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Show THE SEARCHLIGHT Social Security Misunderstood Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of contributed articles on Social Security. Other articles will be presented until the entire field of social security is discussed. If employer of and unemployment community asset worker alike insurance instead in of an could terms think of individual a lia- bility or an individual windfall, a big’ social problem would be on the way to solution. Just why persons with brains enough to un- derstand the workings of intricate machinery are so blind to the intricacies of our social system is one of the modern mysteries. Persons who understand fully that an infected foot can cause delirium refuse to understand that a community infected by unemployment is having, or is in danger of having, a serious illness. The same folks who ery because there is no business, wail because the State has devised unemployment insurance plans to supply purchasing power to make business. On the other side of the fence are those who would hike unemployment insurance benefits and hope that George has enough money to pay the bill. Then there are those who, because they have had steady jobs for years, feel that they are immune from unemployment and that their ear was meant to hear with on when their usefulness on and not to leht the job is at an end. There are those who carry sickness insurance for deeades and thank God they have never had to draw any of it, who turn around and bellow to high heaven that in the past seven years they haven’t drawn a dime’s worth of unemployment insurance (because they have had jobs that paid several times as much as unemployment And, there are insurance those who would have paid.) feela personal obligation to at least some of their staff, and who keep them on the pay roll (often at reduced rates, but keep them nevertheless) who feel that they are being robbed if they are forced to contribute a much smaller amount to a fund which would carry these same workers at no additional expense to the emplover. All in all it makes one wonder at times the human race hasn’t turned out to be ereat disappointment if a to the Creator. Some, in fact most persons who speak of unemployment insurance, look at it as a New Deal proposal. Actually private companies found unemployment insurance good business long before the New Deal came into. being. The New Deal merely set up a system which applied unemployment insurance to millions all over the country instead of applying it to a few thousands scattered here and there. Private hard way. train employers One was labor, and, learned two things the that it cost money to therefore, labor turnover is expensive. (The other was that it was an expensive proposition to keep trained workers on the job with full pay and little or nothing to do. Some employers cursed the economic eyele and let it go at that; others arranged their business ina way to eliminate most of the seasonal unemployment and set up an unem- ployment insurance system to fill the gap. Proetor-Gamble Soap, General Electric, and Dennison Paper were among the many firms which set up such systems. And, you understand, these systems were set up only partly out of a feeling of fellowship but largely because it was just plain business sense to keep trained workers at hand and reasonably satisfied with their jobs. There was no squawk about workers ‘‘tak- ing vacations at the employer’s expense’’; rather, the employer was willing’ to pay the modest bit of freight to keep the man he had invested his money in close at hand and available. The worker likewise found it profitable to stick close to his pay office and not to waste his savings by scampering after those jobs over the hill. And, the community profited because it meant steady purchasing power— the kind that gives business a chance to plan ahead instead of that kind featured by spasmodic splurges of buying the shelves clean one month and miss installments next. Unemployment insurance is a sense program, but, unfortunately, (Continued on page 7) commonit is not |