Historians cite four important demographic changes in America in the latter 19th century that rendered the idea of adequate economic security increasingly unworkable:
• The Industrial Revolution
• The urbanization of America
• The disappearance of the "extended" family
• A marked increase in life expectancy
The Industrial Revolution began to morph working class people from self-employed farmers into factory wage earners for large industrial concerns. Also, wage earning made the concept of an income tax more workable than ever before.
For generations, agrarian society had seen prosperity directly linked to their farm labor. Anyone willing to work could usually provide a bare subsistence for themselves and their family but when economic income was primarily dependent on wages, economic security was now threatened by cyclical recessions, layoffs, and businesses failures, the latter a direct criticism of capitalism. The progressives capitalized on these occurrences as Americans began to concentrate in large industrialized cities where the most of the jobs were. In 1890, only 28% of the
…show more content…
So called well intentioned by socialists, who in my opinion had no concept of the dynamic of the free market, designed what is essentially known today as a Ponzi scheme. The Social Security Act was enacted in an atmosphere of nationwide suffering, deprivation and discouragement, and it was not well thought out, as is the case with most socialist utopian schemes. There was the task of setting up vast administrative systems to implement the provisions of the Act to bring its benefits quickly to the millions of people who really needed them. The Act covered a broad spectrum of benefits but none the less all socialistic by design. This did not have to be and this is the core the problem with Social Security today, its