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...

Arguably, 401(k) plan fees are the biggest policy issue in the retirement world today. They potentially raise questions about the fundamental business underpinnings of the principal form of retirement savings for the last twenty years. As an indication of their significance, three branches of...

Social Security reform started out with a bang in 2005. President Bush made it the centerpiece of his 2005 State of the Union address, and he spent the early months of the year on a 60-day, 60-city tour around the country in which he touted his pet project of creating Social Security...

Drawing on insights from behavioral law and economics, automatic enrollment IRAs are intended to address the nation's retirement savings gap by taking advantage of workers' inertia. Although automatic enrollment IRAs were initially intended to apply at the federal level, they have gained little...

The United States faces a serious retirement savings funding gap. In an effort to fill that gap, a number of states and municipalities have begun to consider, and in some instances adopt, automatic enrollment IRA programs. Indeed, between September 2012 and June 2016, five states enacted state...

The Affordable Care Act includes a 40 percent excise tax on high-cost employer-sponsored health care coverage. Often referred to as the “Cadillac tax,” this excise tax is one of the most controversial elements of the Affordable Care Act.Currently scheduled to go into effect in 2020, the...

In recent years, a number of states have sought to close the retirement savings funding gap by enacting legislation mandating that employers that do not sponsor a voluntary pension plan for their employees automatically enroll their employees in a state-administered IRA program. This article...

Reform of the Social Security system appears inevitable. The only questions are how and when. This Article discusses the principles that should guide reform. It begins by describing Robert Ball's quot;nine guiding principlesquot; underlying the current Social Security system. It then identifies...

Summary of the Proceedings: Our first two speakers, Jonathan Barry Forman and Norman Stein, will discuss cash balance conversions, one of the hottest issues in employee benefits today. Jon Forman will explain what cash balance plans are and why he believes that conversions from traditional...

The United States is unique among developed nations in its heavy reliance on employment-based health insurance. The United States is not, however, the only nation in which employers play an important role in the financing of health care. The employer plays an important role in financing health...