the govt does not consider it "self employed." Employment is not the same as managing your own investments. And you generally get back from SS based on what you pay in. There is not a minimum so you get what someone who payed in for 30 years gets.
uhh, Social Security doesn't earn interest.. it's a pass through thing, they take in money and pay it out, they don't invest it at all...
That is absolutely and categorically incorrect. The Social Security Trust Fund earns interest on the government securities it is invested in. Up until the present time, the social security system has had a huge surplus of revenue over benefits paid out and that surplus is invested in interest paying government securities. When politicians talk about the government borrowing from social security they are talking about those securities bought by the social security administration. That is the mechanism the government uses to borrow from the trust fund. (Killing people in Iraq is very, very expensive. It costs the US taxpayers over 7 million dollars per each man, women, child and baby they kill in Iraq. So it is easy to see why the government needs to borrow so much money from the Trust Fund!) It is astounding how much misinformation is out there re social security, How on earth do these crazy ideas get started and promulgated?
Today there is a story on Yahoo Re payback of social security benefits received before the regular retirement age. For example, if you had elected to draw social security at age 62, and later at age 65 changed your mind, you could pay back benefits already received and start getting a check that would be about 25% greater. You would also get a tax credit for any income taxes paid on the earlier benefits paid back. What caught my eye was this statement: "The strategy has gained popularity as retirees realized that it is cheaper to repay Uncle Sam and lock in inflation-adjusted payments for life than it is to buy a similar amount of guaranteed income in the form of an annuity from an insurance company." Americans badly need to start recognizing what a good deal they are getting from Social Security and stop bitching about it. Incidentally, The option of redoing your social security payments after twelve months has elapsed is about to go away.
Is it possible the obsession with "retirement" is some type of mass delusion or mental illness? Where in human history is there a divine right to a "retirement". U work try to have a good life then when the time comes you die. The retirement is the great carrot that the corporate-state uses to motivate individuals to slave away doing meaningless work for the majority of their lives. It is much like the healthcare issue. We live in the safest time in human history yet people are obsessed with healthcare. Our forefathers would laugh at what girlymen most of us have become.
yes. and that qualifies you for the minimum amount. Is there somehow something in my poost that did not get this across???