ppt rewriting (11 slides excluding reference)

“Workers and employers pay for Social Security. Workers pay 6.2 percent of their earnings up to a cap, which is $127,200 a year in 2017. (The cap on taxable earnings usually rises each year with average wages.) Employers pay a matching amount for a combined contribution of 12.4 percent of earnings. Self-employed persons pay both the employee and employer share for a total 12.4 percent. (Half of this contribution, the employer share, is a deductible business expense for income tax purposes.) Also, higher-income Social Security beneficiaries pay federal income taxes on their benefit income, and these taxes help pay for Social Security.

During 2011 and 2012, the premiums that workers pay for Social Security protection were temporarily reduced from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. The lost revenue from this “payroll tax holiday”—$103 billion in 2011 and $114 billion in 2012—was made up from the government's general fund. In 2015 the average worker made $48,099 a year, according to the Social Security Administration. This worker and his or her employer will each pay $2,982 this year. Approximately 6 percent of all workers will earn more than the $127,200 tax cap. Earnings above the cap now account for 18 percent of the aggregate pay of all workers who pay into Social Security” (“Who Pays for Social Security?,” 2017).

“The percentage of workers claiming retirement benefits at age 62 increased more than two percentage points during the recession

Fully insured men claiming benefits at age 62 increased from 33.5 percent in 2007, the year before the recession, to 35.8 percent in 2009, at the lowest point of the recession. Fully insured women claiming benefits at age 62 increased from 36.3 percent in 2007 to 38.9 percent in 2009. The increase in claiming at the earliest eligibility age of 62 interrupted a declining trend. For both men and women, the percentage claiming at age 62 began to decrease after 1997. Before then, the rate of women claiming at age 62 was about 50 percent while the rate of men claiming at age 62 increased from 37 percent in 1975 to 49 percent in 1993. At the state level, higher rates of claiming retirement benefits at age 62 are correlated with higher rates of unemployment. In 2009, when the national unemployment rate was 9.3 percent, state-level unemployment rates varied from 4 percent in North Dakota to 13 percent in Michigan. The four states with the lowest rates of claiming at age 62 (less than 33 percent) had unemployment rates between 6 percent and 8 percent. The four states with the highest rates of claiming at age 62 (greater than 53 percent) had unemployment rates between 10 percent and 13 percent” ((“Early Claiming of Social Security Retirement Benefits Increased During the Recession,” 2013).

“Last year, 24 percent of the budget, or $916 billion, paid for Social Security, which provided monthly retirement benefits averaging $1,360 to 41 million retired workers in December 2016. Social Security also provided benefits to 3 million spouses and children of retired workers, 6 million surviving children and spouses of deceased workers, and 10.6 million disabled workers and their eligible dependents in December 2016” (Policy Basics, 2017).

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Conclusion

Social security retirement benefits should be modified to fit each individual needs

Benefits are based on a person income and how much they have worked

“Economic security is a universal human problem, encompassing the ways in which an individual or a family provides for some assurance of income when an individual is either too old or too disabled to work, when a family breadwinner dies, or when a worker faces involuntary unemployment” (DeWitt, 2010).