Crazy Guggenheim
11-08-2007, 02:09 AM
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By ROBIN TONER
BY 1934, it was not hard to make the case for Social Security. The Great Depression had devastated employment, pensions, the stock market and savings. Many older Americans, and their beleaguered children with families of their own, found themselves suddenly and shockingly in economic freefall.
''A great calamity has come upon us, and seemingly no cause of our own,'' declared a 69-year-old architect, one of millions of Americans who wrote to President and Mrs. Roosevelt, pleading for help. ''It has swept away what little savings we had accumulated and we are left in a condition that is impossible for us to correct.''
As Congress begins a debate over the future of Social Security -- whether to allow Americans to put some of their Social Security taxes in private investment accounts -- the relevance of this history will be a matter of fierce dispute.
Isn't it time, many Republicans argue, to reinvent a Depression-era program for a more financially savvy generation that trusts, rather than fears, the market? Or, as Democrats assert, are Republicans ignoring a cautionary history that highlights the value of a guaranteed government benefit?
Even in 1934, historians say, it was not easy to resolve the political tensions over what an individual could and should accomplish on his own, and what Americans could do better together.
Roosevelt, his labor secretary, Frances Perkins, and the other architects of Social Security tried to construct a peculiarly American form of social insurance, one that recognized the strain of rugged individualism that runs deep in the national psyche.
Roosevelt insisted that the new program not look like a dole, his aides later explained; rather, it should resemble a private insurance plan, tied to an individual's contributions in their working years. ''You want to make it simple, very simple,'' Roosevelt told his aides, Perkins later wrote in a memoir. ''Just simple and natural nothing elaborate or alarming about it.'' Along the way, the New Dealers set aside the idea of adding national health insurance to the package, assuming that it would come later. (It never did.)
Even so, Perkins wrote that when she went before Congress to present the plan, Senator Thomas Pryor Gore of Oklahoma had a pointed question.
'''Isn't this socialism?' he asked me. My reply was, 'Oh, no.' Then, smiling, leaning forward and talking to me as though I were a child, he said, 'Isn't this a teeny-weeny bit of socialism?'''
David M. Kennedy, the Stanford historian and author of ''Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War,'' said that he found it paradoxical that the current debate over Social Security ''is being couched in terms of individual ownership and privatization of the system, when those kinds of ideas deeply informed the way the original Social Security system was put together.''
In fact, while the movement for social insurance and old-age pensions had been building for years, it took a depression to overcome resistance to it. ''It's not an accident that only in the context of that protracted trauma did we get such a departure from our notion of laissez-faire, rugged individualism,'' Mr. Kennedy said.
The trauma for the elderly of that era can hardly be overstated. As W. Andrew Achenbaum, a historian at the University of Houston, put it, ''The Depression destroyed every mechanism that had existed for covering the vicissitudes of old-age dependency.''
Before the creation of Social Security, some Americans had private or state pensions, but most supported themselves into old age by working. The 1930 census, for example, found 58 percent of men over 65 still in the workforce; in contrast, by 2002, the figure was 18 percent.
The elderly also relied heavily on their families. ''Children, friends and relatives have borne and still carry the major cost of supporting the aged,'' the Committee on Economic Security, the Roosevelt administration panel that developed Social Security, reported in 1935. ''Several of the state surveys have disclosed that from 30 to 50 percent of the people over 65 years of age were being supported in this way.''
The Depression swept this world away. Many of the elderly could no longer find work. Those who had been lucky enough to have a pension or some savings saw them disappear. And many who relied on their children saw them buckle under the strain.
''I am in no position to do the right thing for my mother,'' one woman wrote to Roosevelt. ''I thought as long as I lived there was no need to worry about her being taken care of, but I never dreamed of a depression like we have had.''
Robert S. McElvaine, a historian at Millsaps College, reviewed 15,000 letters sent to the Roosevelts for his book, ''Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters From the Forgotten Man.'' He said that many who wrote to the Roosevelts asked for a loan, not a handout.
A 72-year-old man wrote, ''I have worked hard all my life, and bad luck has overtaken me in my old days, and I wanted to see if you could help me get a little relief, so I can get me a team and to make a crop this next year.'' He added, ''You know that I need it or I would not ask for it.''
Roosevelt sent his Social Security plan, which included unemployment insurance, to Congress in January 1935, and by August he was able to sign it into law. Some New Dealers chafed at its limits, but the law was widely seen as a moderate alternative to the more radical proposals -- like a guaranteed minimum income for the elderly -- that were stirring then from the grassroots.
''We can never insure 100 percent of the population against 100 percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life,'' Roosevelt declared. ''But we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.''
Today, opponents of partially privatizing Social Security say the guaranteed benefits of a traditional social insurance program are still the best way to protect against the hazards and vicissitudes of life, that the balance struck by Roosevelt and the New Dealers, in short, was just right.
But advocates of private accounts argue that it is time to think anew, just as Roosevelt did.
''We are all children of F.D.R.,'' Representative Bill Thomas, the conservative Republican who heads the House Ways and Means Committee, declared last week, underscoring, perhaps unwittingly, the great pragmatist's enduring triumph.
By ROBIN TONER
BY 1934, it was not hard to make the case for Social Security. The Great Depression had devastated employment, pensions, the stock market and savings. Many older Americans, and their beleaguered children with families of their own, found themselves suddenly and shockingly in economic freefall.
''A great calamity has come upon us, and seemingly no cause of our own,'' declared a 69-year-old architect, one of millions of Americans who wrote to President and Mrs. Roosevelt, pleading for help. ''It has swept away what little savings we had accumulated and we are left in a condition that is impossible for us to correct.''
As Congress begins a debate over the future of Social Security -- whether to allow Americans to put some of their Social Security taxes in private investment accounts -- the relevance of this history will be a matter of fierce dispute.
Isn't it time, many Republicans argue, to reinvent a Depression-era program for a more financially savvy generation that trusts, rather than fears, the market? Or, as Democrats assert, are Republicans ignoring a cautionary history that highlights the value of a guaranteed government benefit?
Even in 1934, historians say, it was not easy to resolve the political tensions over what an individual could and should accomplish on his own, and what Americans could do better together.
Roosevelt, his labor secretary, Frances Perkins, and the other architects of Social Security tried to construct a peculiarly American form of social insurance, one that recognized the strain of rugged individualism that runs deep in the national psyche.
Roosevelt insisted that the new program not look like a dole, his aides later explained; rather, it should resemble a private insurance plan, tied to an individual's contributions in their working years. ''You want to make it simple, very simple,'' Roosevelt told his aides, Perkins later wrote in a memoir. ''Just simple and natural nothing elaborate or alarming about it.'' Along the way, the New Dealers set aside the idea of adding national health insurance to the package, assuming that it would come later. (It never did.)
Even so, Perkins wrote that when she went before Congress to present the plan, Senator Thomas Pryor Gore of Oklahoma had a pointed question.
'''Isn't this socialism?' he asked me. My reply was, 'Oh, no.' Then, smiling, leaning forward and talking to me as though I were a child, he said, 'Isn't this a teeny-weeny bit of socialism?'''
David M. Kennedy, the Stanford historian and author of ''Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War,'' said that he found it paradoxical that the current debate over Social Security ''is being couched in terms of individual ownership and privatization of the system, when those kinds of ideas deeply informed the way the original Social Security system was put together.''
In fact, while the movement for social insurance and old-age pensions had been building for years, it took a depression to overcome resistance to it. ''It's not an accident that only in the context of that protracted trauma did we get such a departure from our notion of laissez-faire, rugged individualism,'' Mr. Kennedy said.
The trauma for the elderly of that era can hardly be overstated. As W. Andrew Achenbaum, a historian at the University of Houston, put it, ''The Depression destroyed every mechanism that had existed for covering the vicissitudes of old-age dependency.''
Before the creation of Social Security, some Americans had private or state pensions, but most supported themselves into old age by working. The 1930 census, for example, found 58 percent of men over 65 still in the workforce; in contrast, by 2002, the figure was 18 percent.
The elderly also relied heavily on their families. ''Children, friends and relatives have borne and still carry the major cost of supporting the aged,'' the Committee on Economic Security, the Roosevelt administration panel that developed Social Security, reported in 1935. ''Several of the state surveys have disclosed that from 30 to 50 percent of the people over 65 years of age were being supported in this way.''
The Depression swept this world away. Many of the elderly could no longer find work. Those who had been lucky enough to have a pension or some savings saw them disappear. And many who relied on their children saw them buckle under the strain.
''I am in no position to do the right thing for my mother,'' one woman wrote to Roosevelt. ''I thought as long as I lived there was no need to worry about her being taken care of, but I never dreamed of a depression like we have had.''
Robert S. McElvaine, a historian at Millsaps College, reviewed 15,000 letters sent to the Roosevelts for his book, ''Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters From the Forgotten Man.'' He said that many who wrote to the Roosevelts asked for a loan, not a handout.
A 72-year-old man wrote, ''I have worked hard all my life, and bad luck has overtaken me in my old days, and I wanted to see if you could help me get a little relief, so I can get me a team and to make a crop this next year.'' He added, ''You know that I need it or I would not ask for it.''
Roosevelt sent his Social Security plan, which included unemployment insurance, to Congress in January 1935, and by August he was able to sign it into law. Some New Dealers chafed at its limits, but the law was widely seen as a moderate alternative to the more radical proposals -- like a guaranteed minimum income for the elderly -- that were stirring then from the grassroots.
''We can never insure 100 percent of the population against 100 percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life,'' Roosevelt declared. ''But we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.''
Today, opponents of partially privatizing Social Security say the guaranteed benefits of a traditional social insurance program are still the best way to protect against the hazards and vicissitudes of life, that the balance struck by Roosevelt and the New Dealers, in short, was just right.
But advocates of private accounts argue that it is time to think anew, just as Roosevelt did.
''We are all children of F.D.R.,'' Representative Bill Thomas, the conservative Republican who heads the House Ways and Means Committee, declared last week, underscoring, perhaps unwittingly, the great pragmatist's enduring triumph.