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A Basic Minimum Program of Social Security

THE PURPOSE of a comprehensive program of social security is simple. Basically, it is to enable the working population to maintain economic independence throughout the cycle of family life by distributing the return from labor over the periods in which breadwinners can earn and those in which they cannot; at any one time, contributions made by the many who are subject to the risk are available to compensate the relatively few who at that time are suffering its impact. In addition, there must be systematic measures to assure the subsistence of persons who have not been able to share in social security provisions based on work or who have met with extraordinary individual catastrophes. It is not the aim of social security to provide a lifetime bonus. Social insurance represents, rather, a safeguard against economic hazards besetting the long road of self-support and family support, which is arduous and risky for most in any working generation. Among workers, as among a party of mountain climbers, some at any moment will have a secure foothold, while others, except for the safety rope, would slip to disaster. Some persons in each generation are not able to share in gainful work while some others at any given time will not have acquired an insurance stake commensurate with their individual needs. For these, public assistance, representing the effort of the entire population, provides a secondary safeguard to the maintenance of personal and social integrity. The major functions of a program of social security are therefore to cope with wage losses arising from the interruption or cessation of earnings and to remedy deficiencies in the personal resources of individuals who lack the means of subsistence. Rights to insurance stem from the individual's previous participation in work; rights to assistance, from his current need. Since capacity and opportunity to work are the foundation of both individual and national security, public measures to prevent and care for sickness and to assure access to jobs are essential to organized programs of social security. The existence of opportunities for work is governed, of course, by basic economic factors beyond the scope and control of the social security system. Insurance and assistance payments facilitate the smooth and orderly operation of economic forces by augmenting purchasing power when and where it is most needed. A comprehensive and flexible system of social security thus enables individuals, and aids communities and the Nation …