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| OUTDATED LAWS CAUSE EMPLOYEE BENEFIT GAP: http://www.ncpa.org/prs/rel/2006/20060419.html Outdated Laws Cause Employee Benefit Gap New Book Shows Inflexible Labor and Benefit Laws Present Challenge for Modern Families April 19, 2006 Media Contacts: Sean Tuffnell (972) 308-6481 sean.tuffnell@ncpa.org DALLAS ( April 19, 2006 ) – Even more serious than a wage gap between men and women, is an employee benefit gap. According to a soon-to-be-released book, Leaving Women Behind: Modern Families, Outdated Laws, federal policies encourage employers to provide life insurance, disability insurance and even day care for children; yet not everyone is treated the same. "Our major economic institutions — including tax law, labor law, and employee benefits law, as well as Social Security, and retirement policies — were designed for families with a full-time worker and a stay-at-home spouse," said Kim Strassel, editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal and co-author of the book. "By comparison, they punish every other arrangement." For example: Because of rigid tax laws and employee benefits laws, if both spouses work full-time they will likely receive duplicate, unnecessary sets of benefits. A wife, for example, will be unable to acquire higher wages in return for forgoing health and pension benefits she acquires through her husband's employer. In a free labor market, one would expect to find a wide variety of work arrangements. Not every two-earner couple will want to work 40 hour weeks. Some might opt for 25 to 30 hour weeks so they can spend more time with each other or raising children. But rigid tax and employee benefits laws make such arrangements largely impossible for people who need health insurance, pensions and other benefits. Women raising children or caring for an ailing parent have other reasons to want flexibility in working hours. However, rigid labor laws often deny them the opportunity to attend a child's soccer game or take a parent to the doctor one week and make up the hours the following week. The book argues that our nation's employee benefit system needs to be reformed in order to meet the needs of modern women, who are more likely to work part time so they can also take care of family members, and who move from job-to-job and in and out of the labor market more frequently than men. Leaving Women Behind: Modern Families, Outdated Laws is a forthcoming book by Kim berly Strassel, editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal; John C. Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA); and Celeste Colgan, an NCPA senior fellow. It is published by Rowman & Littlefield in cooperation with the Manhattan Institute and will be available at booksellers, including Amazon.com, this May. The NCPA is an internationally known nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute with offices in Dallas and Washington, D. C. that advocates private solutions to public policy problems. We depend on the contributions of individuals, corporations and foundations that share our mission. The NCPA accepts no government grants. |
| Introduction To Social Security March 31, 2006 | By Jim McWhinney http://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/06/socialsecurity.asp Social Security is a federal benefits program the United States developed in 1935. While the program encompasses disability income, veterans' pensions, public housing and even the food stamp program, it is most commonly associated with retirement benefits. However, if you still have many working years ahead of you, you may not be able to depend on these benefits as a source of income. In this article, we go over how the Social Security system works and why it is predicted to fail in the future. The Social Security system is funded through payroll taxes. The Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) mandates a 12.4% levy on the first $94,200 (2006 limit) of each individual's earned income each year. The employer pays 6.2% and the employee pays 6.2%. Self-employed individuals pay the full 12.4%. Contrary to popular belief, this money is not put in trust for the individual employees who are paying into the system, but is used to pay existing retirees. Any excess is invested in U.S. Treasury bonds. |
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