Retirement Security Law Commons^™

Completing Social Security: Paid Leave And The Social Security Act, Molly Weston Williamson

Journal of Legislation

The Social Security Act of 1935’s twin flagship programs, unemployment insurance and retirement benefits, each provide cash benefits to replace lost wages when income is cut off due to harms beyond our control. But the Social Security Act fails to protect workers against wage loss due to serious but temporary illness, which poses a risk to economic security that parallels job loss and old age. This missing insurance protection is better known today as paid leave.

The omission of wage loss insurance for serious illness leaves a profound gap in the Social Security Act that was recognized since the law’s …

Unbundling Social Security From The Payroll Tax, Henry Ordower

All Faculty Scholarship

To preserve social security as a welfare program primarily for older individuals and to ameliorate the distributional inequity of funding social security across income and wealth levels, this article recommends unbundling the benefit side of social security from its longstanding payroll tax funding mechanism. The article recommends replacing the payroll tax revenue with a budget allocation from general revenues accompanied by both revenue raisers and benefit limitations. Income tax rate increases linked to repeal of the FICA tax and tax expenditure limitations would enhance income tax revenue. Modifying social security benefits from their current overinclusive, entitlement structure for all to …

Promoting Retirement Security For Low-Income Workers In Illinois: An Analysis And Lessons For Other States, Philip C. Aka, Chidera V. Oku, Murna Habila

Akron Law Review

This Article makes suggestions for promoting retirement security among low-income workers in Illinois with pointed lessons for workers in other U.S. states. Adapting a framework from a previous study by the principal author, the Article portrays retirement preparedness for low-income workers in Illinois as a function of changes in Social Security, employer-sponsored pensions, and personal assets—the famed “three-legged stool” of retirement income—synchronized with reduction of disparities between socioeconomic groups in education, healthcare, and housing. Many studies on retirement security focus excessively on the national level sometimes at the expense of the subnational phenomena that complicate retirement security and increase the …

Save The Social Security Disability Trust Fund! And Reduce Ssi Exposure To The General Fund, Daniel F. Solomon

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

Adjudicasaurus Rex, Jeffrey S. Wolfe

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

This article proposes a simple theme. While many issues plague the Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs, only reform of the hearings and appeals process can solve the decades-long (and growing) hearings backlog. Only then, can the remaining questions regarding the solvency of the DI trust fund be meaningfully addressed. As it now stands, the ongoing backlog of pending hearings and appeals feeds the twin plagues of rising costs and increasing delay. These are the very issues that drove the federal courts in the passage of the Civil Justice Reform Act of 1990 (CJRA). This article provides …

Social Insecurity: A Modest Proposal For Remedying Federal District Court Inconsistency In Social Security Cases, Jonah J. Horwitz

Pace Law Review

This Article addresses a relatively narrow but consequential problem in the system: the inadequacy of federal judicial resolution of appeals from the denial of Social Security disability benefits. It addresses the problem with an equally narrow, and hopefully equally consequential, solution: granting a published district court decision in such a case the power of binding precedent with respect to the judicial district in which the opinion is issued. In so doing, greater uniformity, consistency, fairness, and efficiency would be brought to a process that is badly in need of all.

The Article proceeds in five parts. Part I provides some …

Privatizing Railroad Retirement, Steven A. Sass

Upjohn Press

Sass discusses the evolution of the U.S. Railroad Retirement System and whether its ability to invest its assets in private equities offers any lessons for Social Security.

Recommendations For A New Independent Adjudication Agency To Make The Final Administrative Adjudications Of Social Security Act Benefits Claims , Robin J. Arzt

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

No abstract provided.

An Overview Of The U.S. Retirement Income Security System And The Principles And Values It Reflects, Kathryn L. Moore

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article is designed to provide an overview of the U.S. retirement income security system from a comparative law perspective. Like many countries, the U.S. has a three tier pension or retirement income system, with the three tiers consisting of (1) Social Security, (2) employment-based pensions, and (3) individual savings. Thus, superficially, the U.S. retirement income security system resembles that of many around the world. Yet, in other ways, such as its focus on individual rights and responsibility, the U.S. system is unique.

The article begins by discussing the nine guiding principles of the U.S. Social Security system as identified …

The Public Trust In Private Hands: Social Security And The Politics Of Government Investment, Benjamin A. Templin

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Social Security Reform: Lessons From Private Pensions, Karen C. Burke, Grayson M.P. Mccouch

UF Law Faculty Publications

Widespread concerns about the long-term fiscal gap in Social Security have prompted various proposals for structural reform, with individual accounts as the centerpiece. Carving out individual accounts from the existing system would shift significant risks and responsibilities to individual workers. A parallel development has already occurred in the area of private pensions. Experience with 401(k) plans indicates that many workers will have difficulty making prudent decisions concerning investment and withdrawal of funds. Moreover, in implementing any system of voluntary individual accounts, it will be important to design default settings that provide appropriate guidance for workers with heterogeneous levels of financial …

Social Security And The Stock Market: How The Pursuit Of Market Magic Shapes The System, Alicia Haydock Munnell, Steven A. Sass

Upjohn Press

Munnell and Sass explore whether equities could help solve the woes facing the U.S. retirement income system in general, and the Social Security shortfall in particular. They examine the experiences of three nations that added equities to the investment mix of their retirement systems—the U.K., Australia, and Canada. As these experiences show, while equities promise higher returns than government bonds, how they are implemented—as add-ons, carve-outs, or as trust fund supplements—matters greatly.

The Four Pillars Of Work Law, Orly Lobel

Michigan Law Review

In our contemporary legal landscape, a student wishing to study the law of the workplace has scarce opportunity to encounter an integrated body of scholarship that analyzes the labor market as the subject of government regulation, contractual duties, collective action, and individual rights. Work law developed in the American legal system as a patchwork of common law doctrine, federal and state statutes, and evolving social norms. Typical law school curricula often include courses relating to the four pillars of work law: "employment law," "labor law," "employment discrimination," and some variation of a tax-oriented "employee-benefits law." Employment law, in most categorizations, …

Reforming Retirement Systems: Why The French Have Succeeded When Americans Have Not, Kathryn L. Moore

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In order to understand why the American Social Security system has been so resistant to change while the retirement systems in other countries have been amended, this Article analyzes why one country, France, was able to reform its retirement system significantly in 2003. The Article begins by briefly describing the French retirement system prior to 2003. It then provides an overview of the most significant changes wrought by the reform enacted in 2003. It then analyses why, after years of inaction and failed attempts to reform the French retirement system, the government succeeded in reforming the retirement system in 2003. …

Lessons From The French Funding Debate, Kathryn L. Moore

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The French retirement system, like the American social security system, is facing long-term funding difficulties. As a result, the French are debating whether to expand the role of pre-funded retirement plans. The economic arguments presented in this debate are virtually identical to the economic arguments presented in the American debate on whether the American social security system should be partially privatized.

The French and American debates, however, diverge once history and ideology are considered. The French have a history of failed funded pensions in contrast to the United States where the failure of prominent underfunded pension led to the enactment …

Labor Standards On Cypriot Ships: Myth And Reality, Iliana Christodoulou-Varotsi, Dmitri A. Pentsov

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article offers a comprehensive comparative analysis of labor and social security standards on Cypriot and Greek ships. Potential cost savings for shipowners who register their ships in one country rather than the other may result from the absence of a given standard in the country of registration, or a lower or more flexible standard in that country than in the other. The authors conclude that the registration of ships in Cyprus does not provide overall advantages (in terms of "inferior" labor standards) over registration in Greece. Broadly speaking, shipowners may gain certain advantages by registering their ships in Cyprus …

Privitizing Social Security: Administration And Implementation, Karen C. Burke, Grayson M.P. Mccouch

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article considers administrative issues that bear on the structure and implementation of any universal, mandatory system of personal accounts within the Social Security system. The central issues involve tradeoffs between relatively standardized, low-cost options with constrained individual choice and limited risk, on the one hand, and more flexible, higher-cost options with enhanced opportunities for individual control and greater risk, on the other hand. A centralized system modeled on the Thrift Savings Plan for federal employees could balance these goals by offering participants a relatively narrow range of investment and withdrawal options, with correspondingly low administrative costs and limited risks. …

The Best Of Times And The Worst Of Times: Lessons From Recent Reforms Of The French Retirement System, Kathryn L. Moore

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Principally because of increasing life expectancy and the fact that the baby boom generation is reaching retirement age and is followed by a much smaller generation, the American social security system is facing a long-term funding deficit. The Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors and Disability Trust Funds predicts that unless corrective action is taken, social security benefits will exceed dedicated tax revenues by the year 2016, and the social security system will become insolvent, that is, unable to pay benefits in full, by the year 2038.

The United States is not alone in facing these circumstances. …

Social Security Reform: Risks, Returns, And Race, Dorothy A. Brown, Karen C. Burke, Grayson M.P. Mccouch

UF Law Faculty Publications

The debate over social security reform has far-reaching implications for the economic well-being of blacks and other minority groups. In this article, we examine how blacks have fared under the existing system, and then consider the likely consequences of moving toward a privatized system. Specifically, we consider the claim, recently advanced by some privatizers, that blacks receive an especially "bad deal" under the existing system and would be better off under a privatized system. We find that, for blacks as a group, this claim tends to overstate both the shortcomings of the existing system and the advantages of privatization. Furthermore, …

The Wage Carrot And The Pension Stick: Retirement Benefits And Labor Force Participation, Laurence J. Kotlikoff, David A. Wise

Upjohn Press

Kotlikoff and Wise document the continued backloading of pension benefits and the extent of retirement incentives by examining pension accrual in over 1,500 companies with defined benefit plans. They also perform a detailed analysis on the retirement plan of a "Fortune 500" company.

Counseling The Coal Miner Suffering From Respiratory Disease, Gail Falk

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Social Security And The Plain People, Paul C. Cline

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Problem Of Coverage, Charles J. Barnhill, William M. Bloom, W. Daniel Bretz Jr., John R. Danch

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.