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Full-Text Articles in Social Welfare Law
Putting Distribution First, Robert C. Hockett
Putting Distribution First, Robert C. Hockett
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
It is common for normative legal theorists, economists and other policy analysts to conduct and communicate their work mainly in maximizing terms. They take the maximization of welfare, for example, or of wealth or utility, to be primary objectives of legislation and public policy. Few if any of these theorists seem to notice, however, that any time we speak explicitly of maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing other things and of equalizing yet other things. Fewer still seem to recognize that we effectively define ourselves by reference to that which we distribute and equalize. For it is in …
Social Security Is Fair To All Generations: Demystifying The Trust Fund, Solvency, And The Promise To Younger Americans, Neil H. Buchanan
Social Security Is Fair To All Generations: Demystifying The Trust Fund, Solvency, And The Promise To Younger Americans, Neil H. Buchanan
Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy
The Social Security system has come under attack for having illegitimately transferred wealth from younger generations to the Baby Boom generation. This attack is unfounded, because it fails to understand how the system was altered in order to force the Baby Boomers to finance their own benefits in retirement. Any challenges that Social Security now faces are not caused by the pay-as-you-go structure of the system but by Baby Boomers' other policy errors, especially the emergence of extreme economic inequality since 1980. Attempting to fix the wrong problem all but guarantees a solution that will make matters worse. Generational justice …