The Form and nature of the old-age insurance plan, is very questionable; the whole matter should have received careful study by an expert commission. It would mean an added tax burden equal to nearly half of the existing total Federal tax burden.
The Social Security Bill will add 6 percent to the labor cost of doing business. No one with the slightest familiarity with economic principals can believe that the total cost of this will be born solely by employers; it must be shared by labor and consumers.
There is no such thing, biologically, socially or economically, as absolute security; but the greatest security comes from within the individual rather than from without and the Thames unduly to ensure, will so weaken the individual and cannot adapt circumstances and environment to himself, or himself to his surroundings.
If the provisions of the bill now pending should be adopted, the country should realize that within a decade there will be a tax burden amounting to as much as $1 billion.
In other countries, the problem is handled by taking the necessary sum each year from the current taxes. Otherwise the load would get so big as to be a menace. On the other hand, if industry is burdened with too heavy taxes, the result may be more unemployment in the future, killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
So-called social security [will] mean industrial in-security.
This bill opens the door and invites the entrance into the political field of a power so vast, so powerful as to threaten the integrity of our institutions and to pull the pillars of the temple down upon the heads of our descendants.
[Social Security will ] impose a crushing burden on industry and labor [and] establish a bureaucracy in the field of insurance in competition with private business.
The lash of the dictator will be felt and 25 million free Americans will for the first time submit themselves to a finger print test.
Never in the history of the world has any measure been brought in here so insidiously designed so as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers, and to prevent any possibility of the employers providing work for the people.