Tag Archives: Social Security

News

Redistribution of wealth: 2362 millionaires collecting unemployment

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How well does government redistribute the money that they take from job creators and workers?

From CNS News.

Excerpt:

There were 2,362 people who earned a million dollars or more in taxable income in 2009 and who also received federal unemployment benefits that year, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.

In fact, these millionaires collectively raked in more than $20 million in unemployment benefits.

The Congressional Research Service report–Receipt of Unemployment Insurance by Higher-Income Unemployed Workers (“Millionaires”)–was published on Aug. 2 and was based on the most recent data available from the Internal Revenue Service.

“Among tax filers with AGI [Adjusted Gross Income] of $1 million or more, 2,840 reported receipt of unemployment benefit income in 2008 and 2,362 tax filers reported receipt of unemployment benefit income in 2009,” the CRS reported.

The CRS reported that millionaires received $20.8 million in federal unemployment benefits in 2009, up from $18.6 million in 2008. That averages out to $8,806 in unemployment benefits per millionaire.

Unemployment insurance is a joint federal-state program and is funded by a payroll tax assessed against all workers. In the four years preceding 2012,according to the Tax Foundation, the unemployment insurance system was in the red. “Between 2008 and 2011, $174 billion was paid in unemployment taxes while $450 billion was paid out in benefits, a gap of $276 billion,” the Tax Foundation said.

[…]In addition to the 2,362 people with adjusted gross incomes of $1 million or more who got unemployment benefits in 2009, there were also 8,335 people with incomes between $500,000 and $1 million who received benefits and 120,227 with incomes between $200,000 and $500,000 who received benefits.

The money that is paid out for unemployed people is taxed from all workers. That means that my unemployed insurance payments are funding unemployed millionaires. I’ve also had to pay Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, and I’ve never taken a dollar back from that.

According to this Senate report, millionaires collected $9 billion in Social Security payments from the government from 2004-2009. I’ll never collect a dime of Social Security, but I’m paying for theirs. There is no reason for me to be paying into Social Security – it’s not a good deal for younger workers.

Commentary

Entitlements programs are going bankrupt: how can we fix them?

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From the American Enterprise Institute, a post that explains in brief how to reform each of the three largest entitlement programs so that they will not go bankrupt by the time today’s younger workers need them.

Here are the programs:

  1. Social Security (a social program to redistribute wealth from current workers to current retirees)
  2. Medicaid (a social program to provide health care to low income/low wealth Americans)
  3. Medicare (a social program to provide health care and prescription drugs to older Americans)

And here’s one of the solutions (for Social Security):

Social Security is the easiest entitlement program to reform and can be done without raising taxes.

  • The age should be gradually raised to 70 by 2065.
  • Benefits should be indexed to price inflation, not wage inflation, as the program’s purpose is to keep the elderly out of poverty.
  • Benefits should gradually be reduced for earners with high incomes. The system should be a way to keep individuals out of poverty, not create a dependent upper- and middle-class.

Together these three reforms would ensure Social Security stays solvent. The entire system, however, could be easily replaced with a new program designed to keep seniors out of poverty and empower them throughout their retirement. People should be given the incentive to work longer by eliminating the Social Security payroll tax for individuals over 62, and a basic income supplement should be provided to impoverished senior citizens. Workers should then be given ownership of their retirement savings by enrolling all workers 55 and younger into a retirement savings account funded by 5 percent of the worker’s earnings (2.5 percent from the individual and 2.5 percent from the employer). These simple reforms would create a system that  actually provides a safety net for needy citizens — all for 60 percent of what the U.S. currently spends on Social Security.

Click through for the other two problems and solutions.

News

Half of all Americans live in households that get government handouts

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From the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

49.1%: Percent of the population that lives in a household where at least one member received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2011.

Cutting government spending is no easy task, and it’s made more complicated by recent Census Bureau data showing that nearly half of the people in the U.S. live in a household that receives at least one government benefit, and many likely received more than one.

The 49.1% of the population in a household that gets benefits is up from 30% in the early 1980s and 44.4% as recently as the third quarter of 2008.

[…] As of early 2011, 15% of people lived in a household that received food stamps, 26% had someone enrolled in Medicaid and 2% had a member receiving unemployment benefits. Families doubling up to save money or pool expenses also is likely leading to more multigenerational households. But even without the effects of the recession, there would be a larger reliance on government.

The Census data show that 16% of the population lives in a household where at least one member receives Social Security and 15% receive or live with someone who gets Medicare. There is likely a lot of overlap, since Social Security and Medicare tend to go hand in hand, but those percentages also are likely to increase as the Baby Boom generation ages.

[…]The more people who receive benefits, the harder it’s going to be to make cuts, and it’s never popular to raise taxes. In some respects that argues for letting a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that is set to automatically hit in 2013 take effect. There’s just one problem: the Congressional Budget Office says it would sink the economy into recession.

All of this dependence on the government is not good for us. How can we compete with the rest of the world when we just sitting around borrowing money from our kids and spending it?