'August 14... in 1935, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act'

[Joinfortmill]

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-13-2022

'Since it seems clear we will be deciding whether we want to preserve the Social Security Act by our choice of leaders in the next few elections...' Heather Cox Richardson


Letters from an American: Heather Cox Richardson

'The Social Security Act is known for its payments to older Americans, but it did far more than that. It established unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services. It was a sweeping reworking of the relationship between the government and its citizens, using the power of taxation to pool funds to provide a basic social safety net...The driving force behind the law was FDR’s Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins.

The overwhelming unemployment, hunger, and suffering caused by the Great Depression made Perkins realize that state governments alone could not adjust the conditions of the modern world to create a safe, supportive community for ordinary people. She came to believe, as she said: “The people are what matter to government, and a government should aim to give all the people under its jurisdiction the best possible life.”

With the Social Security Act, Perkins helped to write into our laws a longstanding political impulse in America that stood in dramatic contrast to the 1920s philosophy of rugged individualism. She recognized that the ideas of community values and pooling resources to keep the economic playing field level and take care of everyone are at least as deeply seated in our political philosophy as the idea of every man for himself.'

[patricia92243]

1. This changed the way of life for Americans more than any other one thing.

[raccoon]

2. If a Republican had been in office in 1935, that would never have happened. NT

[betsuni]

3. What happens when liberal Democrats have supermajorities and a normal opposition party.

[Native]

5. What happens when....smart, caring women are in power!

[TreasonousBastard]

4. And they're trying to take it away.

[NCjack]

6. There were Reoublicans in the House and Senate who voted with the Democratic

majority for the SS Act. That was a period when compassionate Republicans existed.

To get back that congressional performance, we need fair apportionment of congressional districts.

[SheltieLover]

7. Dems must campaign on qpukes trying to end SS & Medicare!

[Farmer-Rick]

8. FDR was a wise man.

But the GOPers who want to take away your earned Social Security need to be reminded why they take out a Social Security Tax from your every single paycheck.
You pay for your Social Security with every paycheck. It is your money, you have earned every dime of it. It's not a government handout like when they gave those banks bailouts in 2008. It's your hard earned money.

FDR's famous quote on the importance of the payroll taxes was: "We put those payroll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program."

[Boomerproud]

9. The word entitlement makes me angry.

The MSM uses it as much as repugs do as a pejorative. When the homeless problem explodes because of sky-high rent and home prices they'll blame the government and those affected first and always.

[GreenWave]

10. Social Security is way better than private accounts (or stock market)

I have paid and my employers have paid over the many years about $240,000 into the account. I will get over 3 grand monthly when I hang them up at age 70. Over the same period of time I have had taken out of my account and matched or surpassed by employers roughly three times the amount for 401, 403 etc. The larger account does not grow at 8% per annum as Social Security has. This secondary "income" will not pay for a non-working spouse as SS does. Nor can they give me anything but gobbledygook when I even ask for a ballpark figure, but it appears despite them getting three times the $ that SS does, I will get roughly half the amount, so the highly vaunted Free Market is six times worse.

Sorry for the rant.

Pro tip: 69 years and 3 months is a good time to start collecting SS as it will be around another 20 years before the money you rake in during those remaining nine months before maximum retirement age (70) equals the boost you get for the final year.