On April 17, TJSL Professor Ben Templin gave a presentation at UC San Diego’s Osher Institute titled Social Security Reform. The Social Security Administration recently reported that its trust fund may run out by 2033 – three years earlier than estimates that were made a year ago.
Many reform proposals have been proposed by politicians and the analysts, but the problem has been getting agreement from the two political parties on which set of reforms to pursue.
Professor Templin’s discussed the potential of four reforms to decrease the funding deficit, and the political trade-offs from pursuing each. Those reforms are: (1) changing the way that cost-of living adjustments are calculated; (2) increasing the retirement age; (3) increasing the taxable maximum for the payroll tax; and (4) diversifying trust-fund investments to earn a higher rate of return.
Ben Templin is associate professor of law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. He has published five law review articles on Social Security reform. His most recent was "Social Security Reform: Sovereign Wealth Funds as a Model for Increasing Trust Fund Returns" published in 2011 in the Fordham International Law Journal.