The long-term budget prospects of the United States are grim. Projected spending greatly exceeds projected revenue over the next few decades. Projected growth of health care spending accounts for more than all of the anticipated gap. <P>Without action to narrow the gap, accumulating deficits will...</p>

Examines the theoretical rationale for wealth transfer taxes, discusses data on the distribution and accumulation of wealth, and reviews the experience of the United States and other countries under their existing systems. Because a substantial portion of the existing stock of wealth is...

Concentrates on the tendency under any health insurance system to overconsume health care services -- the problem of "moral hazard" that arises whenever people deciding on the use of some economic good do not bear the full economic cost of their decisions, and the administrative problems that...

Social Security is currently much in the news because it faces a projected funding gap, because of overall budget deficits, and because of doubts in some quarters about its design. Minor adjustments are sufficient to close the funding gap. Benefit cuts, even if considered desirable, would not...

Discusses the proposed cuts of social security and what the outcome of those cuts may be. Also discusses cutting the payroll tax and privatization.

This book provides a comprehensive appraisal of social security in Japan, where traditionally the burden of welfare provision has been the main responsibility of the family and employers, rather than the state. However, an ageing population, changes in family structure and continued recession...