Posted on 09/19/2014 6:25:51 AM PDT by logi_cal869
There was an open call-in on the radio this morning on Social Security. It got my blood boiling. On a whim, I went looking for 1933 news on the reality of Social Security before it was passed and the current meme posited by libs & the media.
First, I found this:
The pundits at Politifact wrote, "We’d always believed Social Security stemmed from a desire help keep the elderly out of poverty...
George Will asserted:
"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."
Politifact went on to brand the notion 'mostly-false'. Then I noted the 'update' at the VERY bottom of the article referencing an unusually-frank 'fireside chat' by Roosevelt on 04/28/1935 after the SSA passage (AFTER all the propaganda)...one I had never seen referenced nor read anywhere prior. Nor was the linked article at Politifact posted at FR.
I've posted the entirety of the 'Roosevelt Social Security Fireside Chat' transcription below, with pertinent passages emphasized.
Fireside Chat: The Works Relief Program
April 28, 1935
Since my annual message to the Congress on January fourth, last, I have not addressed the general public over the air. In the many weeks since that time the Congress has devoted itself to the arduous task of formulating legislation necessary to the country's welfare. It has made and is making distinct progress.
Before I come to any of the specific measures, however, I want to leave in your minds one clear fact. The Administration and the Congress are not proceeding in any haphazard fashion in this task of government. Each of our steps has a definite relationship to every other step. The job of creating a program for the Nation's welfare is, in some respects, like the building of a ship. At different points on the coast where I often visit they build great seagoing ships. When one of these ships is under construction and the steel frames have been set in the keel, it is difficult for a person who does not know ships to tell how it will finally look when it is sailing the high seas.
It may seem confused to some, but out of the multitude of detailed parts that go into the making of the structure the creation of a useful instrument for man ultimately comes. It is that way with the making of a national policy. The objective of the Nation has greatly changed in three years. Before that time individual self-interest and group selfishness were paramount in public thinking. The general good was at a discount.
Three years of hard thinking have changed the picture. More and more people, because of clearer thinking and a better understanding, are considering the whole rather than a mere part relating to one section or to one crop, or to one industry, or to an individual private occupation. That is a tremendous gain for the principles of democracy. The overwhelming majority of people in this country know how to sift the wheat from the chaff in what they hear and what they read. They know that the process of the constructive rebuilding of America cannot be done in a day or a year, but that it is being done in spite of the few who seek to confuse them and to profit by their confusion. Americans as a whole are feeling a lot better -- a lot more cheerful than for many, many years.
The most difficult place in the world to get a clear open perspective of the country as a whole is Washington. I am reminded sometimes of what President Wilson once said: "So many people come to Washington who know things that are not so, and so few people who know anything about what the people of the United States are thinking about." That is why I occasionally leave this scene of action for a few days to go fishing or back home to Hyde Park, so that I can have a chance to think quietly about the country as a whole. "To get away from the trees", as they say, "and to look at the whole forest." This duty of seeing the country in a long-range perspective is one which, in a very special manner, attaches to this office to which you have chosen me. Did you ever stop to think that there are, after all, only two positions in the Nation that are filled by the vote of all of the voters -- the President and the Vice-President? That makes it particularly necessary for the Vice-President and for me to conceive of our duty toward the entire country. I speak, therefore, tonight, to and of the American people as a whole.
My most immediate concern is in carrying out the purposes of the great work program just enacted by the Congress. Its first objective is to put men and women now on the relief rolls to work and, incidentally, to assist materially in our already unmistakable march toward recovery. I shall not confuse my discussion by a multitude of figures. So many figures are quoted to prove so many things. Sometimes it depends upon what paper you read and what broadcast you hear. Therefore, let us keep our minds on two or three simple, essential facts in connection with this problem of unemployment. It is true that while business and industry are definitely better our relief rolls are still too large. However, for the first time in five years the relief rolls have declined instead of increased during the winter months. They are still declining. The simple fact is that many million more people have private work today than two years ago today or one year ago today, and every day that passes offers more chances to work for those who want to work. In spite of the fact that unemployment remains a serious problem here as in every other nation, we have come to recognize the possibility and the necessity of certain helpful remedial measures. These measures are of two kinds. The first is to make provisions intended to relieve, to minimize, and to prevent future unemployment; the second is to establish the practical means to help those who are unemployed in this present emergency. Our social security legislation is an attempt to answer the first of these questions. Our work relief program the second. The program for social security now pending before the Congress is a necessary part of the future unemployment policy of the government. While our present and projected expenditures for work relief are wholly within the reasonable limits of our national credit resources, it is obvious that we cannot continue to create governmental deficits for that purpose year after year. We must begin now to make provision for the future. That is why our social security program is an important part of the complete picture. It proposes, by means of old age pensions, to help those who have reached the age of retirement to give up their jobs and thus give to the younger generation greater opportunities for work and to give to all a feeling of security as they look toward old age.
The unemployment insurance part of the legislation will not only help to guard the individual in future periods of lay-off against dependence upon relief, but it will, by sustaining purchasing power, cushion the shock of economic distress. Another helpful feature of unemployment insurance is the incentive it will give to employers to plan more carefully in order that unemployment may be prevented by the stabilizing of employment itself.
Provisions for social security, however, are protections for the future. Our responsibility for the immediate necessities of the unemployed has been met by the Congress through the most comprehensive work plan in the history of the Nation. Our problem is to put to work three and one-half million employable persons now on the relief rolls. It is a problem quite as much for private industry as for the government.
We are losing no time getting the government's vast work relief program underway, and we have every reason to believe that it should be in full swing by autumn. In directing it, I shall recognize six fundamental principles:
(1) The projects should be useful.
(2) Projects shall be of a nature that a considerable proportion of the money spent will go into wages for labor.
(3) Projects which promise ultimate return to the Federal Treasury of a considerable proportion of the costs will be sought.
(4) Funds allotted for each project should be actually and promptly spent and not held over until later years.
(5) In all cases projects must be of a character to give employment to those on the relief rolls.
(6) Projects will be allocated to localities or relief areas in relation to the number of workers on relief rolls in those areas.
I next want to make it clear exactly how we shall direct the work.
(1) I have set up a Division of Applications and Information to which all proposals for the expenditure of money must go for preliminary study and consideration.
(2) After the Division of Applications and Information has sifted those projects, they will be sent to an Allotment Division composed of representatives of the more important governmental agencies charged with carrying on work relief projects. The group will also include representatives of cities, and of labor, farming, banking and industry. This Allotment Division will consider all of the recommendations submitted to it and such projects as they approve will be next submitted to the President who under the Act is required to make final allocations.
(3) The next step will be to notify the proper government agency in whose field the project falls, and also to notify another agency which I am creating -- a Progress Division. This Division will have the duty of coordinating the purchases of materials and supplies and of making certain that people who are employed will be taken from the relief rolls. It will also have the responsibility of determining work payments in various localities, of making full use of existing employment services and to assist people engaged in relief work to move as rapidly as possible back into private employment when such employment is available. Moreover, this Division will be charged with keeping projects moving on schedule.
(4) I have felt it to be essentially wise and prudent to avoid, so far as possible, the creation of new governmental machinery for supervising this work. The National Government now has at least sixty different agencies with the staff and the experience and the competence necessary to carry on the two hundred and fifty or three hundred kinds of work that will be undertaken. These agencies, therefore, will simply be doing on a somewhat enlarged scale the same sort of things that they have been doing. This will make certain that the largest possible portion of the funds allotted will be spent for actually creating new work and not for building up expensive overhead organizations here in Washington.
For many months preparations have been under way. The allotment of funds for desirable projects has already begun. The key men for the major responsibilities of this great task already have been selected. I well realize that the country is expecting before this year is out to see the "dirt fly", as they say, in carrying on the work, and I assure my fellow citizens that no energy will be spared in using these funds effectively to make a major attack upon the problem of unemployment.
Our responsibility is to all of the people in this country. This is a great national crusade to destroy enforced idleness which is an enemy of the human spirit generated by this depression. Our attack upon these enemies must be without stint and without discrimination. No sectional, no political distinctions can be permitted. It must, however, be recognized that when an enterprise of this character is extended over more than three thousand counties throughout the Nation, there may be occasional instances of inefficiency, bad management, or misuse of funds. When cases of this kind occur, there will be those, of course, who will try to tell you that the exceptional failure is characteristic of the entire endeavor. It should be remembered that in every big job there are some imperfections. There are chiselers in every walk of life; there are those in every industry who are guilty of unfair practices, every profession has its black sheep, but long experience in government has taught me that the exceptional instances of wrong-doing in government are probably less numerous than in almost every other line of endeavor. The most effective means of preventing such evils in this work relief program will be the eternal vigilance of the American people themselves. I call upon my fellow citizens everywhere to cooperate with me in making this the most efficient and the cleanest example of public enterprise the world has ever seen. It is time to provide a smashing answer for those cynical men who say that a democracy cannot be honest and efficient. If you will help, this can be done. I, therefore, hope you will watch the work in every corner of this Nation. Feel free to criticize. Tell me of instances where work can be done better, or where improper practices prevail. Neither you nor I want criticism conceived in a purely fault-finding or partisan spirit, but I am jealous of the right of every citizen to call to the attention of his or her government examples of how the public money can be more effectively spent for the benefit of the American people.
I now come, my friends, to a part of the remaining business before the Congress. It has under consideration many measures which provide for the rounding out of the program of economic and social reconstruction with which we have been concerned for two years. I can mention only a few of them tonight, but I do not want my mention of specific measures to be interpreted as lack of interest in or disapproval of many other important proposals that are pending.
The National Industrial Recovery Act expires on the sixteenth of June. After careful consideration, I have asked the Congress to extend the life of this useful agency of government. As we have proceeded with the administration of this Act, we have found from time to time more and more useful ways of promoting its purposes. No reasonable person wants to abandon our present gains -- we must continue to protect children, to enforce minimum wages, to prevent excessive hours, to safeguard, define and enforce collective bargaining, and, while retaining fair competition, to eliminate so far as humanly possible, the kinds of unfair practices by selfish minorities which unfortunately did more than anything else to bring about the recent collapse of industries. There is likewise pending before the Congress legislation to provide for the elimination of unnecessary holding companies in the public utility field.
I consider this legislation a positive recovery measure. Power production in this country is virtually back to the 1929 peak. The operating companies in the gas and electric utility field are by and large in good condition. But under holding company domination the utility industry has long been hopelessly at war within itself and with public sentiment. By far the greater part of the general decline in utility securities had occurred before I was inaugurated. The absentee management of unnecessary holding company control has lost touch with and has lost the sympathy of the communities it pretends to serve. Even more significantly, it has given the country as a whole an uneasy apprehension of overconcentrated economic power.
A business that loses the confidence of its customers and the good will of the public cannot long continue to be a good risk for the investor. This legislation will serve the investor by ending the conditions which have caused that lack of confidence and good will. It will put the public utility operating industry on a sound basis for the future, both in its public relations and in its internal relations.
This legislation will not only in the long run result in providing lower electric and gas rates to the consumer, but it will protect the actual value and earning power of properties now owned by thousands of investors who have little protection under the old laws against what used to be called frenzied finance. It will not destroy values.
Not only business recovery, but the general economic recovery of the Nation will be greatly stimulated by the enactment of legislation designed to improve the status of our transportation agencies. There is need for legislation providing for the regulation of interstate transportation by buses and trucks, to regulate transportation by water, new provisions for strengthening our Merchant Marine and air transport, measures for the strengthening of the Interstate Commerce Commission to enable it to carry out a rounded conception of the national transportation system in which the benefits of private ownership are retained, while the public stake in these important services is protected by the public's government.
Finally, the reestablishment of public confidence in the banks of the Nation is one of the most hopeful results of our efforts as a Nation to reestablish public confidence in private banking. We all know that private banking actually exists by virtue of the permission of and regulation by the people as a whole, speaking through their government. Wise public policy, however, requires not only that banking be safe but that its resources be most fully utilized, in the economic life of the country. To this end it was decided more than twenty years ago that the government should assume the responsibility of providing a means by which the credit of the Nation might be controlled, not by a few private banking institutions, but by a body with public prestige and authority. The answer to this demand was the Federal Reserve System. Twenty years of experience with this system have justified the efforts made to create it, but these twenty years have shown by experience definite possibilities for improvement. Certain proposals made to amend the Federal Reserve Act deserve prompt and favorable action by the Congress. They are a minimum of wise readjustment of our Federal Reserve system in the light of past experience and present needs.
These measures I have mentioned are, in large part, the program which under my constitutional duty I have recommended to the Congress. They are essential factors in a rounded program for national recovery. They contemplate the enrichment of our national life by a sound and rational ordering of its various elements and wise provisions for the protection of the weak against the strong. Never since my inauguration in March, 1933, have I felt so unmistakably the atmosphere of recovery. But it is more than the recovery of the material basis of our individual lives. It is the recovery of confidence in our democratic processes and institutions. We have survived all of the arduous burdens and the threatening dangers of a great economic calamity. We have in the darkest moments of our national trials retained our faith in our own ability to master our destiny. Fear is vanishing and confidence is growing on every side, renewed faith in the vast possibilities of human beings to improve their material and spiritual status through the instrumentality of the democratic form of government. That faith is receiving its just reward. For that we can be thankful to the God who watches over America.
What percent of Freepers do you think are on S/S? I’m not yet but my husband is. My guess is that it’s 50%.
So what? I’m 62, went on SS because I want my money back. I don’t want my money going to illegal immigrants, drug addicts, drunks and so called disabled (if they are not). Look at the original SS ACT. It was intended for the person who PAID into it. NOT the children, wives of the workers nor for drug addicts, made-up diseases and it was SUPPOSED to draw interest in each “Insurance policy” which never happened. 50%? Probably more. Guess what? I still work and pay into SS, not because I HAVE to, but I figure if my get the bear’s share of my “investment” what I’m putting in now can go to the dreck.
I'm 61.75 and in a quandry as to whether start taking it at 62 or wait until later. I need to lower my real estate taxes some how though in order to have enough left to live on. I may have to move to a cheaper property tax location.
Are that many freepers that old?
I just can’t bring myself to speculate an answer to that. The motivation for posting was correcting the historical revision, as rewriting history is, imho, criminal.
The idea that aging conservatives are held at metaphorical gunpoint with SS infuriates me and drives me to NEVER draw payola from those that would manipulate me.
I won’t comment on others that rationalize their decision to do so...I have to go to work to support those that are drawing SS and don’t need it and those drawing other ‘benefits’ so they can support the economy with their spending. With the third of my resulting income I have to survive and figure out how to budget my time during the week to manage my personal life.
Ain’t ‘work’ grand? /s
‘Jobs’ is a topic of much deeper discussion.
Interesting table posted at the link here
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3205466/posts
Many new ‘jobs’ are going to foreign workers while the government stifles innovation & job creation under the guise of ‘taxing the rich’. I thought Keynesian economics was thoroughly discredited, yet it continues under progressives, our current government and the Puppet...
“I went looking for the 1933 news on the reality of Social Security before it was passed”
Why on earth would you go to an FDR “fireside chat” for that purpose? As if he was going go tell any more truth than “liberals” and their “memes” (I hate even to write that despicable word). I suppose he could let some things slip, there could be windows into secret purposes, or you could find advocated what no claiming political descent from him would admit. But what you won’t find, ever, is plain reality.
Case in point, they had the gall to call it “insurance,” which to this day people persist in thinking it is, when it is absolutely and obviously not. That was a lie. What SS really is, deep down, is mostly a means of buying votes. Less so, it is about, as usual, expanding power, crowding out private prerogatives, addicting people to the government tit, making people feel as though there’s some connection between what they take from you and what they eventually give back (if anything), etc.
You can’t get your money back. Your money is gone. What you get is other people’s money.
The "analysis" of this issue the government will give you is so simplistic as to be useless, and unfortunately the government line is repeated by many large financial advisors.
Calculation of a "break-even" age must consider the return on investment you receive on your other retirement savings. I did this calculation as I approached 62, several years ago. From memory, If I have savings which I can draw from and my options are SS at 62 vs. drawing the same amount from savings each year until I am 66, the break-even age is late 80s if the return on my savings is 7%, and I will never break even if I can get 8% on my own money.
Since stock market returns average 10-11% in simple index funds, the only reason to delay taking SS even a minute beyond age 62 is if one has very little savings and intends to work until 66.
I took SS at age 62, and have been very pleased with the result. I kept my money in my investments, which I control. If you have a financial advisor, and he suggests anything else, fire him and get someone who understands the time value of money. Similarly, if your financial advisor has your savings allocated to a lot of fixed income investments, your later years will be lean and sparse. Ask him if he understands the concept of "phantom bonds". Essentially the idea that SS and a pension represents streams of income which should be treated as the return on a fixed income investment. This tilts your asset allocation to more equities. If he does not understand this find someone who does.
A Communitarian Ethos
The Groton influence of Endicott Peabody showed in a speech Roosevelt gave at the People's Forum in Troy, NY in 1912. There he declared that western Europeans and Americans had achieved victory in the struggle for "the liberty of the individual," and that the new agenda should be a "struggle for the liberty of the community." The wrong ethos for a new age was, "every man does as he sees fit, even with a due regard to law and order." The new order should be, "march on with civilization in a way satisfactory to the well-being of the great majority of us."
In that speech Roosevelt outlined the philosophical base of what would eventually become the New Deal. He also forecast the rhetorical mode by which "community" could loom over individual liberty. "If we call the method regulation, people hold up their hands in horror and say ‘un-American,' or ‘dangerous,'" Roosevelt pointed out. "But if we call the same identical process co-operation, these same old fogeys will cry out ‘well done'.... cooperation is as good a word for the new theory as any other."
More here.
When I put my money in the bank, they don't write my name on the specific bills I give them, put them in a vault and give me back the exact same bill I put in years ago.
When I pay taxes into SS (a bad deal for most workers by the way) what they give me is a claim against future SS taxes.
While the truth is that they squandered the SS Trust Fund long ago, I still have a valid claim against SS and their current income. Only the government can legally operate a ponzi scheme like this, but they can and do. I also realize that they can change my claim at the whim of Congress, but there are political consequences which resist this.
So, it is as much "my" money as a bank deposit. (As we have seen in Cyprus and other select countries, bank deposits can easily be taken by government.)
“Look at the original SS ACT. It was intended for the person who PAID into it.”
Nonsense. The first recipients didn’t pay into it; how could they? I’ll admit for subsequent generations there was some connection between being taxed and eventually getting paid, theoretically. But they certainly didn’t pay into anything in a strict sense, since there was nothing into which to pay. That only lasted for a few generations at most, by which time even theoretically there stopped being a connection, since everyone agrees, basically, that the fictitious “system” is broke.
What actually happened was the feds tricked people like you into paying them to blow on whatever it is that caught their fancy by pretending as if you paid into some kind of insurance policy/retirement plan, which never existed. They want welfare to seem not like welfare by creating the illusion that you merely get hack what you pay in.
If that were the case why the hell would I have to pay in? I could keep the money, then they wouldn’t have to pay it back. You’re too stupid to run your own life, according to them. But they don’t say that. Instead they get you on board with socialism by the elaborate pretense that you’re getting back your own money. In reality, your money went to someone else and someone else’s money is going to you. This is okay by most of the general public because they’ve been raised to believe in socialism without knowing it.
I hate to say it, but wait for a while until you can get a job for part-time or only pays for 1600 or less. I don’t know what your health condition is but hang in. Get what you paid in.
The first recipients didn’t pay into it; how could they? ... KMA she DID PAY into it. For what she got she rolled the dice and won.
You are the Muzzie lover, right?
This means the projects should be as UN-mechanized as possible. People leaning on shovels instead of using earth-moving machinery. The idea that using manual labor instead of machinery creates jobs goes all the way back to the Roman Empire if not earlier.
as someone has pointed out, using seven workers to do a job that one worker with a machine could do doesn't create seven jobs, it splits a paycheck seven ways.
I am in pretty good health. I still have a full time job working that pays fairly well but the owner manages like Simon Legree would in this day and age. Needless to say it is a dismal place to work.
Sorry, you neither ‘paid in’ nor are you getting ‘your $’
If it WERE your $$, you could get it back whenever YOU wanted, like your banking analogy.
There is NO way to win this war/debate when ‘we’ cannot even get the terms correct. SS is a taxing Ponzi welfare scheme, nothing more, nothing less.
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