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President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Business Failure

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In life not many things are guaranteed with the exception of living and dying. During the time between birth and death Americans are faced with many uncertainties. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said while signing the social security act that “The civilization of the past hundred years, with is startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure” (Presidential Statement). The industrial revolution brought about a change in the work force, the majority who were self-employed had now become wage earners in industry, while chasing jobs they moved from rural areas to big cities. These changes also took away the individual’s ability to control their own financial destiny due to outside factors such as; business failure, …show more content…

In June of 1934 he began his march towards achieving this goal by creating the Committee on Economic Security (CES), he tasked five high level cabinet officials to study economic insecurity and suggest ways to improve it (ssa history). Six months later the committee had completed the analysis and the President was ready to take action. Some of the recommendations in the report included providing disability coverage, medical benefits, unemployment insurance and old age assistance. When the president presented this report to both the Senate and the House of Representatives the deliberations began. In the end concessions were made and the provisions originally included for disability and medical benefits had been removed. On August 14, 1935 the Social Security Act was signed into law providing unemployment insurance and old age assistance. Even though it was now law, the ways developed to provide the funds for these programs was under close …show more content…

Many realized that they would be borrowing from younger employees’ payments to pay the older generations thus creating a deficit that would continue to grow. If something was not done this would someday require money from the general revenues to continue this program. In the eyes of politicians, the way to fix the problem was to exclude categories from coverage such as farm labors, servants and establishments with fewer than ten employees (kennedy). A perfect example of what the President meant when he said he could not protect one hundred percent of the population against all that life may throw at them (ssa history). The passing of this proposal was propelled by fear of the system being too large and confusion on whether social legislation by the federal government was the right thing to do (david kennedy). President Roosevelt had confidence now that protection was in place to prevent future administrations from going into to debt to provide for the needy (Roosevelt signing act). The reserve funds for this program also ensured some other important

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