FDR – giving at least some protection to thirty million people.

Click on the link here for audio player: FDR Signs Social Security Act – Aug. 14, 1935

Today marks the seventy-seventh birthday of The Social Security Act.

FDR: “The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure. Young people have come to wonder, what would be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last. This Social Security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions, and through increased services for the protection of children, and the prevention of ill health. We can never insure 100% of the population against 100% of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-stricken old age.”

It came about for a reason. It came about because those who could have done something, didn’t.