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During the worst depression the United States has ever experienced, the poor and unemployed took to the streets.  Councils of the unemployed formed in many cities and crowds of neighbors would sometimes block marshals trying to evict tenants who could not pay their rent. The social unrest of the Depression triggered the passage of the Social Security Act. Before the Social Security Act was established, the Townsend movement proposed a pension scheme where everyone over the age of 60 would receive $200 a month on the condition that they spent it immediately. During this time, the reluctance of the federal government to address the failures of the private sector was called into question (Blau, 2014).

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Social Security is based on the earnings on which you pay while you are working. The higher your earnings (up to $128,400), the higher the benefit.

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Definition Social Welfare Policies... in general

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Definition Social Welfare Policies... in general

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This is a policy within the government political setting... the study of social services. This policy consists of guidelines, principles, legislature, and activities that affect the living conditions conducive to human welfare, such as a person's quality of life. Social Welfare policy puts the "social" in social work. More broadly, the Social Welfare Policy helps to define the type of society we live in.

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Social Security is the largest social program. It is funded through payroll taxes which total 15.3% of the employees salary. The Employer contributes 6.2% of the employees salary. The employee also matches that contribution. Another tax is 1.45% payroll tax towards medicare.
Current taxes/deductions are being utilized to pay those receiving benefits. Therefore, those currently contributing can only hope that when it is their time to receive benefits, there are enough contributions to support the program. (Blau, 2014)

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Welfare programs defuse political antipathy among recipients while offering non recipients a suitable target for their anger. Social insurance programs build political loyalties. These programs, such as social security, serve a dual function: they give just enough to poor people to undercut political organizing, and at the same time, they offer a wealth of opportunities for scapegoating. Welfare programs group recipients and set them up as the legitimate targets of other people's anger. Because the recipients in these programs are usually weak and vulnerable, those who are not in the program can attack them with impunity. Thus, some individuals are likely to express anger against them instead of at other, more powerful people. In grouping recipients together in one program, authorities both defuse the recipient's anger and create a safety valve for the discontent of non recipients that might otherwise be expressed in more politically threatening ways. Due to the elderly being a key voting bloc and social security being a critical issue, presidential candidates stress what they will do to maintain the program's integrity. Candidates who succeed in this task gain the elderly's allegiance, and in this allegiance, in turn, can help to catapult them to the presidency (Blau, 2014).

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Ideology justifies the principle of less eligibility. This ideological perspective views the only reason to work is to avoid a lower standard of living.
The ideological function of income support programs such as Social Security retirement is to enforce work norms.
Income support programs distinguish between the worthy and unworthy poor. They help to mark the unworthy poor for easy scapegoating.
Enforcement of the family ethic is one of income support's most important ideological functions.
According to family ethic, poor women who try to live independently must be worse off than those who work. They belong to the group known as the unworthy poor and need help making changes in their character (Blau, 2014).

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The Social Security Act was enacted during the Depression of the 1930s. For about 40 years prior to the Depression, workers campaigned for assistance programs including social insurance for the retired elderly, but the political and economic elites rejected their demands until the Depression. The Social Security Act included unemployment benefits, public assistance, and social insurance for the retired. But at the time, the Social Security Act redistributed money downward, often bowed before states' rights even when those states practiced segregation, and further sharpened the distinctions between the worthy and unworthy poor (Blau, 2014).

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Through the mid-1970s, there was a steady pattern of growth for Social Security retirement. The small changes that added to the growth of the program demonstrated two things: a sense that the government is the only collectivity that can compensate for the failings of the market, and that responsibility for addressing these failings should be vested in the federal government whenever our political and economic institutions allow (Blau, 2014)