🚀 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.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=6531

As Twight notes, after five years of depression, nothing like Social
Security had been sponsored by a member of Congress. She quotes
Carolyn Weaver, a historian of Social Security, who has written,
"[T]here simply was no significant demand for such a program." When
President Roosevelt had the idea proposed in Congress, Weaver wrote,
"no ground swell developed in support of social insurance programs
because they did not affect the major problems or relieving the
victims of the depression."

Although most people did not want to see the government get into the
pension business, they did favor federal help for the elderly who had
lost their savings. A bill to that effect was wending its way through
congressional channels--until Roosevelt, who wanted full-blown
Bismarckian compulsory social insurance, told Congress to hold off
passing the ad hoc aid. Twight reports: "This postponement was
critical in preserving needs-based old-age assistance as an issue that
later could serve as a lever for moving Roosevelt's controversial
program of compulsory old-age insurance through Congress." (Otto von
Bismarck is credited with constructing the first modern welfare state
in the late nineteenth century. The Social Security Administration
pays homage to Bismarck by posting his photo here.)

Roosevelt set out to make opposition to his plan politically costly.
Drawing on Weaver�s work, Twight enumerates FDR�s strategy: �(1)
control information flowing to Congress and the public; (2) dominate
the agenda with the presidentially backed bill; (3) package the
compulsory old-age insurance provisions with other, more popular,
programs, such as federal funds for old-age assistance, unemployment
compensation, and maternal and child health services; and (4) refuse
to sign individual sections of the bill if separated from other
sections (an �all-or-nothing� offer or tie-in sale).�

In other words, Roosevelt wanted to make it virtually impossible to
oppose his unpopular socialistic plan without also effectively
opposing more modest publicly supported measures. As Edwin Witte,
executive director of Roosevelt�s Committee on Economic Security,
wrote, �I doubt whether any part of the social security program other
than the old age assistance title would have been enacted into law but
for the fact that the President throughout insisted that the entire
program must be kept together.� (Quoted in Twight, p. 83.)

No effort was spared in having Social Security ride on the coattails
of old-age assistance. �Moreover,� Twight explains, �they placed the
popular old-age assistance title first, believing it [in Witte�s
words] �had the effect of drawing away opposition from other titles,
which had much less popular support.� When it seemed �probable that
the old age insurance titles would be completely stricken from the
bill� and leading Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee
advised the president �that the old age insurance provisions could not
be passed,� Roosevelt �insisted that this was the most important part
of the bill and very definitely gave these Administration leaders to
understand that all essential parts of the measure must remain
intact.��

According to Twight, Witte acknowledged in his book, The Development
of the Social Security Act (1962), that members of Congress received
mostly �critical or hostile� correspondence about Social Security. He
said that the �net impression [was] that there was serious opposition
to the bill and no real support.� He went on, �Few members of the Ways
and Means Committee were sympathetic with the economic security bill.�
Many of them voted for it, Witte wrote, only because �it had the
endorsement of the President.� 
"Considering the events of recent years, 
 the world has a long way to go to regain
 its credibility and reputation with the US."
                                 unknown