The Truth About Social Security Its Critics Refuse to Acknowledge

President Franklin Roosevelt signed our Social Security system into law eighty-three years ago today, on August 14, 1935. It has stood the test of time.

Social Security protects us against the economic consequences of risks to which all of us are vulnerable.
Rich or poor, any of us can suffer a devastating, disabling accident or illness.
Rich or poor, any of us can die prematurely, leaving young children behind.
Rich or poor, all of us hope to grow old.

When we do, if we are to have a dignified and independent retirement, we need a guaranteed steady income which we cannot and will not outlive.

Social Security addresses universal economic risks that have always been with us and always will be.

That explains why more than 170 countries today have some form of social security.
It also explains Social Security’s deep and longstanding popularity in our country.

In a survey conducted in 1936—one year after the enactment of Social Security, before a penny of benefits was expended—68 percent of those surveyed expressed approval for the new and untested program.

By 1944, that percentage was a nearly unanimous 96 percent. That high level of support has been consistent throughout the last eighty years.

Despite Social Security’s more than eighty-year history, some elites either do not understand Social Security or willfully refuse to understand it. They talk about providing benefits to those who need them, as if the program were government largesse, which it is not. Rather, Social Security is insurance that is earned through work and paid for with premiums regularly deducted from workers’ pay.

In addition, elites often speak as if the trust funds were some kind of gimmick, somehow less real than private pension trust funds. Perhaps most absurd are those who claim that what the creators of Social Security intended is not the program we now have.

Indeed, today’s discussions of Social Security are replete with revisionist history—statements made today about what was or was not intended by its original creators and champions. Some of today’s revisionist statements are zombie lies: Claims made and refuted again and again over the last eighty years; claims that refuse to die.

Former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY), for example, has stated that Social Security “was never intended as a retirement program. It was set up in ’37 and ’38 to take care of people who were in distress—ditch diggers, wage earners….” Nationally syndicated columnist George Will claims, “People forget Social Security was advocated … in the 1930s, as a way of getting people to quit working, because they thought we were confined to a permanent scarcity of jobs in this country.”

Syndicated columnist Robert Samuelson in a column entitled, “Would Roosevelt recognize today’s Social Security?” even claims, “Social Security has evolved into something he never intended and actively opposed.” Samuelson, Will, Simpson, and the other revisionist historians are wrong. Indeed, to state it bluntly, those modern-day statements are all nonsense.

Roosevelt’s and the other founders’ words and actions make clear that they envisioned Social Security to be a permanent part of the economy, once the Great Depression was history.

They knew that the nation would return to full employment. When we did, the goal was to have in place Social Security and other programs that improved the economic security of all Americans and prevented, as much as possible, the human cost imposed by the ups and downs of all modern economies.

In particular, Social Security was not designed to alleviate the suffering of people caught in the immediate distress of the Great Depression, nor to get people to quit their jobs. Rather, it was set up as wage insurance that people earned.

This should be obvious to anyone with even a superficial knowledge of Social Security’s history. Because the architects knew that it would take time and work to earn Social Security’s benefits, the Social Security Act of 1935 was written so that not a single penny of those earned monthly retirement benefits was payable for seven years!

But the absurdity of those revisionist historians goes much further than simply being wrong on the facts. They seek to expunge the far-sighted and noble vision of Social Security’s founders. President Roosevelt and those around him had a sweeping vision that still has yet to be fully realized.

When Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act of 1935 into law, he described it as “a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete.” He and his colleagues were anything but short-sighted. They were not simply and solely focused on the immediate distress caused by the Great Depression, as the revisionists would have us believe. Rather, they saw Social Security as a “cornerstone,” a beginning on which to build.

Despite today’s revisionists, the structure and size of today’s Social Security program is completely consistent and harmonious with what Roosevelt began. Medicare is consistent with a first step toward the vision of universal health insurance. The revisionists are wrong when they claim that Roosevelt would not recognize today’s Social Security and Medicare.

He would be surprised that more progress hadn’t been made, but he would absolutely recognize how those who came later built on what he envisioned and began. Now it is our turn. It is time to expand Social Security and enact an improved Medicare for All.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

This excerpt was adapted from Nancy J. Altman, The Truth About Social Security: The Founders’ Words Refute Revisionist History, Zombie Lies, and Common Misunderstandings (Strong Arm Press, Publication Date: August 14, 2018).

I think it was super dave that chastised me for constantly posting about the US' continual, illegal, unConstitutional, immoral warmongering mostly for the protection and benefit of some giant corporations to continue to plunder another sovereign nations resources for their profits. Of course, they LIE to the US sheople that it is to spread democracy, fight terrorism or some other bullshit.

Viet Nam accomplished nothing but to get 58,000 patriotic young men killed and many more wounded and mangled. The war in Iraq in 15 years has accomplished nothing except getting nearly 5,000 soldiers kill, many thousands more wounded and making a whole slew of private corporations billions all to preserve the hegemony of the petrodollar.

!7 years in Afghanistan has done the same only worse and there is NO END in site.

Look at the mess the US created in Libya all to preserve the petrodollar by letting terrorist murder Gadahfi becuse he was woking to unite the oil producing countries of Africa into trading oil only for the gold backed dinar and because he was selling oil to Russia and China.

As General Smedley Butler said in his 1935 book by the same title that War is a Racket. He was dead on.

You had a good post until your last line. It's too bad your point of view ended up so slanted, it's like looking at the world with just one eye. College professors are not the problem, but it is people who make false accusations or intentionally misinform the public, which does include the president. These are the things as crippled say we should not accept, and people who do these acts should be called out on and be accountable by a form of punishment. There should be a place for news and facts and a place for opinionated editorials and a clear distinction between the two, these muddied grey lines need to end.

Who is this new forming cult that continually disparages our government, our governing system, our education system and our homeland security? They are an enemy.

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Who are you supporting right now?

I support President Trump because he is so much better than the alternative and he has accomplished much more than the past 3 Presidents all combined.

As far as being lied to--no one has lied to the American people more than either Obama or the Clintons-- or LBJ " The Democrats. President Trump is not a perfect person but I did not vote for him to be a Boy Scout leader. I voted for him to be President of this great country. Look at who lied to us about the Gulf of Tonkin.
LBJ a F-ing Democrat

I was in Vietnam 3 times between 1965 and 1969. Now when I look back I realize that we should not have gone to war in Vietnam. French Indochina had been under French rule since 1887. It was a Colony of France just like what later became the USA had been a Colony of Great Briton. The people in that part of the world just wanted their freedom and we should have helped them but we didn't because France was an Allie of the United States. Ho Chi Mein asked us for help and we turned him down so then he turned to the Communist for help.

I don't believe we should be fighting in Afghanistan or Syria or Iraq. We should not allow Muslims to immigrate to this country. They should be forced to remain in their own Muslim countries killing each other. Too late now though, Lieing-Muslim Obama has infected this country with Islam just like a disease.

GREAT posts Carol and Cripple. And the Looney tunes don't like nationalism. Hmmmm. To me nationalism is taking care of your own FIRST. Don't feel you have to be the world's arbiter or police force. Deal with other countries to trade or to share mutually beneficial info, etc. Support your countrymen in getting education and opportunities so the best and brightest can maintain cutting edge medical and tech advances. Reinstitute education standards. STOP college professors, the MSM and entertainers from preaching America hate and romanticizing moral decay and perversions.

I’m afraid! Not afraid of dying but of what I’m leaving behind for future generations of conservatives to deal with. We’ve all known about war if we had anybody family or friend go away and not return or at least not the way they left us. We also know that most of these “clashes” could have been avoided but for the ignorance of our leaders. Most of us haven’t been through what you’ve been through, but we understand and have empathy.
For whatever it’s worth, I read what you wrote and I won’t say I felt your pain but I did understand.

The very definition of 'I Am Much Holier Than Trump' virtue signaling.
Trump shouldn't give a mueller about my sexcapades why would anyone care about Trump's?
Jealous maybe?
Being President of the United States doesn't have anything to do with sex.
Wanna get into Obama's sex life in the Whitehouse? How about Obama's sex life in the Bathhouse?
And bullmueller, you never voted for Trump. The BillyBush tape would have disgusted you enough to vote for hilliar, which you were going to do anyway.