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Misleading Guides to Pension Design

Nicholas Barr

in The Welfare State as Piggy Bank: Information, Risk, Uncertainty, and the Role of the State

This chapter summarizes core controversies about pensions by focusing on ten persistent myths about pension design that have clouded discussion, many of them centred on the debate about the ... More

This chapter summarizes core controversies about pensions by focusing on ten persistent myths about pension design that have clouded discussion, many of them centred on the debate about the respective merits of funded pensions (in which today's pensions are paid out of previously accumulated contributions) and Pay‐As‐You‐Go arrangements (in which today's pensions are paid out of today's contributions). Analysis of pensions needs to draw on microeconomics, macroeconomics, financial economics, and an understanding of the theory of social insurance. Many of the myths – relating to demographic change, savings, economic growth, public spending, and labour supply – are based on analysis that is incomplete because it omits one or more of these components.Less

Pension Design: The Options

Nicholas Barr

in The Welfare State as Piggy Bank: Information, Risk, Uncertainty, and the Role of the State

This chapter sets out the wide range of options for pension design – funded or Pay‐As‐You‐Go, public or private, defined‐contribution or defined‐benefit – drawing on economic theory, the experience ... More

This chapter sets out the wide range of options for pension design – funded or Pay‐As‐You‐Go, public or private, defined‐contribution or defined‐benefit – drawing on economic theory, the experience of different countries, and analysis of public and private institutional capacity constraints. Though the options vary in the form and extent of state involvement, even the most private arrangements require continuing government involvement, notably to ensure macroeconomic stability, to enforce contributions, and to ensure regulation of financial markets; and if reducing uncertainty is an objective – addressing inflation, pooling risks within a generation and across generations – the role of the state is to that extent larger.Less

Facing the Pension Crisis in France

Gordon L. Clark

in Pension Security in the 21st Century: Redrawing the Public-Private Debate

This chapter examines the pension problem in France. The French pension situation follows the path of most Bismarckian pension institutions; it has long maintained a relative status quo despite ... More

This chapter examines the pension problem in France. The French pension situation follows the path of most Bismarckian pension institutions; it has long maintained a relative status quo despite several difficult reforms. Such institutions are difficult to reform because change affects the special interests of various privileged groups of workers. For reforms to pass, they must be negotiated with social partners. It remains unclear when and what type of pension funds will develop, who will be in charge of them, and how they will be invested.Less

The Iron House, the Men in Bags, and the Severed Head

Patrick Sims‐Williams

in Irish Influence on Medieval Welsh Literature

This chapter (continuing from Chapter 9) begins with the Iron House story in Branwen. Arson in medieval life and literature is discussed, with special reference to Norse material and the Irish sagas ... More

This chapter (continuing from Chapter 9) begins with the Iron House story in Branwen. Arson in medieval life and literature is discussed, with special reference to Norse material and the Irish sagas Orgain Denna Ríg and Mesca Ulad, but also the Grimms' ‘Six Go Through the World’ and Vercelli Homily IX. It is argued that the Bórama, first attested in the Book of Leinster, is the best Irish parallel to Branwen and that a version of it, probably from St Maedóc's monastery at Ferns, Co. Wexford, influenced the Welsh author here and in his ‘Men in the Bags’ episode. A Leinster sequel, The Battle of Allen, may have influenced his story of Brân's severed head. The Welsh king Brân and Irish king Brandub seem to have been equated.Less

The Apocryphal History of Kiyomori

in Eccentric Spaces, Hidden Histories: Narrative, Ritual, and Royal Authority from The Chronicles of Japan to The Tale of the Heike

This chapter examines the The Tale of the Heike as an apocryphal history of Taira no Kiyomori. It focuses on the episodes about Kiyomori's kaburo who served as his spies, the identification of ... More

This chapter examines the The Tale of the Heike as an apocryphal history of Taira no Kiyomori. It focuses on the episodes about Kiyomori's kaburo who served as his spies, the identification of Kiyomori as the reincarnation of the demon-subjugating general Jie Taishi and legends of Kiyomori's heterodox royal parentage in the “Gion Lady.” This chapter discusses Kiyomori's achievement of symbolic authority over the demonic and defiled realms and suggests that this royal authority and practices are similar to those of Emperor Go-Shirakawa and Go-Daigo.Less

Wonderful Nonsense

John Franceschina

in Hermes Pan: The Man Who Danced with Fred Astaire

Hermes Pan moves to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to choreograph The Barkleys of Broadway with Fred Astaire and Judy Garland but is released at Garland’s request after the completion of the “Shoes With Wings ... More

Hermes Pan moves to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to choreograph The Barkleys of Broadway with Fred Astaire and Judy Garland but is released at Garland’s request after the completion of the “Shoes With Wings On” routine. He contracts with Mike Todd to choreograph As the Girls Go on Broadway and joins composer Jimmy McHugh, lyricist Harold Adamson, and director Howard Bay at Todd’s Irvington Estate to begin work. After five weeks of rehearsal the show opens in Boston with costumes by Oleg Cassini on 13 October 1948 to devastating reviews. After three weeks of reworking, the musical opened in New Haven to excellent notices anticipating a triumphant premiere in New York City on 13 November.Less

Experiments in television drama

Troy Kennedy Martin

in Troy Kennedy Martin

This chapter provides description of various television dramas. Troy Kennedy Martin's famous polemic, ‘Nats Go Home’, subtitled ‘First Statement of a New Drama for Television’, was published in the ... More

This chapter provides description of various television dramas. Troy Kennedy Martin's famous polemic, ‘Nats Go Home’, subtitled ‘First Statement of a New Drama for Television’, was published in the theatre magazine Encore in March 1964. Its opening paragraph set the tone for an article which was to stir up a hornet's nest in television drama circles at the time and which has become one of the most cited articles in the history of television studies. ‘Nats Go Home’ was the product of debates, which had been going on in the Drama Department at the BBC for some time, involving the new generation of scriptwriter/adapters recruited in 1959–61. This chapter states that several months before Storyboard and before MacTaggart's arrival, Kennedy Martin had already demonstrated an interest in experimenting with the form of television drama in a short script written as an exercise for a BBC training course. The course was one in which all new staff in the Drama Department were required to complete and it was designed to teach the basics of television production.Less

Stage and Screen Confections … and Something a Little Deeper

Andy Propst

in They Made Us Happy: Betty Comden & Adolph Green's Musicals & Movies

Betty Comden and Adolph Green returned to lighter fare after Subways Are for Sleeping. They penned a giddy film romp called What a Way to Go! The film starred Shirley MacLaine as an oft-married woman ... More

Betty Comden and Adolph Green returned to lighter fare after Subways Are for Sleeping. They penned a giddy film romp called What a Way to Go! The film starred Shirley MacLaine as an oft-married woman who finds herself, despite her desire to remain poor, getting richer and richer. Neither the writers nor the critics found the movie to be satisfying, but audiences at the time delighted in it. For the stage they also penned a goofy satirical comedy, Fade Out–Fade In, specifically for Carol Burnett. This look at filmmaking in the 1930s delighted audiences as well, but the show struggled when Burnett dealt with chronic health issues. Beyond these two projects Comden and Green also tried to re-team with the men with whom they wrote their first Broadway show (Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins), but the quartet eventually had to part company on this piece: a musical version of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth.Less

Pacchigi! and Go: Representing Zainichi in Recent Cinema

Ichiro Kuraishi

in Diaspora without Homeland: Being Korean in Japan

This article appraises the contemporary portrayal of the Korean diaspora by and, in the Japanese imagination, with reference to two movies, Pacchigi and Go. The former, while portraying elements such ... More

This article appraises the contemporary portrayal of the Korean diaspora by and, in the Japanese imagination, with reference to two movies, Pacchigi and Go. The former, while portraying elements such as Zainichi poverty, a discriminatory and hostile attitude, and other scars from Japanese colonialism, retains a conciliatory tool for the relief of the Japanese audience—the death of the Korean protagonist, which effectively enables Japanese audiences to reconcile the Zainichi tragedy as something that can be eliminated from memory. This is further validated by inferring contrast between him and the Japanese hero, Kösuke. Go, an individualist perspective on the Korean diaspora portrays its elements with obvious constructivist attitude—a North Korean character dies, all Zainichi characters owe allegiance to North Korea and Chongryun. Also, quite effectively, the repatriation to North Korea is maneuvered separate from the present. The movie concludes with the end of the hero's commitment to North Korean elements.Less

The Adventure is Larger than the Man

Marilyn Ann Moss

in Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood's Legendary Director

In his mid-seventies, Raoul Walsh saw himself as someone who still had adventures to seek and films to be made. He had agreed to direct a picture called Bury Them Together, but ten days earlier, it ... More

In his mid-seventies, Raoul Walsh saw himself as someone who still had adventures to seek and films to be made. He had agreed to direct a picture called Bury Them Together, but ten days earlier, it was cancelled. Since Walsh was still in Rome shooting Esther and the King, Mary Walsh acted as signatory in his absence, sealing a deal with Universal to have the studio distribute Walsh's upcoming production Come September. Walsh would go uncredited as the film's producer. Marines, Let's Go! was an odd choice to show Kennedy since it is a comedy, not a war picture, and would have given little indication of the kind of war story Walsh would direct. The final picture of Walsh's career is a western called A Distant Trumpet. This film marked the culmination of changes a long time coming in Walsh's career and in the film industry itself. He wouldn't talk about personal travails. Living in darkness the last years of his life, Walsh did what he had always done: created an adventure from the material he did have and used his imagination, the landscape that never failed him. In December 31, 1980, he passed away at the age of 93.Less

Branching Out

Brent Phillips

in Charles Walters: The Director Who Made Hollywood Dance

In this chapter, Walters’ life in Palm Springs is explored, including the launching of “Chuck Walters Presents,” a men’s clothing store that sold the director’s personally designed fashions. Walters ... More

In this chapter, Walters’ life in Palm Springs is explored, including the launching of “Chuck Walters Presents,” a men’s clothing store that sold the director’s personally designed fashions. Walters begins a new personal relationship with Jimie Morrissey. The popular decline of the movie musical is discussed, and Dore Schary is removed from M-G-M. Walters typecasting as a “woman’s director” is his key reason for directing the military comedy Don’t Go Near the Water (1957), a financial success. Walters re-shoots portions of Vincente Minnelli’s Oscar-winning Gigi, and the two directors are compared.Less

December 1966: At Home with the Blues

Jas Obrecht

in Stone Free: Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966-June 1967

Jimi deepens his entanglement with manager Michael Jeffery by signing another ill-advised contract, and moves with Chas Chandler and Kathy Etchingham into an apartment owned by Ringo Starr. He begins ... More

Jimi deepens his entanglement with manager Michael Jeffery by signing another ill-advised contract, and moves with Chas Chandler and Kathy Etchingham into an apartment owned by Ringo Starr. He begins assembling a wide-ranging collection of albums, including many by favourite blues artists Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Elmore James. After a visit with his former bandleader, Little Richard, Hendrix is accosted by the London police due to his skin color and clothing choices. The Jimi Hendrix Experience make their television debut on Ready Steady Go!, and record “Foxey Lady,” “Can You See Me,” “Love or Confusion,” “Red House,” and other original Hendrix compositions. The band’s first single, “Hey Joe” backed with “Stone Free,” is released to rave reviews. Then, while waiting backstage to perform at a Boxing Day matinee, Jimi composes “Purple Haze,” drawing inspiration from a Philip José Farmer science fiction short story. He rings in the new year with Noel Redding’s family.Less

Reification of the Human: Global Organ Harvesting and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go

J. Paul Narkunas

in Reified Life: Speculative Capital and the Ahuman Condition

Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel Never Let Me Go follows a group of genetic clones who are created as wards of the British health service because they serve a utilitarian function: They are manufactured ... More

Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel Never Let Me Go follows a group of genetic clones who are created as wards of the British health service because they serve a utilitarian function: They are manufactured for the purpose of having their vital organs harvested until their death. The world he envisions of a grouping of humans reproduced to be a living warehouse of organs while certainly dreadful is nowhere near as horrific as when organ transplantation and global uneven development intersect in our neoliberal present. Ishiguro shows how humans who view their humanity instrumentally expedite a world that is ready to slice them into shares, monetizing all the parts along the way. Through Ishiguro’s text, I diagnose the reification of the body as an aggregation of fungible body parts. Human reification challenges bioethicists and cultural critics alike to reflect on how human dignity and bodily integrity no longer serve as barriers for marking the species-limit due to new advances in biotechnology.Less

Go Tell It on the Mountain: James Baldwin and the Politics of Faith

Wilson Carey McWilliams

in A Political Companion to James Baldwin

This chapter treats Baldwin’s religiosity as a means of exploring both relevant cultural factors shaping Baldwin’s writing as well as examining the foundational, evangelist tenets of Baldwin’s faith ... More

This chapter treats Baldwin’s religiosity as a means of exploring both relevant cultural factors shaping Baldwin’s writing as well as examining the foundational, evangelist tenets of Baldwin’s faith that informed his political standing. Wilson Carey McWilliams’s close reading of Mountain not only unpacks the characters of the novel as various disquisitions on faith but also uses these instances of faith to reveal what Baldwin has to say about identity, multiculturalism, and the universal power of love. The chapter is both an important synthesis of the two approaches to Baldwin’s religion and original in thought and examination.Less

A Documentary Biography

Paul S. Atkins

in Teika: The Life and Works of a Medieval Japanese Poet

Teika lived to the age of eighty, and we have a great deal of information about his life. Much of it comes from his own diary, Meigetsuki, which he kept for over fifty years. Teika was born into a ... More

Teika lived to the age of eighty, and we have a great deal of information about his life. Much of it comes from his own diary, Meigetsuki, which he kept for over fifty years. Teika was born into a literary house and achieved early success as a poet, but suffered a number of setbacks, including the fall from power of his patrons, the Kujō family. He returned to the center of poetic activity thanks to the backing of Retired Emperor Go-Toba, commissioner of the eighth imperial anthology of waka poetry, the Shin Kokinshū. After Teika and Go-Toba became estranged, Teika’s career advanced even further when military authorities exiled Go-Toba and his sons in retaliation for their attempt to topple the Kamakura shogunate.Less

Decision Making, Taste, and Financial Commitment to Culture: Or, Why Counterpoint Press Accepted after Rejecting It

Clayton Childress

in Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel

This chapter examines why Counterpoint Press eventually accepted the manuscript for Jarrettsville after initially rejecting it. As a precondition for representing Cornelia Nixon, Wendy Weil asked her ... More

This chapter examines why Counterpoint Press eventually accepted the manuscript for Jarrettsville after initially rejecting it. As a precondition for representing Cornelia Nixon, Wendy Weil asked her to write and send one chapter per month of the novel that would eventually become Jarrettsville. Weil thought she could place Nixon's novel Angels Go Naked, but Jarrettsville was the novel she wanted to represent. As Nixon worked on Martha's Version, Weil worked on placing Angels Go Naked until it was released by Counterpoint on April 1, 2000. Martha's Version was sent to five editors in 2002, and then reworked, before being sent out to another sixteen editors from 2003 to 2005. Those sixteen editors all also rejected Martha's Version. The chapter first considers the interdependencies of literary agents and editors and how editors make and legitimize decisions before discussing why Jarrettsville was rejected and later accepted by Counterpoint.Less

Wartime Shipyard

Erin Royston Battat

in Ain't Got No Home: America's Great Migrations and the Making of an Interracial Left

This chapter places African American writer Chester Himes's novel If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945) in the context of the crisis of unions and the fracturing of the Left in the 1940s. Himes depicts the ... More

This chapter places African American writer Chester Himes's novel If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945) in the context of the crisis of unions and the fracturing of the Left in the 1940s. Himes depicts the conflicts between white Okies and African American migrants as they jockeyed for position in the California shipyards during World War II. When a white female Okie frames the black protagonist for rape, she transplants Jim Crow to California, using the force of the American legal system and the U.S. military to shore up her claims to white femininity. Himes highlights the stark contradictions between the democratic aims of the war and the treatment of people of color at home and abroad. While most critics his novel as an anticommunist polemic, this chapter reads it as a voice of black leftist internationalism that links capitalism, imperialism, and racial problems on the home front.Less

Jazz Dance and Racism

Carlos Jones

in Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches

This chapter examines the complications of race and class as a part of the jazz dance story. Acceptance as an art form has eluded jazz dance for decades. Much of this can be attributed to the ... More

This chapter examines the complications of race and class as a part of the jazz dance story. Acceptance as an art form has eluded jazz dance for decades. Much of this can be attributed to the separation between the artistic community and what is considered entertainment, and therefore less sophisticated. The development of jazz dance as a codified technique during the latter half of the twentieth century has blurred or erased movement that does not emanate from white ideas of artistic value. This chapter offers theories that encompass the discussion of race and class in America, highlighting the contradiction that allowed jazz dance to become a marginalized dance form while still having great commercial success. Discussion includes the influence of rock and roll music, Motown, and shows like American Bandstand and Ready Steady Go¡Less

From the Mausoleum to a Spider Web: William Faulkner’s and Louise Erdrich’s Takes on Hybridity

Melanie R. Anderson

in Faulkner and the Native South

Critics have noted many connections between the work of William Faulkner and Louise Erdrich, from their penchant for creating sprawling series of novels that tease out place and community in their ... More

Critics have noted many connections between the work of William Faulkner and Louise Erdrich, from their penchant for creating sprawling series of novels that tease out place and community in their Southern and Midwestern settings to the link of the Mississippi River between their regions’ Native histories. Specifically, this essay focuses on the representations of Native characters in both writers’ fiction. On the one hand, Faulkner’s Native characters are often represented as ghosts fading into a dim past. Influenced by the myth of the Vanishing American, he creates Native characters of uncertain origins with no futures. On the other hand, Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa band of Ojibwe, portrays Native characters who are survivors into the twentieth century. While Faulkner’s Native characters have truncated genealogies that fall through the cracks of contact zones, Erdrich’s characters’ family trees extend and widen, emphasizing border crossing and Native resilience.Less