporting from Northeastern Ohio.

The post How the opioid crisis decimated the American workforce appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

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Editor’s Note: Journalist Philip Moeller is here to provide the answers you need on aging and retirement. His weekly column, “Ask Phil,” aims to help older Americans and their families by answering their health care and financial questions. Phil is the author of the new book, “Get What’s Yours for Medicare,” and co-author of “Get What’s Yours: The Revised Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security.” Send your questions to Phil.

Michael – Pa.: I just reached my full retirement age of 66; my wife is 62. We need to apply for Social Security benefits right now because I’ve just lost my job. My wife’s current benefits would be about $500 and mine about $2,400. If she applied for spousal benefits instead of her benefits, would we see higher monthly benefits?

Phil Moeller: I’m sorry about your job loss, and I understand that you really need the money now. Because your wife’s benefit is so small, I’d suggest that you file for your own benefit first. This will enable her to file for a spousal benefit right away. It will be reduced from what she’d get if she waited to file until her full retirement age, but it will still be larger than her own retirement benefit. Unfortunately, 2015 changes to Social Security laws make it impossible for her to file for a spousal benefit without also filing at the same time for her own retirement benefit. She will get nothing from that benefit, because it’s smaller than her spousal benefit.

By the way, if you decide to look for a new job and are successful, you may have some options about Social Security. The cleanest choice would be to withdraw from the program and pay back the benefits you’ve already received. This option is good for up to a year after you began receiving benefits. I know it might be hard to come up with those funds, but doing do would permit you to “reset” your benefit entitlements and thus increase your benefits by deferring them to a later filing date.

You also could suspend your benefits. This would avoid the need to repay any past benefits to Social Security, and it would allow you to earn delayed retirement credits until the time you unsuspended. However, under those 2015 law changes. your wife would no longer be able to receive her spousal benefit if you suspended your own benefit. In that event, suspending your benefit might no longer be attractive. You can run the numbers to decide.

Neil: My wife is 67 and became Medicare-eligible two years ago. She has no recent work record, no quarters of credit (in the last 30 years) and no retirement benefits. And she has been paying more than $400 a month for Part A. I turned 62 a few months ago, have sufficient quarters for benefits, still work, and have not yet filed for Social Security benefits.

READ MORE: How do I get the Medicare coverage I want with the lowest out-of-pocket cost?

I believe that since I’m now 62 and eligible for retirement benefits, although not claiming them, my wife should now be able to get Medicare Part A at no cost by claiming on my record. Yes? (I know she had to pay Part A premiums after her 65th birthday and before I turned 62). I’ve been told this is the case, but the Medicare representatives my wife has spoken with don’t seem to know this and we can’t (yet) seem to get her Part A premiums eliminated.

Phil Moeller: Your understanding is correct. Here is a formal explanation of this rule. Social Security handles Medicare enrollments and premiums. I suggest you call Social Security, and not Medicare, and try to get this worked out. Hopefully, citing this rule will help, should the representative not be familiar with it.

Linda – Fla.: I have always been told that I didn’t qualify for Social Security since I worked for the state college system in Massachusetts and paid into the state retirement system instead of Social Security. I retired at age 55 and began collecting my pension along with health insurance through the state system. Annually, I received a notice from Social Security that I didn’t qualify for Social Security or Medicare. I was never told that I would be covered by Medicare as my husband’s spouse once he turned 65, so I didn’t apply, and continued to participate in the state program. Years later, the discrepancy was caught by Social Security, and I signed up. But I am being charged an extra $40 a month because I failed to sign up earlier! However, for some reason, I am now receiving a small Social Security payment of $40 each month! I am confused.

Phil Moeller: Wow. What a mess!

In the real world in which we all live, you might be better off letting sleeping dogs lie, as the old saying goes. After all, your mystery payment of $40 a month cancels out the $40 late-enrollment penalty that you think you’re being unfairly charged. Once you formally engage Social Security in evaluating your situation, who knows how badly things could fall off the rails! This is an overworked agency that makes mistakes even on good days.

If it matters, your spousal eligibility for Medicare, and thus for premium-free Part A of Medicare, began when your husband turned 62, not 65. If you were out any money because you did not sign up for Medicare when he turned 62, you might be able to appeal this to Social Security. It would help if you had some of those old notices where the agency said you were not eligible for premium-free Part A. This was true as far as your own earnings record was concerned, but not true when your spousal eligibility was taken into account.

Lastly, for what it’s worth, there is no test for Part B eligibility other than being a legal resident of the U.S. for five years. However, because people need Part A to qualify for most private Medicare policies, they think of that requirement as affecting their overall eligibility for Medicare.

Lisa – Okla.: I will turn 60 in October and am planning my retirement details. My husband of 32 years received full disability at 58 and died at age 63 (five years ago). I visited a Social Security office last summer. I was told the most I could receive would be my own retirement benefit, because my benefit would be more than half of what his benefit had been. After reading your Social Security book, this seems like a spousal benefit and not a widow’s benefit. I had thought I could take my own benefit early at a reduced rate, then transfer to his when I reached full retirement age. It’s all very confusing!

Phil Moeller: You are right on both counts – your understanding is correct and it is all very confusing! Your survivor benefit is not half of his but all of his. I’m gathering from your note that this will be greater than yours, so I’d advise you to take your own benefit as soon as you can, which is age 62. Then, when you reach your full retirement age, you would apply for your survivor benefit, which will have reached its maximum amount at that time.

READ MORE: Can I work and still collect my late husband’s Social Security benefits?

If you will be 60 this fall, it means you were born in 1957, and that your full retirement age is 66 years and six months. When you file for your survivor benefit, you should receive an additional payment each month equal to the amount by which that benefit exceeds your own retirement benefit.

Make it clear when you file for your own retirement benefit that you are filing only for that benefit, and that you will file for your survivor benefit when you have reached your full retirement age.

Anonymous – Mich.: I’m 63 and retired, but still have health insurance through my employer. At what point do I file for the Medicare coverage? I’ve heard six months prior to reaching 65 but I want to be sure.

Phil Moeller: You need to find out from your former employer what happens to your health coverage when you turn 65. Most employer retiree health plans require people to get Medicare when they turn 65. At that time, Medicare becomes the primary insurer and the employer plan becomes secondary, and can help pay claims that Medicare does not fully cover. If this is the case, you will have a seven-month initial enrollment period that begins three months before your birthday, and includes your birthday month and the following three months.

READ MORE: Does Medicare make sense for seniors with employer health coverage?

I urge people to sign up early during this period, and thus make sure they have no break in their primary health insurance coverage. These are things you can confirm with the employer plan.

Brandi – Fla.: Twice in the last two years my 80-year-old father (with Alzheimer’s) has mysteriously had his Medicare switched from an all-expenses-paid plan (including prescriptions) to the PPO Florida Blue plan. Florida Blue says Medicare made the switch, and Medicare says that Florida Blue made the switch!

Who in their right mind would switch a man with a monthly income of less than $1,200 from a free plan to one with a $53 monthly premium and co-pays? And this has happened TWICE! He didn’t sign up for it, and as his legal power of attorney, I didn’t sign up for it either.

Meanwhile the medical bills are in the thousands, and he has been denied some medical care that Medicare would have covered. I haven’t paid these premiums, and he doesn’t even know what premiums are at this point. I don’t feel we should have to pay a dime (although he paid some medical bills and prescriptions before I caught on). Does this happen to anyone else? Don’t they need a signature? If they can’t prove we signed up then how can we be held accountable?

Phil Moeller: Fair or not, in some circumstances, Medicare health plans do have the authority to assign people to a plan without their permission, although it’s my understanding that they have a legal responsibility to tell them this is happening.

Having said this, I do not know if this is what has happened. It sounds like your father is on Medicaid as well as Medicare. Because Medicaid eligibility and related rules are affected by state rules, I would not hazard a guess as to what has been going on with your father’s coverage.

There are a couple of Medicare nonprofits that sometimes help people with these kinds of problems. It’s their call whether to try and help or not. The two I have in mind are the Medicare Rights Center and the Center for Medicare Advocacy. I hope one of them can help you. And please let me know how things turn out for your father. Perhaps you can learn things that will help others as well as him.

The post I’m 66 and I just lost my job. How do we maximize our Social Security? appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

The best talent doesn’t answer recruiters dialing for dollars, writes Ask the Headhunter Nick Corcodilos. Photo by Getty Images

Nick Corcodilos started headhunting in Silicon Valley in 1979 and has answered over 30,000 questions from the Ask The Headhunter community.

In this special Making Sen$e edition of Ask The Headhunter, Nick shares insider advice and contrarian methods about winning and keeping the right job, on one condition: that you, dear Making Sense reader, send Nick your questions about your personal challenges with job hunting, interviewing, networking, resumes, job boards or salary negotiations. No guarantees — just a promise to do his best to offer useful advice.

We’re going to skip the Q&A this week because I’ve been receiving complaints from readers about recruiters.

A reader just told me a recruiter for a major multi-national corporation briefly solicited her by phone after an email solicitation after he found her on LinkedIn. His caller ID was “PRIVATE.” The number was blocked. When he called her again later, it was not from a company number. She worries who she’s dealing with. He wants to send her for an interview with the hiring manager.

Said the reader: “He knows nothing about me, not really. And I know nothing about the manager, the job, or what’s expected.”

I told her to forget about him. He’s one of a new ilk: recruiters with no standards who are dialing for dollars.

What you need to know about recruiters

Here’s the first thing to know about headhunters and recruiters. The good ones, who are worth the money employers pay them, would never in a million years send a candidate to interview with a hiring manager without themselves thoroughly interviewing, vetting and reference-checking the candidate.

That’s what they’re paid for. They do their jobs to protect their reputations.

READ MORE: Why recruiters aren’t always good for the economy

Today, I’d say 99 percent (or more) of recruiters routinely pluck a name from LinkedIn and set up an interview. There is no value in that. It’s dialing for dollars and hoping for a hit. (They don’t care about their reputations because they don’t have reputations. They have cellphones.) It’s why most job interviews are failures.

Are these kinds of recruiters for real? No, they’re not.

If a good recruiter is involved with a hire, the hit rate (hire rate) should be incredibly high. With good recruiters and headhunters, it is. With crank recruiters, the hit rate is dismal — because it should be.

And it’s why job seekers are so demoralized, frustrated and angry about having their time wasted. They actually bring it on themselves because they’re not vetting the recruiters who don’t bother to vet them. The job seekers trust the system, even if they know it’s destroying their careers.

One reader today sent me four Glassdoor job ads from four different staffing firms. All are for the same job at one real company. All four staffing firms are dialing for dollars. Glassdoor makes money four times when it sells space to post those ads. But it’s not just Glassdoor. LinkedIn does the same thing.

What happens when job seekers are free

When candidates are free — it so cheap to solicit them that they really are essentially free — it’s okay for recruiters to make tons of mistakes when recruiting and hiring. They can quickly find all the job seekers they want.

But the cost of this game to job seekers can be staggering.

Today I received three other emails from people who accepted or started jobs only to have their job offers rescinded outright, or to get terminated after eight hours of work. One of them quit a year-long job to accept a job offer. Another moved across the country. It cost all of them dearly.

They all rushed into questionable deals. The reader at the beginning of this story saw the signals and walked away. It was clear to her that the recruiter was using her, not placing her.

Employers don’t care. To employers, job candidates are free, too. What employers do to new hires doesn’t matter. It doesn’t affect an employer’s reputation. Thousands more job candidates are waiting in line.

So thank you, Glassdoor. Thank you, LinkedIn. Thank you, Indeed. Thank you, ZipRecruiter. Thank you, dialers for dollars. Thank you, HR. Thank you, employers.

READ MORE: Column: ZipRecruiter turned hiring into a beauty pageant where everyone loses

Good headhunters love this. It means they have less competition when they go looking for the best talent. The best talent doesn’t answer recruiters dialing for dollars. Most job seekers are happy to be suckered — as long as they can have their job searches “automated.” Most job seekers have been corralled and are being processed, chewed up, spit out, and abused by recruiters dialing for dollars. They’re out of the way. This makes it easier for good headhunters who earn their money to find and actually recruit the right talent.

Dear Readers: How do you tell the difference between good recruiters and unsavory recruiters? How do you tell a real solicitation from a terrible risk?

Nick Corcodilos invites Making Sense readers to subscribe to his free weekly Ask The Headhunter© Newsletter. His in-depth “how to” PDF books are available on his website: “How to Work With Headhunters…and how to make headhunters work for you,” “Keep Your Salary Under Wraps,” “How Can I Change Careers?” and “Fearless Job Hunting.”

Send your questions to Nick, and join him for discussion every week here on Making Sense. Thanks for participating!

Copyright © 2016 Nick Corcodilos. All rights reserved in all media. Ask the Headhunter® is a registered trademark.

The post Ask the Headhunter: How to spot a job recruiter without standards appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Students walking past Widener Library at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photo by Brian Snyder/REUTERS

In August, the Justice Department sought lawyers to investigate whether Harvard University discriminates against Asian Americans in favor of black and Latino applicants. Roger Clegg, a former official under Reagan and Bush in that same department, responded by noting that “it is frequently the case that not only are whites discriminated against now, but frequently Asian-Americans are as well.”

Aside from the government’s new initiative, right now Harvard is contending with an anti-affirmative action lawsuit on behalf of an Asian-American plaintiff that is funded and organized by conservative activist Edward Blum. Blum, the man behind the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, was also the organizer behind the Fisher v. University of Texas case, which upheld affirmative action. Abigail Fisher, a white Texan, argued that she experienced racial discrimination when University of Texas, Austin rejected her application. Blum has now turned to an Asian-American plaintiff to make the case against affirmative action.

Why the sudden interest in Asian-American rights by conservatives who normally reject any mention of race or ethnicity as “identity politics,” especially when those mentions claim racial discrimination? Asian Americans are the latest vehicle for critiquing affirmative action. Blum, Clegg and others claim that providing an admissions boost to black and Latino applicants negatively affects Asian Americans.

Related: Should affirmative action be based on socioeconomic status?

The problem with this logic, however, is that it assumes that the number of seats for white students — the majority in most schools — must remain constant, while Asian Americans and black and Latino applicants vie for the remaining slots. So, under this faulty logic, giving to underrepresented minorities means taking away from Asian Americans. This slippery argument is how conservatives are co-opting Asian Americans in their mission to end affirmative action. As they do so, they assume the dominance of whites.

But affirmative action cannot explain why Asian Americans seem to need higher achievement than whites to gain entrée into top colleges. Is this a form of affirmative action for whites amid Asian-American overachievement? Most Asian Americans support affirmative action, and, in my experience, also believe that elite colleges discriminate against Asian-American applicants, in favor of whites.

A campus that is “too Asian” is seen as problematic, but one in which whites are the majority group is not. Why? For many Americans, whiteness is the norm, so other ethnicities must define themselves in relationship to whiteness. So, majority white campus? No problem. Majority Asian? Problem.

Affirmative action for blacks and Latinos differs from giving whites a leg up vis-à-vis Asian Americans. Affirmative action’s goal is to bring previously absent voices to campus and to address racial inequality, past and present. In contrast, colleges would be hard-pressed to make the case that Asian Americans have advantages over whites in the United States.

The United States has a history of maintaining white supremacy in college admissions, though the very definition of whiteness has shifted over time. In the past Jews were not considered part of the dominant white group. During the 1920s, elite universities worried that their campuses would become overrun by Jewish students acing admissions exams, so they changed admissions processes accordingly to dramatically reduce the number of Jewish students admitted. Here, the fear that campuses would become “too Jewish” led the way.

Eventually, of course, the anti-Semitism embedded in these concerns faded away, as Jews became part of a white American mainstream. Today, we don’t hear about the percentage of Jewish students at selective colleges, because it is no longer an issue. A burning question is whether Asian Americans will experience the same incorporation into the mainstream. I will believe it’s happening when no one balks at the possibility of more Asian Americans than white students at Harvard.

Asian Americans, as well as white, black, and Latino Americans, need to understand the history of racial exclusion and the production of racial inequality in American society. When we do, it’s hard not to support affirmative action for underrepresented racial minorities.

Still, we should not shy away from raising important questions about whether universities hold Asian Americans to higher standards than their white peers; little in U.S. history has privileged Asians over whites, so there is little unjust history to address in this case. When we disentangle the question of Asian-American discrimination from affirmative action, it’s easy to see how one could support affirmative action for black and Latino Americans yet critique a boost for whites over Asian Americans.

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