Did you know that Social Security started out as a mandate to buy stock market accounts?

[eridani]

Really, it did. At least according to some revisionist history on DU. 10% of the population was allowed to buy into the tax-funded government option, which gradually turned into a retirement income program for everyone. See, you start out with shit and then you improve it. Works every time.

[Mind_your_head]

1. No, I didn't/don't *know* that.....

Can you provide some history/links ....

(I'm not *doubting*/challenging your assertion*....I'm just asking for substantiation).

[sandnsea]

3. It's sarcasm

Of course, what the OP doesn't tell you in this OP is that all she cares about is letting people 55 and over buy into Medicare so she'll be covered. And yes, she will sell everybody else down the river to get that, she already told me that in a separate thread a few days ago.

[Mind_your_head]

4. I would trust that eridani would reply him/herself.....

why/how could you possibly *interpret* for him/her? That it's :sarcasm:....

Pffft.

[eridani]

5. I actually have quite a few concrete suggestions about the Pelosi bill

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6900771

Given that we are not likely to get single payer, the obvious solution and a generator of 2.6 million jobs, I'd settle for letting anybody buy into Medicare who wants to. Put the $600-$900 billion into more funding for Medicare, not for enabling thieves and murderers to harvest profits from sickness.

[inna]

19. instead Medicare is being CUT by a half a trillion dolars.

[sandnsea]

6. Well clearly social security didn't start out as a mandate

to buy stocks, did it??

:eyes:

[eridani]

7. Then the analogy to SS that people insist on applying to health care reform is wrong

Correct?

[sandnsea]

9. No, because there's more to the health care bill

than just a mandate to buy insurance.

[Teaser]

10. forget it. there's no point arguing with someone who's got religion

.

[eridani]

13. Of course anyone who says "I believe in Y because Famous Person

--believes in Y" has nothing resembling religion.

[eridani]

12. And your reason for not stripping the good parts out as separate legislation is what?

Do you insist on eating poison ivy salad if it has a nice balsamic vinegar dressing on it?

[sandnsea]

15. Because a subsidy IS the good part for many of us n/t

[eridani]

20. The subsidy is a piece of shit for everybody if it can be slashed at any time

And it will be. Do you suppose that we are actually going to meet the legislation's deficit targets with an open checkbook for Iran and Afghanistan?

[Hannah Bell]

2. "revisionist history" is right.

[charlyvi]

8. Wrong.

http://www.socialsecurity.gov/history/briefhistory3.html


Major Provisions Of The Act

The Social Security Act did not quite achieve all the aspirations its supporters had hoped by way of providing a "comprehensive package of protection" against the "hazards and vicissitudes of life." Certain features of that package, notably disability coverage and medical benefits, would have to await future developments. But it did provide a wide range of programs to meet the nation's needs. In addition to the program we know think of as Social Security, it included unemployment insurance, old-age assistance, aid to dependent children and grants to the states to provide various forms of medical care.

(Full text of 1935 Act)

The two major provisions relating to the elderly were Title I- Grants to States for Old-Age Assistance, which supported state welfare programs for the aged, and Title II-Federal Old-Age Benefits. It was Title II that was the new social insurance program we now think of as Social Security. In the original Act benefits were to be paid only to the primary worker when he/she retired at age 65. Benefits were to be based on payroll tax contributions that the worker made during his/her working life. Taxes would first be collected in 1937 and monthly benefits would begin in 1942. (Under amendments passed in 1939, payments were advanced to 1940.)

The significance of the new social insurance program was that it sought to address the long-range problem of economic security for the aged through a contributory system in which the workers themselves contributed to their own future retirement benefit by making regular payments into a joint fund. It was thus distinct from the welfare benefits provided under Title I of the Act and from the various state "old-age pensions." As President Roosevelt conceived of the Act, Title I was to be a temporary "relief" program that would eventually disappear as more people were able to obtain retirement income through the contributory system. The new social insurance system was also a very moderate alternative to the radical calls to action that were so common in the America of the 1930s.

[eridani]

11. Can you say "reductio ad absurdum" boys and girls?

I knew you could. If you don't check into DU often, you might not realize that many are saying that the establishment of SS is exactly parallel to proposed health care legislation. Both started small and can be improved, supposedly. I'm trying here to point out how that analogy fails badly.

[KG]

14. the notion that the piss of the proposed HCR will be transfomed to wine later is ridiculous

[eridani]

17. Take the piss out and make the useful parts into other bills n/t

[AllentownJake]

16. Did you know that Herbert Hoover was the first person to propose it

He wanted a government pension of $50 a month for senior citizens. It got shot down.

Of course $50 in 1930 is more close to $700 now.

[eridani]

18. I've read that he had a number of other useful ideas

His own commitment to a balanced budget shot a lot of them down.