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Social Security And Utilitarianism

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Social Security is a government system that gives financial assistance to individuals who have low income, or none. In the United States, the Social Security Act was signed into office by Franklin Roosevelt in 1935. In addition to those who have inadequate or no income, the act also allows individuals who are retired, disabled, or unemployed to collect benefits as well. There are more than 60 million people in the United States alone that collect social security, and we are lagging relative to other countries as is. The allocation of social security across America is done through the government. Everybody pays a certain amount of money to the government through taxes that is then redistributed to them when they retire, file for a disability, …show more content…

Utilitarianism holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong in proportion that they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. Happiness is defined by pleasure and the absence of pain, and unhappiness is defined by pain and the lack of pleasure (Mill, 5). Pleasure and the lack of unhappiness are the only two aspects that are desirable as ends and inherently good. A significance in Mill’s definition of utilitarianism is what it is not. It is not psychologically measurable on a same scale but has different qualities and that those with more experience can determine what pleasures are higher than others. There is ultimately a sanction that make us as individuals feel like we should be held accountable if we break the philosophy. The inherent accountability could be applied to many other moral philosophies, and there are both internal and external sanctions. External sanctions come from other people through various means such as disapproval. There are also internal sanctions that come from our own mind such as feeling remorse for violating an obligation. Both the external and internal sanctions can affect our actions, but our internal sanctions are more powerful (Mill, 19-20). Utilitarianism, as explained by James Rachels, proves an important lesson in that the rightness of actions are considerations having to do with the future. Due to utilitarianisms exclusive concern with consequences, it has us restrict our attention to what would happen because of our actions (Rachels, 108). These ideas and perspectives on utilitarianism will serve a great purpose as to how privatizing social security serves to be immoral. If we are to privatize security, not only would we increase pain and suffering, but these actions that we make would carry on through the future by creating the pain and suffering for those who highly depend on and benefit from

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