Basics of Social Security and Your Social Security Number

The Medicare tax is also often lumped together with the social security withholdings. Employers are required to withhold 1.45 percent of the wages of an employee for Medicare. This amount has not changed in 2008 because there is no cap on the tax collection. You must collect it from every employee regardless of whether they make one dollar or a million.

Am I eligible to collect Social Security retirement benefits? I did not work that much during my life.
In order to qualify for Social Security retirement benefits you need to have worked forty quarters and earned a specified minimum amount during each quarter, in order for the quarter to qualify. A quarter is a three month period.

The most powerful message trumpeted by the President Clinton's spin machine of political anthropology is the one that during his term the federal government produced a surplus. The definition of surplus when used in the vocabulary of working families implies that the family enjoyed more income than its obligations. Purchasing goods and services with credit does not qualify as part of surplus income. The credit funds must be paid with interest at a future date. Those obligations must be met.

The federal fix-it commission chairman, previewing what the committee faces in search of a solution, has labeled our deficit as a cancer. Grasshoppers don't have cancer! The black hole they have created will suck away most of the opportunities for the next two generations. Cancer is curable; unfunded entitlement liabilities are financial death!

On September 30th (circa 2010), America will quietly begin a generational shift. This will be the final day of the government's fiscal year 2010, and consequentially, a very notable day for Social Security (SS). September 30 will be the last day, maybe for a long time, that Social Security could possibly be operating at a surplus.

But as you might remember, we have been here before. A not-so-dissimilar bout of high unemployment and lousy economic growth in the 70s brought the Social Security fund to a sudden crisis in the early 80s. By 1982, the powers that be weren't just fretting over the program entering deficit, they had every reason to believe the Social Security would be out of money in as little as a year.

(Ball 3) Now an estate tax, or sometimes called a "death tax", is a tax on a person's estate depending on how much he or she was worth. Again, I see a problem with this proposal because Ball is suggesting that we use another means of tax to be paid into Social Security. I personally think it's wrong to even have an estate tax because those who are taxed an estate tax were most likely small business owners. "More than 70% of family businesses do not survive the second generation; 87% do not make it to the third generation." (Frequently Asked Questions about the "Death Tax")

One concern arising presently is that the social security and its benefits are now put at risk. There are retirees now enjoying benefits that people in the future would not be able to perhaps enjoy. Currently, it is determined that employees now would be getting 25% less of the benefits that retirees are enjoying presently. However retired grantees are also on the lookout to make sure that even with the booming population, taxes would be reduced so that we could avoid having people living underneath the poverty line.

Insanity...one of the best definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, each time expecting a different result. Raising employment taxes and/or reducing benefits in an effort to cure the problems of Social Security is INSANITY. In reality taking these actions will only server to delay and exacerbate the underlying problems.

In Years Three through Five, all Federal, State and Local Income taxes on all forms of private retirement accounts (IRA, 401(k), 403(b), etc.) would be reduced by one third per year, and would be declared forever illegal at the end of year Five. A Federal Sales Tax of 1% or 2% (on all final-product-sales, not a VAT) could be enacted after the second year's cut. From Year Three forward, SSRIA holders would be able to view their projected monthly benefit at various retirement ages, based on contract provisions and their deposit and earnings history.