Social Security Act of 1935

Social Security Act of 1935

Social Security Act of 1935 established old age insurance for much of the over 60 population. Half of the funds are provided by a payroll tax on workers and half is paid by employers. The act also provided federal unemployment insurance, welfare aid to low-income mothers (later amended to families), funding for individual state assistance to elderly individuals, and various other social insurance provisions.

Cry Wolf Quotes

Do not forget this: such an excessive tax on payrolls is beyond question a tax on employment. In prosperous times it slows down the advance of wages and holds back re-employment. In bad times it increases unemployment, and unemployment breaks wage scales.

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Alf Landon, the 1936 Republican nominee for president.

American Medical Association [AMA] was strongly opposed to any scheme for group practice and to health insurance ... because they are un-American.

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Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association, The New York Times.

Unfortunately, the measure is in some respects ill-considered. It’s constitutionality is by no means certain: if the Federal Government may compel the states to adopt unemployment insurance under the guise of a tax, why may it not similarly compel them to adopt any other sort of legislation

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Editorial, The New York Times.

We are creating an enormous bureaucracy to take care of problem the magnitude and significance of which we really do not understand…. This is a problem so far-reaching, so important, and so long in duration that it should not be as an emergency measure, without the opportunity for review and consideration, so as to minimize the inevitable tinkering that will come.

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Elon H. Hooker, president of the Manufacturing Chemists Association. Senate Finance Committee hearings.