Law Commons^™

What Do We Owe Future Generations?, Neil H. Buchanan

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In the United States, it is common for legal scholars, economists, politicians and others to claim that we are selfishly harming "our children and grandchildren" by (among many other things) running large government budget deficits. This article first asks two broad questions: (1) Do we owe future generations anything at all as a philosophical matter? and (2) If we do owe something to future generations, how should we balance their interests against our own? The short answers are "Probably" and "We really are not sure."

Finding only general answers to these general questions, I then look specifically at U.S. fiscal …

'Generational Theft'? Even With Stimulus And Bailout Spending, U.S. Fiscal Policy Does Not Cheat Future Generations, Neil H. Buchanan

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Despite the oft-heard claims that current generations are stealing from future generations by running fiscal deficits, both theory and evidence suggest that this is either not true or not knowable. Intergenerational justice is not an appropriate lens through which to analyze fiscal issues, because there is no obvious starting point from which to build a moral consensus about whether current generations owe anything at all to future generations - and even if we do believe that we owe something to future generations, no one has offered a useful method by which we can determine whether we are doing enough for …

Four Out Of Four Panelists Agree: U.S. Fiscal Policy Does Not Cheat Future Generations, Neil H. Buchanan

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

As part of the George Washington Law Review's symposium "What Does Our Legal System Owe Future Generations? New Analyses of Intergenerational Justice for a New Century," participants discussed the nature of intergenerational obligations as they relate to fiscal policy. The panelists reached consensus that intergenerational justice is not an appropriate lens through which to analyze fiscal issues, because there is no obvious starting point from which to build a moral consensus about whether current generations owe anything at all to future generations, much less how to quantify any such obligation. In addition, even pessimistic forecasts indicate that future generations will …