Tax-advantaged savings has become a staple of the American retirement system, with 60 million savers squirreling away $6.6 trillion in their 401(k)s, alone.
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[But] that success now vexes many retirement experts, alarmed by how easily Congress acquiesces to tax breaks for retirement savings that disproportionately help the wealthy while treating the benefits relied upon by most retirees — Social Security and Medicare — as budget-busters ripe for reform.
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The latest expansion of private retirement savings comes at a time when Social Security, which the majority of American seniors rely on to cover basic living expenses, faces insolvency in 2034. Secure 2.0 sailed through Congress shortly before lawmakers convened working groups to try to fix Social Security’s $119 billion cash shortfall, which amounted to less than half of a single year’s worth of tax benefits for retirement savings that mostly go to higher earners.
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The success of the retirement industry and its advocates in Congress has put a sinkhole in the federal budget at a time when entitlements are under threat. While the cost to the Treasury for tax-advantaged retirement savings was $81 billion in 1995, it has since swelled to over $369 billion in 2023 and, in the wake of Secure 1.0 and 2.0, is expected to nearly double to $659 billion in 2027.
“The item found in the travertine floors could have been something that died around the spring or died somewhere else and was washed into the region and covered in the travertine. Those are the two most likely scenarios,” [Dr. Andrew Leier, chair of the Geological Society of America’s sedimentary geology division] explains. But is it a human jaw?
“It absolutely looks like one,” say Amber D. Riley, MS, RDH, the immediate past president of American Society of Forensic Odontology, and Anthony R. Cardoza, DDS, a forensic dentistry consultant, in a joint email to AD. The arch shape and tooth anatomy appear human, but perhaps the most unusual finding is that it looks like the person may have had dental work done. “There appear to be absent teeth and the bone tissue has filled into where the teeth once were. Another human potentially intervened and removed teeth due to injury or disease,” they explain.
“The item found in the travertine floors could have been something that died around the spring or died somewhere else and was washed into the region and covered in the travertine. Those are the two most likely scenarios,” [Dr. Andrew Leier, chair of the Geological Society of America’s sedimentary geology division] explains. But is it a human jaw?
“It absolutely looks like one,” say Amber D. Riley, MS, RDH, the immediate past president of American Society of Forensic Odontology, and Anthony R. Cardoza, DDS, a forensic dentistry consultant, in a joint email to AD. The arch shape and tooth anatomy appear human, but perhaps the most unusual finding is that it looks like the person may have had dental work done. “There appear to be absent teeth and the bone tissue has filled into where the teeth once were. Another human potentially intervened and removed teeth due to injury or disease,” they explain.
People have long hated Renoir. The loathing has both moral and aesthetic substance. On moral grounds, Renoir’s innumerable dumb-faced, unflattering female nudes have seen him posthumously charged with sexism. Adding to the ignominy was his anti-Semitism, as shown by his stance in the Dreyfus affair.
And yet even the aesthetic charges are somewhat personal. Renoir, a ceramicist by training, fell in with [artists] who would become part of the Impressionist movement. Bold color and depictions of modern life were in. Formalism, florid rococo details, and grand mythological scenes were out.
The problem was, Renoir quite liked these old things—“I am of the 18th century,” he once said—and when times got financially tough, he backtracked and began painting saccharine, bourgeois portraits. It made him rich, an international star even. In short, he’s seen as a sellout.
I knew a Renoir hater. Didn’t know this was an entire movement.
Critics argue Renoir paid no attention to line or composition (he painted as though on a pot, the charge runs)
