Law Commons^™

Through The Doughnut Hole: Reimagining The Social Security Contribution And Benefit Base Limit, Patricia E. Dilley

UF Law Faculty Publications

The Obama campaign proposal to address Social Security's future financing shortfalls by increasing the Social Security tax base limit only for those making more than $250,000 per year raises the broader question of the function of the base limit from a Social Security program perspective. The public supports increasing the wage base above all other possible avenues for solving long term financing issues, but the problems with the Obama "doughnut hole" proposal are substantial from several perspectives. In this article, the author suggests that the function of the base limit be reconsidered, and the benefit accrual function of the earnings …

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

UF Law Faculty Publications

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 …

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

UF Law Faculty Publications

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 …

Social Security And Government Deficits: When Should We Worry?, Neil H. Buchanan

UF Law Faculty Publications

In this Article, I critically examine the assumption that the Social Security system faces a financing crisis and that the government can avert the crisis only by acting now to cut benefits or to raise taxes. The best conclusion we can draw from the current evidence is that the system is not doomed and that it is not necessary to institute immediate changes. We should, of course, continue to monitor the situation closely to determine whether future changes become necessary. This conclusion is further strengthened by the likelihood that any changes the government makes to the Social Security system today …

Hope We Die Before We Get Old: The Attack On Retirement, Patricia E. Dilley

UF Law Faculty Publications

The American institution of retirement has sustained numerous attacks over the last twenty years, to the extent that it may cease to exist by the time most of today's workers reach their midsixties. Professor Patricia Dilley describes how all of the components of the "three-legged stool" that represents private pensions, personal savings, and Social Security, have declined so significantly in recent years that the combination may not be able to provide support for the elderly in the future, particularly those retired seniors who are in the lower and middle classes. Changes in employment policies, the markets for retirement savings investment, …

Breaking The Glass Slipper: Reflections On The Self-Employment Tax, Patricia E. Dilley

UF Law Faculty Publications

Lawmakers and their staffs, in drafting tax legislation, often resemble Prince Charming looking for Cinderella with that glass slipper in hand -- rather than start from scratch and draft a completely new tax provision. It is frequently easier, faster, and more reassuring to taxpayers and tax practitioners to use an existing statute or approach and simply amend it slightly to make it fit the need of the new provision. However, problems can arise from this approach.

In the original Grimm Brothers' version of the Cinderella story, for example, the wicked stepsisters were each so anxious to be the chosen one …

Taking Public Rights Private: The Rhetoric And Reality Of Social Security Privatization, Patricia E. Dilley

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores the foundations of the Social Security privatization debate. What is frequently portrayed as a numbers problem to which a "correct" answer can be found is in fact an ideological and political argument about wealth building versus direct income support and about the reality and security of public entitlement as opposed to private property rights. Efforts to use the idea of private property as the basis of rights in the context of the Social Security system and other non-retirement social welfare programs have proven problematic. This Article suggests that Social Security, far from being a quaint, retrograde souvenir …

The Evolution Of Entitlement: Retirement Income And The Problem Of Integrating Private Pensions And Social Security, Patricia E. Dilley

UF Law Faculty Publications

There are clear distinctions between the legal relationships creating private pension entitlement and Social Security benefit entitlement. Nonetheless, an analysis of the function and context of retirement income rights reveals that the presumed gulf between public and private rights in this area is not nearly so wide as it may at first seem. In this Article I examine the historical roots and evolution of the American system of entitlement to old-age income security in order to understand why in one technical area--the integration of private pension plans with Social Security--workers' presumed entitlement to private pensions is less secure than their …