 |
|
Harry Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster |
|
ESSAYS ON:
|
Essays on Social Security, |
Targeting Disability In addition to old-age benefits, it is often forgotten that Social Security provides survivor and disability insurance protections as well. The privatization debate has overlooked the fate of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) as a part of the program’s family of benefits. April 2005 The Right Not to
Work: Power and Disability I have a confession to make: I do not work. I am on SSI. I have very little work value (if any), and I am a drain on our country's welfare system. I have another confession to make: I do not think this is wrong, and to be honest, I am very happy not working. Instead I spend the majority of my time doing the activity I find the most rewarding and valuable, painting. March 2004 REVIEW
OF THE MONTH Social Security was the crowning achievement of Roosevelt's New Deal. It has been the most successful and still remains the most popular of all U.S. government programs. More than a pension program, Social Security provides for workers and their families in the case of early death and disability, in addition to retirement. In 1997, it provided about twelve trillion dollars worth of life insurance alone, more than that of the entire private life-insurance industry. Furthermore, it does all of this in the form of social insurance, in which the distribution and the amount of benefits provided are determined by family relationships and basic economic rights—factors that private insurance and pension plans ignore. Nearly one-fifth of the elderly in the United States rely on Social Security as virtually their sole source of income, while two-thirds of all recipients depend on it for at least half of their income. Almost half of all white seniors would be classified as poor without their Social Security benefits; nearly half of all black and Latino elderly depend on it for 90 percent or more of their income (Business Week, June 26, 2000, p. 34). For many years it was drummed into the heads of the working population that their Social Security benefits were sacrosanct; they had paid for them and they were owed them. Beware the politician who attempted to take them away. October 2000 For a thorough historical understanding of the social security crisis, the editors recommend the two essays below: Social Security:
The Phony Crisis In a recent speech, the head of the main government workers union in the United States accused the Reagan administration of “bleeding” the nation in order to finance defense spending and tax breaks for the rich. It is now clear that one cherished national social institution which is scheduled by the Reagan crowd for a major blood-letting is the Social Security System. February 1983 The Struggle to Save
Social Security Jacob Morris has effectively exposed the attack on Social Security for what it is, and he has done this within the framework of the existing system. The underlying assumption is that Social Security must be paid for out of an accounting reserve supported by payroll taxes. Based on this premise, generally accepted by liberals and conservatives alike, the financial integrity of the reserve is taken as equivalent to the integrity of Social Security itself. But the real questions are different. Why use an accounting reserve and why apply the test of financial integrity? No such tests are applied to any other part of the federal budget, surely not to the enormous armaments expenditures. Basically, what is at issue here is not a financial but a social problem. This was spelled out in a recent communication we received from Irving Kaplan, an economist friend of ours who has been a student of the Social Security program from its very inception: February 1983 |
|
All material © copyright by Monthly Review |
