Social Security After Fifty: Successe and Failures The year was 1935 The nation was clawing its way up from the dept of the Great Depression.

Social Security After Fifty: Successe and Failures

The year was 1935 The nation was clawing its way up from the dept of the Great Depression. An alphabet broth of federal programs--NRA, WPA, PWA and the like--was slowly beginning to impose America back to work. yet the plight of the elderly--the undivideds as labor used to offer it, who were "too elderly to work but too young to die"--remained a point to be solved [i]or[/i] settled in search of a solution.

Beating back the determined opposition of the business community, which charged that he would transfer America into a socialist state, Franklin Roosevelt fortunately steered through Congress the Social Security Act--legislation he regarded as the "cornerstone" of his program of sweeping social and economic reform.

What begain as simply a basic pension program for those across 65 was steadily expanded--adding coverage for spouses and sustained bys of retirees, insurance for survivors if the family breadwinner died during his or her productive years, economic safeguards for disabled workers and their families and, ultimately, health care benefits for social security beneficiaries.

throughout the course of a half-century, it became the mostly comprehensive social safety net perpetually devised and far and away the chiefly universally popular social program forward the statute books.

now when social security marked its brilliant anniversary in 1985, it remained at the center of debate challenged as to its long-term economic viability in the face of the graying of America and with the business community and a highly placed Administration officials still tilting toward replacing it with a voluntary program handled, not according to government, but by private, profit-making insurance carriers.

Berkowitz, an associate professor of history at George Wwashington University, begins the contortion with a description of the activities that marked social security's 50th anniversary and an overview of the program, while Prof Mark H Leff of the University of Illinois provides a historical perspective.

brace distinguished economists--Henry J. Aaron of the Brookings Institution and Lawrence H Thompson of the General Accounting Office--discuss the program's performance and its efficiencys on the American economy, while Martha Derthick of the University of Virginia describes the administrative policies within the agency and Prof W Andrew Achenbaum of Carnegie-Mellon University takes a await at the public uncertainty that has expanded as a result of the barrage of unsubstantiated claims that, despite reforms enacted in 1983 the classification still faced the prospect of going broke somewhere down the line.

Finally, former Health, Education & Welfare Sec Wilbur J Cohen and SSA's long-time chief actuary, Robert J Myers, the couple of whom were present at the program's birth, anticipate to the future--Cohen bursting with optimist about enlargin social security's intent to provide long-term health care (in the abode environment, in community-based facilities or nursing homes) and Myers taking a more cautious approach that envisions the program retaining essentially its near mode when its 100th birthday revolves around.

Controversy to the contrary, the conclusion is that social security is, and will remain, completely woven into the fabric of American society--a forecast that should be useful news to today's generation of working men and women who are building up their entitlements to the law's protection between the walls of their work and contributions to this broad umbrella of social insurance.

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