Social Security Reform
Social Security ReformThe year is 1935, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is sitting down to add another item to the new deal to try to spark the recovering economy of United States. F.D.R is creating a way to spread the wealth of the nation over the entire population. He creates the Social Security program, which takes pay out of workers’ checks and pays it out to the elderly to create a means of income after retirement. This is to be paid to citizens for the rest of their lives. The system works great in theory. This system, however, will fail if certain conditions exist. For the current system to function correctly everyone must live to roughly the same age; the average life span can not change rapidly, or sporadically over a large period of time. In addition, the size of population must change in correlation with the average life span. If the population does not grow consistently, this will create
disturbances in the payments and financing of the Social Security program. If this problem is not corrected in the near future, the bulk of the United States will suffer the repercussions of a poorly financed government system.
As the end of World War II approaches, the United States is experiencing the largest birth rate in history (Knutson). These babies were even dubbed “baby boomer” because for the size of the new generation, and their rapid births. As the demographics of the citizens in the United States continue to change, we grow increasingly needy of a Social Security reform. When the Social Security program was kicked off in 1935, the average life span was 61 years (Bettelheim 870). That implies more than half the population was no expected to receive any payments for Social Security, which started at age 65. In the next few years, the average life span can be expected to approach 80. This means that within the next few years, every working citizen will receive an average of fifteen years of Social Security support. The growth trends of the population is also changing and creating a relatively large percentage of the population collecting Social Security, and a relatively small percentage of the population supporting them. Congress has been searching for ways to solve the Social Security problem, but there clearly is no easy way to change the Social Security program and keep everyone happy.
If this problem is not corrected within the next few years, people of all ages and demographic situations will see the effects in some way. People currently receiving Social Security compensation will generally notice a decrease in payments, especially as they continue to depend on a tapped system. Workers of all ages will also see the problems due to the fact that they will have more and more of their gross pay deducted to contribute to the support of...
To view the complete essay, you be registered.