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Social Security: Time for Change? Essays

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For the past 78 years, one governmental system’s benefits have been essential to the nation’s elderly and disabled individuals. This system itself has focused on providing benefits to every American when they reach the age of 65, or earlier than the age of 65 if they preferred to receive smaller amounts of benefits per year (Social Security Administration). The system, at the same time, has taxed citizens and companies to levy this distribution of benefits. This system may seem to be a great idea; however, the trust fund has been ever decreasing with no end of this decrease in sight (Economist Briefing). This system –Social Security – is in grave danger of running out of funds and needs to be reformed immediately.
President Franklin D. …show more content…

Before the Social Security Act, Americans had believed in laissez-faire economics and that in their capitalistic economy, winners deserved their rewards and losers needed to fend for themselves. The Social Security Act spun the schema of social responsibility 180 degrees; the federal and state governments now cared for the underprivileged and handicapped. Citizens were expected to contribute to this care for the underprivileged and handicapped through their yearly tax “contributions.”
While the Social Security Act helped encourage a greater amount of care for underprivileged people, it simultaneously took a massive toll on the economy. In New Deal or Raw Deal?, author and economic historian Burton Folsom claims Roosevelt’s Social Security plan created many problems. Folsom points out that the Social Security Act retarded recovery from the Great Depression by contributing to unemployment as well as being financially unsound, as workers had to reach age sixty-two to receive benefits, while the average life expectancy at the time was only 60 years (Folsom 188). Employed workers were required to contribute a specific amount of money from their paycheck each month for thirty years while the average American never received any of the money that they had contributed returned to them. This system did not only discriminate against individuals that died before the age of 62, but since the average life

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