Social Security After Fifty: Succes...

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 bring forward America back to work. nevertheless the plight of the elderly--the commons as labor used to place it, who were "too old-fashioned to work but too young to die"--remained a point in dispute in search of a solution.

Beating back the determined opposition of the business community, which charged that he would inflect America into a socialist state, Franklin Roosevelt favorably 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 above 65 was steadily expanded--adding coverage for spouses and conditioneds 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.

through the whole extent of the course of a half-century, it became the chiefly comprehensive social safety net always devised and far and away the greatest in quantity universally popular social program upon the statute books.

still when social security marked its splendid 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 near 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 dimensions 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.

sum of two units 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 forces 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 examine at the public uncertainty that has discloseed as a result of the barrage of unsubstantiated claims that, despite reforms enacted in 1983 the plan 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, as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but of whom were present at the program's birth, contemplate to the future--Cohen bursting with optimist about enlargin social security's extent 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 current mode when its 100th birthday turn abouts around.

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

COPYRIGHT 1987 AFL-CIO

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