When Paula Symons joined the U.S. workforce in 1972, typewriters in her office clacked nonstop, people answered the telephones and the hot new technology revolutionizing communication was the fax machine. Symons, fresh out of college, entered this brave new world thinking she'd do pretty much what her parents' generation did: Work for just one or two companies over about 45 years before bidding farewell to co-workers at a retirement party and heading off into her sunset years with a pension.
 
Forty years into that run, the 60-year-old communications specialist for a Wisconsin-based insurance company has worked more than a half-dozen jobs. She's been laid off, downsized and seen the pension disappear with only a few thousand dollars accrued when it was frozen.

The last time I considered Barack Obama’s re-election chances in this magazine, in mid-November, things were looking pretty bleak for the president. The statistical model I used measured three key factors — a president’s approval rating, economic growth and the ideological orientation of his opponent — and taken together, they showed that Obama had become a slight underdog to win re-election.

Corporate tax reform is creeping back into the picture, although experts predict the election will chase the issue off the agenda this year. Congressional Republicans and the White House are flirting with plans to overhaul the corporate tax system. But any perceived progress is expected to stall out despite a push from business groups to lower the 35 percent corporate tax rate, the highest among industrialized nations.

"President Obama and his wife, Michelle, despite having the second-lowest income of the four candidate/spouse combos, gave the highest percentage of their $1.8 million income to charity in 2010. He and Michelle gave 14.2% of their AGI, while the Romneys gave 13.8%." "Santorum and Newt Gingrich, by comparison, gave very little of their income to charity. Gingrich and his wife, Callista, gave 2.6% of their $3.2 million income in 2010. Santorum and wife Karen, who made the least in 2010 (less than $1 million), also gave the lowest percentage of their income to charity, at 1.8%."