🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 4 Jul 2005 21:14:47 +0000 (UTC), Merlin Dorfman
<dorfman@green.rahul.net> wrote:

>>>    But that's really beside the point.  The point is that the
>>>purpose of Social Security is to provide a minumum guaranteed
>>>income to everybody, regardless of the state of the economy, or the
>>>state of the stock or bond market, or the quality of investment
>>>choices made by the individual. 
>
>> And again you are wrong.
>
>     Then correct me, O wise one, what is the purpose of Social
>Security?
http://www.ssa.gov/history/fdrstate.html
This law represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built
but is by no means completed--a structure intended to lessen the force
of possible future depressions, to act as a protection to future
administrations of the Government against the necessity of going
deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy--a law to flatten out
the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation--in other words, a
law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide
for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater
soundness." -August 14, 1935

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USARsocial.htm

(1) Franklin D. Roosevelt, radio broadcast, Fireside Chat (28th April,
1935)

While our present and projected expenditures for work relief are
wholly within the reasonable limits of our national credit resources,
it is obvious that we cannot continue to create governmental deficits
for that purpose year after year. We must begin now to make provision
for the future. That is why our social security program is an
important part of the complete picture. It proposes, by means of old
age pensions, to help those who have reached the age of retirement to
give up their jobs and thus give to the younger generation greater
opportunities for work and to give to all a feeling of security as
they look toward old age.

The unemployment insurance part of the legislation will not only help
to guard the individual in future periods of lay-off against
dependence upon relief, but it will, by sustaining purchasing power,
cushion the shock of economic distress. Another helpful feature of
unemployment insurance is the incentive it will give to employers to
plan more carefully in order that unemployment may be prevented by the
stabilizing of employment itself.

 

(2) John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth (1944)

The most tragic illusion about this man is that built up by the
ceaseless repetition of the false statement that he gave us a system
of security.

Security for whom? For the aged? An old�age security bill was passed
during his first administration which provides for workers who reach
the age of 65 a pension of $8 a week at most. And even this meager and
still very badly constructed plan had to be pushed through against a
strange inertness on his part. Roosevelt's mind ran in curious
circles. People have forgotten his procrastination about putting
through the social security bill until in the 1934 congressional
elections the Republicans denounced him for his tardiness. It is
difficult to believe this now after all the propaganda that has washed
over people's minds. And when he did finally consent to a bill, like
so many good ideas that went into his mind, it came out badly twisted.
It contained a plan for building a huge reserve fund that would have
amounted to nothing more than a scheme to extract billions from the
workers' payrolls without any adequate return. Over the protest of the
President, the Congress finally took that incredible joker out of the
law. But it is in every respect a pathetically inadequate law. Does
anyone imagine that $8 a week is security for anyone, particularly
since Roosevelt's inflation has cut the value of that in half?

But what of the millions of people who through long years of thrift
and saving have been providing their own security? What of the
millions who have been scratching for years to pay for their life
insurance and annuities, putting money in savings banks, commercial
banks, buying government and corporation bonds to protect themselves
in their old age? What of the millions of teachers, police, firemen,
civil employees of states and cities and the government, of the armed
services and the army of men and women entitled to retirement funds
from private corporations � railroads, industrial and commercial?
These thrifty people have seen one�half of their retirement benefits
wiped out by the Roosevelt inflation that has cut the purchasing power
of the dollar in two. Roosevelt struck the most terrible blow at the
security of the masses of the people while posing as the generous
donor of "security for all." During the war boom and in the post�war
boom created by spending 40 billion dollars a year the illusion of
security is sustained. The full measure of Roosevelt's hopeless
misunderstanding of this subject will come when security will be most
needed � and most absent. 
"Considering the events of recent years, 
 the world has a long way to go to regain
 its credibility and reputation with the US."
                                 unknown