Social Security, Medicare, and 401(k)-style retirement programs are the three pillars of America’s retirement system, and all three have serious problems. Social Security discourages private savings, Medicare is a financial time bomb, and it’s difficult for the less well-off to take advantage of 401(k) plans. Meanwhile, it’s becoming harder for Black and Hispanic Americans to save on their own. We need to fix this, fast.

Behind the protests in Kiev this week are signs of a new geopolitical world in which Iran, Russia, and China are taking advantage of the American bumbling to gain power around the margins. Two pieces from the AI archives show how this world has been a long time in coming.

One way or another, we appear to be headed for some kind of climax in Ukraine fairly soon. Though Yanukovich had said he would speak to opposition leaders yesterday, his announcement was accompanied by a heavy buildup of security forces around Kiev. The offices of jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko’s party were raided, and police started to tear down protestor barricades around town.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets on Sunday in Kiev to protest the government’s turn toward Russia. But while the protests are massive, it’s a much more complicated situation than some media reports let on. Kiev, the national capital, is in the western part of the country where anti-Yanukovich forces have always been strong. But anti-government demonstrations in the west can paradoxically bolster the government’s position in the east. The real battle is likely to depend on how Ukraine’s powerful oligarchs divide among themselves and on how successful the government is at staving off a looming economic crisis.

A Japanese company thought way, way beyond the box with this idea: putting a ring of solar panels around the moon’s equator and beaming that energy back down to earth. This idea is much more fiction than it is science, but dreams like this one may be achieved sooner than we might expect.

The US could save anywhere from 1 to 8.5 billion dollars a year by reducing the inefficiencies in hospital waiting rooms. This is an example of the kind of expensive defects in our health care system that aren’t even really on most people’s policy radars, but few reforms will be really achievable until we can a handle on the waste and inefficiencies currently making the system expensive and dysfunctional.

A new report on the Vatican Bank shows a church, and a Pope, on the move, but with much left still to do.

The death of driving doesn’t mean the end of the suburbs. Thanks to computers and mobile devices, people are able to live richer, more social lives in more places than ever.

As you read this, I’m on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic flying back to the States. I’ve been in Budapest for most of the week completely swamped in meetings, all the while trying to meet several competing writing deadlines. As such, you’ll have to forgive me, dear readers, if my post explaining the site changes you see in front of you is a little brief.

Riyadh and Jerusalem have common interests that are not limited to preventing Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The Saudis believe Iran is leading Shiites in a religious conflict with Sunnis now engulfing the Fertile Crescent. They fear that the Islamic Republic, nuclear or not, poses an existential threat to their security as the Shiite tide rises.