Social Security Policy Analysis

Few federal programs are as popular as Social Security (Desilver, 2015). In 2014, around 165 million people paid into the program while over 59 million Americans received almost $870 billion in retirement, disability, or survivors’ benefits from Social Security (Basic, 2015). While it may seem as though it has been around as long as the country itself, Social Security didn’t begin until 1935, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the act into law and assigned permanent responsibility to the federal government for assisting people in need and helped to “change the economic and social structure of American life” (Berg, 1985).
Only eighty years ago, in the middle of the Great Depression, the Social Security Act of 1935 created a federal
And yet in 1935, the President’s foresight produced a bill for future generations that would “flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation,” while taking care of human needs and the U.S. economy, alike (Statement, 2014). During his forward-looking speech at the White House bill-signing ceremony for Social Security Franklin Roosevelt prophesized, “…we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen…against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age…in a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions, to act as a protection to future Administrations…” (Statement,
As industrialization forced modernization onto the nation, industry, politicians, government, and workers alike seemed unable to adopt corresponding modern values and viewpoints such as living in a collective society and creating programs for the greater good. Their failure to update social and political policies—analogous to the pace of industrial change—found Americans unprepared and in turmoil when the economy plunged toward ruin after the crash. (Atkinson,