ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the original Social Security Act programs have gradually been transformed into today's public welfare programs. The Social Security Act that established the framework for American social welfare was complex legislation. Social insurance and public assistance are based on two slightly different although at times overlapping philosophies. The Social Security program has become large, complex, and expensive. The unemployment compensation program also provides in part for economic stabilization during periods of recession. American economics now uses unemployment insurance in a Keynesian economic framework as a countercyclical economic program. Medicare essentially established a form of government health insurance for the aged that was linked with Social Security. Medicare has never been faced directly with the integral argument faced by Social Security, namely, the idea that medical insurance would absorb those who were covered by companion public assistance programs.
