Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Social security comes of age
- 1 Social security: the early years
- 2 Social security matures, 1940–1972
- 3 The mid-life crisis of American social security
- 4 Social security gets a new lease on life
- Part II Current social security issues in historical perspective
- Notes
- Index
3 - The mid-life crisis of American social security
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Social security comes of age
- 1 Social security: the early years
- 2 Social security matures, 1940–1972
- 3 The mid-life crisis of American social security
- 4 Social security gets a new lease on life
- Part II Current social security issues in historical perspective
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Most commentators were convinced that the social security changes enacted in 1972 made sense. Edwin Dale, writing for the New York Times, was
persuaded that Social Security at the worst is not a bad deal, and is safe, even for the young worker with 40 years of paycheck deductions ahead of him. It is not a bad deal, either, for the doctors and salesmen and other self-employed who tend to do the most squawking. Unless the world blows up, or the country goes bankrupt, it is highly likely that current workers will get back from Social Security more than they paid in if they live only a few years past their retirement age, and a great deal more if they live a long life.
Because it was unlikely that the world would blow up or that the government would ever stop writing checks, social security looked like a good bet.
In one form or another, social insurance had become central to the political economy by 1972. It absorbed an increasing share of workers' earnings and constituted an ever larger percentage of federal expenditures. As long as prosperity lasted, social security's scope expanded. Policymakers justified new programs and increased benefits by citing precedents in the private sector and in other branches of government. Critics later charged that this was a shortsighted policy, one that neglected the inherent limits of what could be done.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Social SecurityVisions and Revisions: A Twentieth Century Fund Study, pp. 61 - 80Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986