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This program impacted California by creating different buildings that still stand today. For example, the WPA constructed the San Francisco bridge, libraries, and schools that are still standing in California. This program was created to help make new jobs for unemployed people, the jobs that they were provided with were mainly labor based. From the WPA California was able to get many new buildings at the time.

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This act was eventually signed into a law by FDR. Social Security served for multiple reasons such as unemployment, child welfare, public welfare etc. This act also provided some relief for retirement however there were still things that needed to be worked out from it. This act was one of the more effective poverty prevention programs. This act affects me because, it provides me with financial protection now and in the future for when I retire.

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President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law on August 14, 1935. The law was wide-ranging. While most Americans know Social Security for its old-age pension system, the act also addressed unemployment benefits, aid to dependent children, maternal and child welfare, public health services, and aid to the blind [1]. It launched what would be called 'the welfare state' or 'the social safety net' of the postwar era.

The social security idea had been gestating in Europe, starting with the pension system of Bismarck's Germany and many countries had introduced old age benefits before the United States. Social security in America had some precedent in veterans' benefits and state welfare payments, but there was no systematic provision for retirement, unemployment or disability [2]. As a result, the poverty rate among senior citizens was extremely high and a huge burden on state welfare funds. So President Roosevelt created the Committee on Economic Security in 1934 to study the problem and make recommendations.

Frances Perkins and Harry Hopkins led the committee's efforts and recommended a universal social insurance type program, with everyone paying in and everyone equally eligible for benefits. They even went so far as to suggest, "...the provision of public employment for those able-bodied workers whom industry cannot employ at a given time. Public work programs...may be needed in normal times...to help meet the problems of stranded communities and overmanned or declining industries" [3]. In the end, the Social Security Act emerged from Congress with compromises on several fronts, including the absence of employment assurance, disability benefits and health insurance (disability and health provisions would be added decades later). A major restriction was that funding came from a (regressive) tax on employers and employees, rather than (progressive) income taxes.

Nevertheless, the Social Security Act was a watershed in American life. As FDR declared:

"The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure. Young people have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last...This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens....[We] have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age...It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness" [4].

The Social Security Act is the most effective poverty mitigation program in the United States. "Prior to Social Security, the elderly routinely faced the prospect of poverty upon retirement. For the most part, that fear has now dissipated" [5]. As of 2009, over 52 million Americans were receiving some type of Social Security benefit [6]. Unfortunately, despite its effectiveness and popularity, Social Security has repeatedly been questioned by conservative forces that seek to cut benefits on the false argument that the Social Security Trust Fund is going bankrupt (it is not). Wall Street financiers have long wished to privatize the system, promising higher returns if the funds were invested in capital markets [7]. This argument, too, is bogus, as proven by the massive losses suffered by private retirement funds in the market crises of 2000 and 2008.

Sources: (1) "1935 Social Security Act," Social Security Administration, http://www.ssa.gov/history/35actinx.html, accessed May 11, 2015. (2) Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. (3) "Report of the Committee on Economic Security," Social Security Administration, http://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/ces/ces5.html, accessed May 11, 2015. On the roles of Perkins and Hopkins, see Kirstin Downey, The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience, New York: Nan Talese (Doubleday), 2009; June Hopkins, Harry Hopkins: Sudden Hero, Brash Reformer; A Biography of the Man Who Started the Welfare System, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999, pp. 183-186. (4) "Statement on Signing the Social Security Act," The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=14916, accessed May 11, 2015. (5) "Social Security Act (1935)," Our Documents, http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=68, accessed May 11, 2015. (6) "Annual Statistical Supplement, 2010," Table 5.A4, Social Security Administration, http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supplement/2010/5a.html#table5.a4, accessed May 11, 2015. (7) See, e.g., "Peter Peterson Spent Nearly Half A Billion In Washington Targeting Social Security, Medicare," Huffington Post, May 15, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/15/peter-peterson-foundation-half-billion-social-security-cuts_n_1517805.html.

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Social Security Act (1935) - Living New Deal

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" Back to Glossary IndexPresident Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law on August 14, 1935. The law was wide-ranging. While most Americans know Social Security for its old-age pension system, the act also addressed unemployment benefits, aid to... read more

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This program helped install music programs within schools. It was created in 1935 and, was mainly created to help employ musicians. These programs helped make events as well, such as orchestras, musicals, and festivals. The FMP was later renamed "WPA Music Program" in Jun 1939. This act affects me because, I remember taking music classes in elementary school and before this program was enabled music teachers were not as common. From those music classes I eventually learned how to play music on my own and now is my hobby.

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Developed in July and August of 1935, the Federal Music Project (FMP) became one of five programs under Federal Project Number One (itself part of the Works Progress Administration, or WPA). FMP was created to "employ professional musicians registered on the relief rolls...as instrumentalists, singers, concert performers, and music teachers" [1].

FMP "musical units" performed symphony orchestras, small orchestral ensembles, string quartets, chamber music, grand opera, light opera, vocal ensembles, vocal solos, dance orchestras, and theater orchestras. Venues included festivals, community centers, theatres, and military installations [2]. Nikolai Sokoloff, who had been the director of the Cleveland Symphony [3], was named head of the FMP and steered the project towards a heavy concentration of classical music [4].

Other projects of the FMP included: an Index of American Composers (not completed, but 20,000 entries were deposited into the Library of Congress); music education, including music at "public schools that did not provide regular music instruction for their pupils"; music copying and music libraries (which were ultimately incorporated into public and university libraries); radio programs; and music laboratories, which "consisted of the performance of a program by one or more contemporary musicians, preferably young musicians in need of a public hearing, who afterward took the platform, explained their musical purposes and views, and replied to questions by the audience" [5].

When Federal Project Number One was terminated in June of 1939, the FMP was renamed "WPA Music Program" [6]. From this point on it was no longer a nationwide program sponsored solely by the WPA. Music projects would now require local sponsors to contribute funding, just as they did with other WPA projects (roadwork, school construction, city park improvements, etc.). Many did, and WPA music projects were enjoyed for the remainder of the program (until 1943). For example, during January 1942, 2.4 million Americans attended WPA music performances across the nation [7].

The FMP and WPA Music Program employed thousands of jobless musicians and brought music to millions of enthusiastic listeners. Ordinary Americans were able to attend symphonies for the first time, receive music instruction in school, and even given opportunities to perform themselves, all at low or no cost. Professional musicians in the program had their skills preserved and enhanced, allowing them to continue their careers. Several major orchestras were saved from collapse under the financial stress of the Great Depression. In fact, several orchestras today can trace their origins to the WPA; for example, the Utah Symphony reports that their orchestra "was created as a WPA orchestra under Roosevelt's New Deal..." [8].

Sources: (1) "Federal Music Project," Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/newdeal/fmp.html, accessed June 8, 2015. (2) Federal Works Agency, Final Report on the WPA Program, 1935-43, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946, pp. 63-64. (3) Sheila D. Collins and Naomi Rosenblum, "The Democratization of Culture: The Legacy of the New Deal Arts Programs." In Sheila D. Collins and Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg (Ed.), When Government Helped: Learning from the Successes and Failures of the New Deal, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 217. (4) Nick Taylor, American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA; When FDR Put the Nation Back to Work, New York: Bantam Books, 2008 (p. 249, 2009 paperback edition). (5) See note 2 and, with respect to the "20,000" statistic, "Librarian MacLeish and the Library of Congress Project," Library of Congress, https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fedtp/ftcole03.html, accessed June 8, 2015. (6) See, e.g., Leta E. Miller, Music and Politics in San Francisco: From the 1906 Quake to the Second World War, University of California Press, 2011, p. 216, and "Federal Music Project," Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/newdeal/fmp.html, accessed June 7, 2015. (7) See note 2, at p. 134. (8) "Utah Symphony / Utah Opera," https://usuo.org/files/resources/written_history.pdf, accessed June 8, 2015.

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Federal Music Project (FMP) (1935) - Living New Deal

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(renamed WPA Music Program, 1939) Developed in July and August of 1935, the Federal Music Project (FMP) became one of five programs under Federal Project Number One (itself part of the Works Progress Administration, or WPA). FMP was created to... read more

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This program was founded in 1934. The purpose of this program is to hand out loans that act as a type of mortgage. The government insures these loans but, they are also funded by the mortgage lenders and later approved by the FHA. The overall purpose is to provide mortgage insurance.

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Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC)

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The FCIC was created on June 16, 1933. The purpose of this was to provide economic stability. Another purpose of this act was to reinstate confidence in banks. This program was directed to crop growers and their insurances.

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Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)

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The FDIC insures deposits. The FDIC also watches over financial institutions for consumer safety. What the FDIC mainly does is make sure that banks do not fail if there is an economic crash. People do not need to be a U.S. resident in order to have their money insured by this program