Flexible Benefits

Most benefit packages offered by employers are restricted to long-term, full-time employees.  Given the expense of these benefits, these restrictions may seem logical from an employer's standpoint.  However, from an employee's standpoint, they leave those workers who are part-time, or full-time but haven't worked long enough to become ‘vested' by their current employer, with few and expensive options in acquiring these benefits elsewhere.  Worse, of those who do work part-time, those who are parents are more likely to do so because they are parents, and/or caretakers of elderly relatives.  Working part-time affords them more flexibility with their schedules to make it easier to raise children and care for their families. At the same time, there are also dual-income households where both full-time earners are receiving benefits, but the benefits overlap, making one of the two benefit packages unnecessary and therefore wasted.

On a different note, the current Social Security system makes it difficult for working seniors to keep up with their expenses, as it actually penalizes those who work past retirement.  Not only that, if the husband of an elderly married couple is 65, but his wife is younger, he qualifies for Medicare but she must find coverage by some other means until she too has reached 65. 

Why can't we have a flexible employee benefit system that makes it easier for dual-earner couples to obtain higher wages rather than unneeded, duplicate benefits, and for part-time workers to accept lower wages in return for more valuable health and retirement benefits? Why can't we have a completely new approach to the treatment of spouses under Social Security? Earnings sharing (where payroll tax contributions are divided like community property) could easily be applied to any new system of personal retirement accounts. Why can't we have a new approach to the taxation of Social Security benefits? If benefits must be taxed, they should be taxed in a way that does not raise marginal tax rates, and there should be no earnings penalty for seniors who work.

Related Articles

• Why Do Women Have Less Retirement Security?
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• Outdated Laws Cause Employee Benefit Gap

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