{"id":1670,"date":"2025-01-26T20:58:06","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T01:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/poverty-journal\/?page_id=1670"},"modified":"2026-02-09T09:09:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T14:09:41","slug":"retirement-in-america-a-luxury-not-all-can-afford","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/poverty-journal\/in-print\/volume-32-issue-i-fall-2024\/retirement-in-america-a-luxury-not-all-can-afford\/","title":{"rendered":"Retirement in America: A Luxury Not All Can Afford"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><i>This piece is adapted from a paper written for a legal philosophy course <\/i><i>taught by Professor Heidi Li Feldman. The piece examines state-sponsored social <\/i><i>security benefits available to retirees in America, focusing on policies like spend-<\/i><i>down requirements and the Estate Recovery program. It then argues that such <\/i><i>policies <\/i><i>incentivize Medicaid planning, a practice that disproportionately shifts the <\/i><i>burden of the negative effects of these policies onto lower-income retirees and per<\/i><i>petuates economic inequality across generations. Borrowing from David Hume<\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u2019<\/span><i>s <\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201c<\/span><i>Of Commerce<\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201d <\/span><i>and <\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201c<\/span><i>Of Refinement in the Arts,<\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201d <\/span><i>the piece considers how policy<\/i><i>makers should conceive of <\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201c<\/span><i>surplus<\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201d <\/span><i>assets and income among retirees. It frames <\/i><i>Medicaid <\/i><i>planning as a <\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201c<\/span><i>luxury<\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201d <\/span><i>under Hume<\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u2019<\/span><i>s theory, then examines whether it is <\/i><i>an <\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201c<\/span><i>innocent luxury<\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201d <\/span><i>or a <\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201c<\/span><i>vicious luxury<\/i><span class=\"s1\">\u201d <\/span><i>that policymakers should seek to deter. <\/i><i>Rather than penalizing those who engage in Medicaid planning, the piece argues <\/i><i>that lawmakers should update asset limits and reform estate recovery to decrease <\/i><i>the necessity of Medicaid planning.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/poverty-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/25\/2025\/01\/32.1-oldham.pdf\">Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This piece is adapted from a paper written for a legal philosophy course taught by Professor Heidi Li Feldman. The piece examines state-sponsored social security benefits available to retirees in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14231,"featured_media":0,"parent":1643,"menu_order":29,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-1670","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/poverty-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/poverty-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/poverty-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/poverty-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14231"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/poverty-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1670"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/poverty-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2019,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/poverty-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1670\/revisions\/2019"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/poverty-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/poverty-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}