"Jonathan Ganz" wrote
katysails wrote:

Social Security to take care of you when you're ancient, ....

That's not true.

Without getting into the theory(s) of capitalism let me simply observe that
it is driven by profits and that true supply vs demand profits are maximized
when more people are buying than are involved in making a product. Also, and
perhaps more important, automation has steadily eroded the need for labor
and without labor's paychecks there are less sales and fewer profits.
Against this background and in a depression it was deemed wise to reduce the
workforce without reducing the number of consumers and that the reduction
was best done by keeping children out of the work force and by encouraging
oldsters to retire sooner in order to preserve available jobs for the people
raising families.

Consider, in the 1930s and before, an 8th grade education was more than
adequate. My grandmother had that and had learned math thru the equivalent
of Calc 101, read the classics, was learned in history, and taught school
herself. It is no accident that it now takes at least two years of college
to reach that level of education, meaning that kids enter the workforce five
or more years later. Similarly, most of us who survive child rearing and
middle age could work well into our 70s but are encouraged (required?) to
retire a decade sooner.

And who pays the bill? Why the younger workers and capitalists who profit
from it, of course.

Is that why FDR invented Social Security? ... Naw, it bought him two more
terms.