The beginning of the 20th century was a very hard time for America and its citizens. After the Industrial Revolution and the Great War came the Great Depression. The economy was crashing, and crashing fast; the stock market crashed twice in one week, thousands of people were laid off, and businesses went bankrupt. These were definitely the hardest of times and the people were looking for help. On June 8, 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces to congress that he intended to provide a program for Social Security. He created the Committee on Economic Security to study the entire problem of the economy and to provide any recommendations that would help congress make a legislative consideration. In early January 1935, the committee gave the report to Roosevelt and on January 17 he presented it to congress. On August 14, 1935 the Social Security Act was pass into law by President Roosevelt. The act was to help people in need of general welfare and pay retired workers age 65 or older a continuing income after retirement. The program later change to include unemployment insurance, old-age assistance, aid to dependant children, and gra

What can we do about the current Social Security program? Obviously there are problems with it. Should America abolish the program all together? No way, that would leave a lot of people homeless, poor, in need of medical care, etc. What America needs is an option to Social Security? Surveys have show that most people believe that there is a problem with Social Security and most agree the only why to fix it is to give people the option to privatize the retirement portion of Social Security. Privatizing Social Security works and there are countries already moving in this direction. These countries include most of Europe and South America. Chile was the first to suggest this and most financial gurus laughed them at. Now Chile's retirees are one of the most financially stable in the world.

Another country that has recognized the need to fix Social Security is France. In the article by Alexander Dorozynski "French Plan to Bail Out Social Security System" he discusses that the French are attempting to rescue the failing Social Security program system. They are planing to tax the middle and upper class families. The families will have to pay higher contributions in to the system and their savings accounts, insurance, and capital gains will be taxed in order to receive more revenues from Social Security. If the United States is not careful this could happen and Americans will not tolerate this (763).

Church, George J. "Robin Hood in Reverse" Time 150.7 (1997) 24+. CD-ROM. EBSCOhost: Academic Search FT Select - Disc 1. 1997.

Kotlikoff, Laurence J. "It's High Time to Privatize". Brookins Review 15.3 (1997) 16+. CD-ROM. EBSCOhost: Academic Search FT Select - Disc 1. 1997.

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Approximate Word count = 3450
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page double spaced)