Earner

The royal couple may have opted to go without one, but many couples who wed this season ought to consider a prenuptial agreement. Despite the common misperception that prenuptial agreements are only for aging tycoons aiming to cut their younger spouses out of the family fortune, they can be a valuable tool to get into the nitty-gritty of a couple's financial goals, says Vivian Groman, a certified public accountant with Starmont Asset Management in...

The more money you make before retirement, the more you may have to cut back when you do retire, a new study has found. Because of Social Security benefits, some low-wage earners receive more income when they retire than they did when they were working. By contrast, many high-wage earners see their incomes reduced significantly in retirement, according to a report by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. "Social Security replaces a higher proportion of low-wage earners' income," the Washington group said Thursday in a news release.

Like many demagogues, David Blankenhorn ("The Fallacy of the Marriage 'Penalty,' " Commentary, Feb. 3) is so eager to push his agenda that he ignores the facts. The facts are that a one-earner married couple, with or without children, already pay less income tax than they would if the people were just living together. If both parties work and have similar incomes, however, they pay more tax than they would if single. How can trying to do something about the very real penalty in the latter case be called "special tax breaks for two-earner couples"?

The man who boasted California's biggest public pension isn't giving it up without a fight. The California Public Employees' Retirement System cut former Vernon city administrator Bruce Malkenhorst's annual pension from more than $500,000 to $115,000 after he was convicted of misappropriating public funds, and now Malkenhorst is demanding Vernon make up the difference. Join us at 9 a.m. when we talk with Times reporter Ruben Vives about the 78-year-old Malkenhorst's novel argument to try and recapture some of the money CalPers said he received improperly.

Once again the government has socked it to the middle class, while pretending this is not the case. This time, they've done it with semantics. Suddenly, the middle-income wage earner has been classified as "affluent." Who are the folks in Washington kidding? An income of $50,000 to $60,000 may have qualified you for an affluent label back when you could purchase a nice home for that amount. But today? When it costs two to three times that amount to buy a house? If my two wage-earner family is affluent, I wonder what that makes Ronald Reagan?

Re "Options Given to Save Social Security," Nov. 30: Social Security can be saved by simply making it fair. The current Social Security tax is outrageously regressive. Each worker is taxed 6.2% on up to $80,400 of annual income. After that, big earners pay nothing. That means those who earn $250,000 a year pay only 2% of their income in Social Security tax. Those who earn $500,000 pay less than 1%. But the low-income earner still pays 6.2%. This makes no sense. Income tax rates are progressive--the rich pay a higher percentage of their incomes than do the poor.

I found the letter "Blessed Are Today's Recipients of a Teetering Social Security" (Jan. 8) by baby boomer Dennis Robman to be infuriatingly full of false figures and conveniently myopic thinking. Take his hypothetical case of an earner contributing the maximum to the Social Security Fund. (I should have been so lucky in 1941 when the minimum wage was 40 cents an hour.) Mr. Robman comes up with a contribution of $34,000 over 47 years, with his pensioner receiving a payoff of nearly $500,000.

Re "Banking on Fantasies," Sept. 17: Social Security is in good shape today and will be so in the future! The surpluses that will be gone by 2037 are based on the assumption that the economy will grow at only 1.5% per year for the next 75 years. This compares to the historical growth rate of at least 2.7% over the past 75 years. It is true that the ratio of workers to retirees will continue its historic decline. However, this is offset by the continuing increase in labor productivity averaging about 2% per year.

Re "Debunking the Two-Earner Family Myth," Commentary, Jan. 24: What is Robert J. Samuelson's agenda? Someone who "knows" about economic issues rather than one who just "writes" about them would not leave out the real reason for the two-earner family. The real reason is taxes. Look up the percent of income paid in taxes by a family earning the median income in the '50s, compared with now. I'm sure that the data will be far too inconvenient to Samuelson's agenda. WARREN H. RAABE Long Beach

Gisele Bundchen tops Forbes.com's list of the world's richest models, earning $33 million in the last 12 months. The Brazilian supermodel strutted past the likes of Kate Moss, who came in at No. 2 with $9 million, and Heidi Klum, who placed third on the list with $8 million. Bundchen, 26, parted ways with Victoria's Secret in May and will see her lucrative contract with the lingerie brand expire at the end of the year.

The man who was granted California's biggest public pension isn't giving it up without a fight. Bruce Malkenhorst took home more than $911,000 a year as city manager of the tiny city of Vernon. His reign ended shortly before he was convicted of misappropriating public funds, and he walked away with an annual pension that eventually topped $500,000, the largest in the California Public Employees' Retirement System. But CalPERS last year decided to cut his pension to $115,000, concluding he'd derived some of his hefty salary improperly.

MOSCOW -- The Russian government has no idea how about 44% of the country's registered workers are making a living, a top official said Wednesday. Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets said the government is unaware of what's happening with about 38 million of the 86 million Russians registered as workers. About 48 million people are working in sectors of the economy that officials “can see and understand,” she said. “It is unclear what everybody else is involved in and to what extent,” Golodets said at an international economic conference at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.

It's amazing, and depressing, when political compromise functions only to throw obstacles in the way of ideas that bring the greatest good to the greatest number of people. Today's example: the long, tortuous road to bringing more retirement security to working-class Californians. In September, the state launched a plan to enable these workers to put aside about 3% of their wages a year for retirement. As enacted by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, the program's goals would be modest indeed.

MEXICO CITY - You might be hard-pressed to find the word "Mexico" in some of the advertising for tourist resorts in Mexico. Brands like "Riviera Maya" often eclipse the name of the country where those lush beaches are located. As deadly violence that has haunted Mexico for years threatens tourist zones, government officials and trade executives are scrambling for ways to minimize damage to an industry that is a top income-earner and employer. The rapes last week of six Spanish women vacationing in Acapulco have heightened fear and called into question the government's ability to control crime and attract foreign visitors.

WASHINGTON - Seeking to leverage the momentum of his reelection victory for a partisan budget battle, President Obama called on Americans to use social media to pressure Congress in his efforts to keep tax breaks for most Americans while raising taxes on the wealthiest 2%. The president's attempt to rally public support Wednesday via Twitter, Facebook and email marks a new strategy for the Obama White House - a dramatic shift from the grinding legislative...

WASHINGTON - U.S. companies had been pulling the country out of the Great Recession. Now, though, consumer confidence is rising higher than it has in years, while companies are spooked about the nation's risk of going off the so-called fiscal cliff. As politicians and business executives fret, economists wonder whether consumers now can start spending more heartily and take a bigger role in the recovery. So worried are major U.S. corporations about the potential fall from the cliff - the combination of expiring tax cuts and automatic federal spending reductions at the start of next year - that they have mounted a full-court press on the White House and Congress to avert the potential hit of more than $500 billion to the economy next year.

Orel Hershiser IV may look like something that just walked off the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, Norman Rockwell's idea of what a major league pitcher should look like. "He's all Adam's apple," a scout once reported to the front office, "but his curve can go around buildings." You'd know just looking at him that his name wouldn't be "Joe" or "Butch" or "Chuck." "Ichabod," maybe. Or, of course, "Orel." But Orel the Fourth has already become a historic figure in our era.

The most profitable man in hip-hop hasn't released a solo album since 1999. But as anyone who follows the record business knows today, the real racket is in corporate partnerships and investments, and that's what vaulted the producer Dr. Dre to the top of Forbes' hip-hop earners list . Dre hauled in $110 million before taxes in 2011, the vast majority of it coming from a $300-million investment in his Beats by Dre company by the telephone-tech company...

The Los Angeles Board of Education voted Tuesday to throw its support behind two rival tax measures on the November ballot - both of which would raise billions of dollars for education in the state. The board approved three resolutions: one that supports Gov. Jerry Brown's tax initiative, a second that supports a rival tax measure backed by wealthy Pasadena attorney Molly Munger and another that supports both. All resolutions passed unanimously. Board member Bennett Kayser, who sponsored the proposal to back both initiatives, said in a statement that the Los Angeles Unified School District, along with every other school district in California, is in dire need of financial help.