Retirement and Disability Payments From YOUR Paycheck
Yep! The federal Government passed a law that you have to pay into an account, that is handled by the government; a certain percentage of your paycheck. It is called FICA.
What is FICA?
FICA stands for Federal Insurance Contribution (tax) Act. Prior to the Great Depression, the following presented difficulties for working-class Americans. A United States federal program of social insurance and benefits developed in 1935. The Social Security program's benefits include retirement income, disability income, Medicare and Medicaid, and death and survivorship benefits. Social Security is one of the largest government programs in the world, paying out hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
Based on the year someone was born, retirement benefits may begin as early as age 62 and as late as age 67. The amount of income received is based on the average wages earned over the worker's lifetime, with a maximum calculable amount of $102,000 as of 2008. Spouses are also eligible to receive Social Security benefits, even if they have limited or non-existent work
The original program was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal plan to lift the U.S. out of the Great Depression. Today, the program is funded through payroll taxes collected by employees and companies; monies are placed into the Social Security Trust Fund and payments are managed by the government along with the Federal Reserve Board.
Prior to the Great Depression, the following presented difficulties for working-class Americans.
* The U.S. had no federal-government-mandated retirement savings; consequently, for those people who had not voluntarily saved money throughout their working lives, the end of their work careers was the end of all income.
* Similarly, the U.S. had no federal-government-mandated disability income insurance to provide for citizens disabled by injuries (of any kind—work-related or non-work-related); consequently, for most people, a disabling injury meant no more income (since most people have little to no income except earned income from work).
* In addition, there was no federal-government-mandated disability income insurance to provide for people unable to ever work during their lives, such as anyone born with severe mental retardation.
* Finally, the U.S. had no federal-government-mandated health insurance for the elderly; consequently, for many people, the end of their work careers was the end of their ability to pay for medical care.
In the 1930s, the New Deal introduced Social Security to rectify the first three problems (retirement, injury-induced disability, or congenital disability). It introduced the FICA tax as the means to pay for Social Security.
In the 1960s, Medicare was introduced to rectify the fourth problem (health care for the elderly). The FICA tax was increased in order to pay for this expense.
The FICA tax funds social services that are generally considered a safety net for disabled people and retired people. The tax forces citizens to do two things that many people often choose not to do for themselves until too late: buy insurance against risks and save for retirement. The lack of insurance and retirement money would have little effect on some people (that is, relatively wealthy people, or non-wealthy people who remained non-disabled throughout their working careers, then died soon after retirement). However, the lack of insurance and retirement money would predictably lead to poverty among many other people (that is, non-wealthy people who suffered disability, or non-wealthy people who remained non-disabled throughout their working careers, then lived many years after retirement).
The Social Security program's benefits include retirement income, disability income, Medicare and Medicaid, and death and survivorship benefits. Social Security is one of the largest government programs in the world, paying out hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
Based on the year someone was born, retirement benefits may begin as early as age 62 and as late as age 67. The amount of income received is based on the average wages earned over the worker's lifetime, with a maximum calculable amount of $102,000 as of 2008. Spouses are also eligible to receive Social Security benefits, even if they have limited or non-existent work.
The original program was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal plan to lift the U.S. out of the Great Depression. Today, the program is funded through payroll taxes collected by employees and companies; monies are placed into the Social Security Trust Fund and payments are managed by the government along with the Federal Reserve Board. The Federal Insurance Contributions Act is currently codified at Title 26, Subtitle C, Chapter 21 of the United States Code
Here's how it works.
You and your employer both contribute a percentage of your income to this tax which is attributed to Social Security and Medicare. Social security is the governmental fund that provides income to retirees, disability, etc. Medicare provides medical insurance coverage to persons over age 65.
The Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) tax is a United States payroll (or employment) tax[1] imposed by the federal government on both employees and employers to fund Social Security and Medicare [2] —federal programs that provide benefits for retirees, the disabled, and children of deceased workers. Social Security benefits include old-age, survivors, and disability insurance (SSDI); Medicare provides hospital insurance benefits. The amount that one pays in payroll taxes throughout one's working career is indirectly tied to the social security benefits annuity that one receives as a retiree.[citation needed] This has led some to claim that the payroll tax is not a tax because its collection is tied to a benefit.[3] The United States Supreme Court decided in Flemming v. Nestor (1960) that no one has an accrued property right to benefits from Social Security.
2008, the employee's share of the Social Security portion of the tax is 6.2% of gross compensation up to a limit of $102,000 of compensation (resulting in a maximum of $6,324.00 in tax). For 2009, the employee's share is 6.2% of gross compensation up to a limit of $106,800 of compensation (resulting in a maximum tax of $6,621.60).[6] This limit, known as the Social Security Wage Base, goes up each year based on average national wages and, in general, at a faster rate than the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U).
(Self-employed people are responsible for the entire FICA percentage of 15.3% (= 12.4% + 2.9%), since they are both the employer and the employed. ( http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fica.asp)
Things not noted above
Medicare,retirement and disability are not WELFARE. If you as an individual need medicare or disability, and have a work history in the United States where you have paid taxes, you are entitled to those just as if you had retired after working for 50 years ( yes, 50. If you started working at age 17, you have to reach age 67 to qualify for full retirement). You paid that money in, therefore it is your money. It is not taking charity to access that money that you have paid in yourself by your hard work.
The sad thing about all of this is the hoops that have to be jumped through to get access to YOUR hard earned money. The next blogs will talk about those hoops and just exactly how little of your hard earned money is allowed to you, due to the ridiculously low poverty levels and outrageously complicated mathematical formulas used to compute your eligibility for these programs.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Let's Get Started by Talking About The Word Bamboozler and The Poverty Level
Bamboozle
Definition: To cause to accept what is false, especially by trickery or misrepresentation.
Synonyms: beguile, betray, bluff, cozen, delude, double-cross, dupe, fool, hoodwink, humbug, mislead, take in, trick
Definition: fool; cheat
Synonyms: baffle, befuddle, bilk, con, confound, confuse, deceive, defraud, delude, dupe, flimflam*, hoax, hoodwink*, hornswoggle*, mystify, perplex, puzzle, stump, swindle, trick
Related forms:bam⋅boo⋅zle⋅ment, noun-bam⋅boo⋅zler, noun
–verb (used with object)
1. to deceive or get the better of (someone) by trickery, flattery, or the like; humbug; hoodwink (often fol. by into): They bamboozled us into joining the club.
2. to perplex; mystify.
–verb (used without object)
3. to practice trickery, deception, cozenage, or the like.
Synonyms:
1. gyp, dupe, trick, cheat, swindle.
The link to the dictionary I used on the internet although all of them use the same wording.
http://dictionary.reference.com/dic?q=bamboozler&search=search
I used this word in my title as this is what our government does daily and for the intrigue factor. By intrigue factor, I mean that someone just surfing through blogs on the internet may be intrigued by the word itself and stop and read my blog. Which is what I am after, mainly because not many people know a lot of the information that I am going to be writing about and it is high time that they did. It does and will have an impact on all citizens of this country. Especially in light of the fact that WE ARE ALL being cheated at an alarming rate.
Let's talk about the Federal Government poverty level. This is the level which the federal government uses to base how it pays out money and determining eligibility for many of it's programs.
"The poverty thresholds were originally developed in 1963-1964 by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration. Orshansky based her poverty thresholds on the economy food plan — the cheapest of four food plans developed by the Department of Agriculture. The actual combinations of foods in the food plans, devised by Agriculture Department dietitians using complex procedures, constituted nutritionally adequate diets; the Agriculture Department described the economy food plan as being "designed for temporary or emergency use when funds are low." (Orshansky also developed a second set of poverty thresholds based on the Agriculture Department's somewhat less stringent low-cost food plan, but relatively little use was ever made of these higher thresholds.) (Take note of the green text as it is designed to bring attention to important facts.)Orshansky knew from the Department of Agriculture's 1955 Household Food Consumption Survey (the latest available such survey at the time) that families of three or more persons spent about one third of their after-tax money income on food in 1955. Accordingly, she calculated poverty thresholds for families of three or more persons by taking the dollar costs of the economy food plan for families of those sizes and multiplying the costs by a factor of three — the "multiplier." In effect, she took a hypothetical average family spending one third of its income on food, and assumed that it had to cut back on its expenditures sharply. She assumed that expenditures for food and non-food would be cut back at the same rate. When the food expenditures of the hypothetical family reached the cost of the economy food plan, she assumed that the amount the family would then be spending on non-food items would also be minimal but adequate. (Her procedure did not assume specific dollar amounts for any budget category besides food.) She derived poverty thresholds for two-person families by multiplying the dollar cost of the food plan for that family size by a somewhat higher multiplier (3.7) also derived from the 1955 survey. She derived poverty thresholds for one-person units directly from the thresholds for two-person units, without using a multiplier. The base year for the original thresholds was calendar year 1963. While the poverty thresholds had been calculated on the basis of after-tax money income, they were applied to income data — the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey — that used a before-tax definition of money income; this was done because when the thresholds were being developed, the Current Population Survey was the only good source of nationally representative income data. Orshansky was aware of the inconsistency involved, but there was no other alternative; she reasoned that the result would yield "a conservative underestimate" of poverty.
You can read the rest of it here: http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/papers/hptgssiv.htm
Some of the important found in the paper:
1968: The Social Security Administration tried to take steps to raise the poverty thresholds to reflect increases in the general standard of living but were shot down by The Bureau of the Budget (now the Office of Management and Budget) that decide after review to limit increases to prices changes and and not for changes in the standard of living.
1973: a review by 3 subcommittees recommended updating the poverty level only every ten(10) years and changing the poverty definitions used to make those changes. No changes were made.
1974: Poverty Studies Task Force (inter agency review) DID NOT recommend and specific changes
1981: Several minor changes where made to family size, farm/non-farm and male and female head of household differentiation.
1990: Congressional Committee requested a study to provide a basis for possible revision.
1992: A panel was appointed to conduct the study.
1995: Report published. ([GSS/SSS Newsletter [Newsletter of the Government Statistics Section and the Social Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association], Winter 1997, pp. 6-7)
And as of this date, there have been no changes to the poverty level in this country.
Isn't it nice to know that your government bases their poverty level on data gathered in 1955? And remember this is the guideline the government uses to base your benefit entitlements on.
Please someone explain to me how that is even appropriate in the year 2009.
Definition: To cause to accept what is false, especially by trickery or misrepresentation.
Synonyms: beguile, betray, bluff, cozen, delude, double-cross, dupe, fool, hoodwink, humbug, mislead, take in, trick
Definition: fool; cheat
Synonyms: baffle, befuddle, bilk, con, confound, confuse, deceive, defraud, delude, dupe, flimflam*, hoax, hoodwink*, hornswoggle*, mystify, perplex, puzzle, stump, swindle, trick
Related forms:bam⋅boo⋅zle⋅ment, noun-bam⋅boo⋅zler, noun
–verb (used with object)
1. to deceive or get the better of (someone) by trickery, flattery, or the like; humbug; hoodwink (often fol. by into): They bamboozled us into joining the club.
2. to perplex; mystify.
–verb (used without object)
3. to practice trickery, deception, cozenage, or the like.
Synonyms:
1. gyp, dupe, trick, cheat, swindle.
The link to the dictionary I used on the internet although all of them use the same wording.
http://dictionary.reference.com/dic?q=bamboozler&search=search
I used this word in my title as this is what our government does daily and for the intrigue factor. By intrigue factor, I mean that someone just surfing through blogs on the internet may be intrigued by the word itself and stop and read my blog. Which is what I am after, mainly because not many people know a lot of the information that I am going to be writing about and it is high time that they did. It does and will have an impact on all citizens of this country. Especially in light of the fact that WE ARE ALL being cheated at an alarming rate.
Let's talk about the Federal Government poverty level. This is the level which the federal government uses to base how it pays out money and determining eligibility for many of it's programs.
"The poverty thresholds were originally developed in 1963-1964 by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration. Orshansky based her poverty thresholds on the economy food plan — the cheapest of four food plans developed by the Department of Agriculture. The actual combinations of foods in the food plans, devised by Agriculture Department dietitians using complex procedures, constituted nutritionally adequate diets; the Agriculture Department described the economy food plan as being "designed for temporary or emergency use when funds are low." (Orshansky also developed a second set of poverty thresholds based on the Agriculture Department's somewhat less stringent low-cost food plan, but relatively little use was ever made of these higher thresholds.) (Take note of the green text as it is designed to bring attention to important facts.)Orshansky knew from the Department of Agriculture's 1955 Household Food Consumption Survey (the latest available such survey at the time) that families of three or more persons spent about one third of their after-tax money income on food in 1955. Accordingly, she calculated poverty thresholds for families of three or more persons by taking the dollar costs of the economy food plan for families of those sizes and multiplying the costs by a factor of three — the "multiplier." In effect, she took a hypothetical average family spending one third of its income on food, and assumed that it had to cut back on its expenditures sharply. She assumed that expenditures for food and non-food would be cut back at the same rate. When the food expenditures of the hypothetical family reached the cost of the economy food plan, she assumed that the amount the family would then be spending on non-food items would also be minimal but adequate. (Her procedure did not assume specific dollar amounts for any budget category besides food.) She derived poverty thresholds for two-person families by multiplying the dollar cost of the food plan for that family size by a somewhat higher multiplier (3.7) also derived from the 1955 survey. She derived poverty thresholds for one-person units directly from the thresholds for two-person units, without using a multiplier. The base year for the original thresholds was calendar year 1963. While the poverty thresholds had been calculated on the basis of after-tax money income, they were applied to income data — the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey — that used a before-tax definition of money income; this was done because when the thresholds were being developed, the Current Population Survey was the only good source of nationally representative income data. Orshansky was aware of the inconsistency involved, but there was no other alternative; she reasoned that the result would yield "a conservative underestimate" of poverty.
You can read the rest of it here: http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/papers/hptgssiv.htm
Some of the important found in the paper:
1968: The Social Security Administration tried to take steps to raise the poverty thresholds to reflect increases in the general standard of living but were shot down by The Bureau of the Budget (now the Office of Management and Budget) that decide after review to limit increases to prices changes and and not for changes in the standard of living.
1973: a review by 3 subcommittees recommended updating the poverty level only every ten(10) years and changing the poverty definitions used to make those changes. No changes were made.
1974: Poverty Studies Task Force (inter agency review) DID NOT recommend and specific changes
1981: Several minor changes where made to family size, farm/non-farm and male and female head of household differentiation.
1990: Congressional Committee requested a study to provide a basis for possible revision.
1992: A panel was appointed to conduct the study.
1995: Report published. ([GSS/SSS Newsletter [Newsletter of the Government Statistics Section and the Social Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association], Winter 1997, pp. 6-7)
And as of this date, there have been no changes to the poverty level in this country.
Isn't it nice to know that your government bases their poverty level on data gathered in 1955? And remember this is the guideline the government uses to base your benefit entitlements on.
Please someone explain to me how that is even appropriate in the year 2009.
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