May 16, 2005

The Social Security bait-and-switch scheme

By Noel Sheppard
As amazing as it might seem in the midst of the current Social Security debate, the first reforms to our national retirement program were actually initiated by its founder, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, less than three years after he signed it into law, and, oddly, before it paid out any benefits.  In fact, an April 28, 1938 letter from FDR to then Social Security Board Chairman Arthur Altmeyer suggests that Roosevelt's original proposal in 1935 was largely what marketing and sales organizations today would refer to as a 'bait and switch': 'I am very anxious that in the press of administrative duties the Social Security Board not lose sight of the necessity of studying ways and means of improving and extending the provisions of the Social Security Act.  I am particularly anxious that the Board give attention to the development of a sound plan for liberalizing the old—age insurance system.  In the development of such a plan I should like to have the Board give...(Read Full Article)