An Analysis Of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Social Security Act

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When President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law on Aug. 14, 1935, only a relative handful of citizens were covered by private pension funds. If you weren't wealthy, or didn't have an extended family with means, there was no place that you or your family could turn to if you were in economic distress, except charity. Most Americans faced a future full of economic hardship and uncertainty, and a "poverty-ridden old age," to use FDR's apt

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