"social insurance" during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when poverty rates
among senior citizens exceeded 50 percent. The stock market crash of 1929 had
destroyed the value of many Americans' retirement savings, and bank failures
did further damage.
***This is nothing new today with the uninsured that would of driven up the cost
of insurance to no use, the low wages, with ALEC keeping many from getting raises.
Then giving dead end loans to the poor to make some money off them making a
housing crisis. Many poor do not have health insurance and get costly,
making others pay for it. This pushes the need to change the system.
Also being there are many states that do not have medicaid expansion
helping the poor that don't make the money to pay for insurance.
It's more of the issue why do they make children wages making them a tax
burden. It's true I am a tax burden also! Healthcare is not a issue if you make
a living wage you would just pull out your checkbook and pay for it.
There where also dead end loans aimed at the poor there is also junk
insurance policy's the lower income has. Many insurance company's
don't like them and have been trying to get rid of them for years!
So being dropped on your insurance is not really a new thing, many had been
dropped many times before!
So in our new Great Depression today action does need to happen!
***All things start bad! We all learn and change it for the better we don't
go backward. It's a evolutionary process as a group we go forward!
Like the Apollo mission they did not scrap the program because of
a mistake, no they fixed the mistake so it won't happen again and moved on!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1
~~~Initial opposition.
Social Security was controversial when originally proposed, with one point of opposition
being that it would allegedly cause a loss of jobs. However, proponents argued that there
was in fact an advantage: it would encourage older workers to retire, thereby creating
opportunities for younger
people to find jobs, which would lower the unemployment rate.
Opponents also decried the proposal as socialism. In a Senate Finance Committee
hearing, one Senator asked Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins,
"Isn't this socialism?" She said that it was not, but he continued,
"Isn't this a teeny-weeny bit of socialism?"
Most women and minorities were excluded from the benefits of unemployment
insurance and old age pensions. Employment definitions reflected typical white
male categories and patterns.
Job categories that were not covered by the act included workers in agricultural labor,
domestic service, government employees, and many teachers, nurses, hospital employees,
librarians, and social workers. The act also denied coverage to individuals who worked
intermittently. These jobs were dominated by women and minorities.
For example, women made up 90 percent of domestic labor in 1940 and two-thirds of all
employed black women were in domestic service. Exclusions exempted nearly half of
the working population. Nearly two-thirds of all African Americans in the labor force,
70 to 80 percent in some areas in the South, and just over half of all women employed
were not covered by Social Security. At the time, the NAACP protested the
Social Security Act, describing it as “a sieve with holes just big enough for the
majority of Negroes to fall through.” Some have suggested that this discrimination resulted
from the powerful position of Southern Democrats on two of the committees pivotal for
the Act’s creation, the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means
Committee. Southern congressmen supported Social Security as a means to bring
needed relief to areas in the South that were especially hurt by the Great Depression
but wished to avoid legislation which might interfere with the racial status quo in the South.
The solution to this dilemma was to pass a bill that both included exclusions and
granted authority to the states rather than the national government
(such as the states' power in Aid to Dependent Children). Others have argued
that exclusions of job categories such as agriculture were frequently left out of new
social security systems worldwide because of the administrative difficulties in
covering these workers.
Social Security reinforced traditional views of family life. Women generally qualified
for benefits only through their husbands or children. Mothers’ pensions (Title IV)
based entitlements on the presumption that mothers would be unemployed.
Historical discrimination in the system can also be seen with regard to Aid to
Dependent Children. Since this money was allocated to the states to distribute,
some localities assessed black families as needing less money than white families.
These low grant levels made it impossible for African American mothers to not work:
one requirement of the program. Some states also excluded children born out of
wedlock, an exclusion which affected African American women more than white women.
One study determined that 14.4% of eligible white individuals received funding, but only
1.5 percent of eligible black individuals received these benefits.
~~~Debates on the constitutionality of the Act
In the 1930s, the Supreme Court struck down many pieces of Roosevelt's New Deal
legislation, including the Railroad Retirement Act. The Social Security Act's similarity
with the Railroad Retirement Act caused Edwin Witte- the executive director of the
President's Committee on Economic Security under Roosevelt who was credited as
"the father of social security" to question whether or not the bill would pass; John Gall,
an Associate Counsel for the National Association of Manufacturers who testified before
the US House of Representatives in favor of the act, also felt that the bill was rushed
through Congress too quickly and that the old age provision of the act was "hodgepodge"
that needed to be written more properly in order to have a higher likelihood of being ruled
constitutional. The Court threw out a centerpiece of the New Deal,
the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act,
and New York State's minimum-wage law. President Roosevelt responded with
an attempt to pack the court via the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937.
On February 5, 1937, he sent a special message to Congress proposing legislation granting
the President new powers to add additional judges to all federal courts whenever there were
sitting judges age 70 or older who refused to retire. The practical effect of this proposal
was that the President would get to appoint six new Justices to the Supreme Court
(and 44 judges to lower federal courts), thus instantly tipping the political balance on the
Court dramatically in his favor. The debate on this proposal was heated and widespread,
and lasted over six months. Beginning with a set of decisions in March, April, and May, 1937
(including the Social Security Act cases), the Court would sustain a series of
New Deal legislation. Two Supreme Court rulings affirmed the constitutionality
of the Social Security Act.
- Steward Machine Company v. Davis, 301 U.S, 548 (1937) held, in a 5–4 decision, that, given the exigencies of the Great Depression, "[It] is too late today for the argument to be heard with tolerance that in a crisis so extreme the use of the moneys of the nation to relieve the unemployed and their dependents is a use for any purpose narrower than the promotion of the general welfare". The arguments opposed to the Social Security Act (articulated by justices Butler, McReynolds, and Sutherland in their opinions) were that the social security act went beyond the powers that were granted to the federal government in the Constitution. They argued that, by imposing a tax on employers that could be avoided only by contributing to a state unemployment-compensation fund, the federal government was essentially forcing each state to establish an unemployment-compensation fund that would meet its criteria, and that the federal government had no power to enact such a program.
- Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937), decided on the same day as Steward, upheld the program because "The proceeds of both [employee and employer] taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like internal-revenue taxes generally, and are not earmarked in any way". That is, the Social Security Tax was constitutional as a mere exercise of Congress's general taxation powers.
be looked at like a failure. ObamaCare will do well being the government is behind it.
Just as Social Security was.
~~~Expansion and evolution
Further information: List of Social Security legislation (United States)
The provisions of Social Security have been changing since the 1930s,
shifting inresponse to economic worries as well as concerns over changing gender roles and the
position of minorities. Officials have responded more to the concerns of women than
those of minority groups. Social Security gradually moved toward universal coverage.
By 1950, debates moved away from which occupational groups should be included to
how to provide more adequate coverage. Changes in Social Security have reflected
a balance between promoting equality and efforts to provide adequate protection.
In 1940, benefits paid totaled $35 million. These rose to $961 million in 1950, $11.2 billion
in 1960, $31.9 billion in 1970, $120.5 billion in 1980, and $247.8 billion in 1990
(all figures in nominal dollars, not adjusted for inflation). In 2004, $492 billion of benefits
were paid to 47.5 million beneficiaries. In 2009, nearly 51 million Americans received
$650 billion in Social Security benefits.
***You also need to note the cost of living is higher now than the wages.
Social Security was not planed out with the view of wages going low.
We are America not a third world country!
ObamaCare will as I see it bring up the pay in a way, being the workers
will have to get insurance, the cost of the insurance will travel as low sales going
to the rich that sales the stuff the poor is buying.
Being the poor has less money to spend. As a group of many low income with
less money really hurts businesses. It's like natural selection putting out the
high dollar places in town and making room for affordable places.
Also the wages has to come up or have no sales!
It's not that hard just look at it in a naturist view supply and demand vs low pay!
ObamaCare will do good with lawmakers helping it do better like Social Security,
did with the changes to make it work better. The did not hold people hostage
over it back then. If they did, many of us would not be here today!
Also Franklin D. Roosevelt's approval ratings was also low after Social Security
got started. Many are glad we have it now!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Social_Security_in_the_United_States
