Salt Lake Telegram | 1939-01-27 | Page 6 | Security Job Needs New Start

, , Security Job Needs New Start By JOHN T. FLYNN ' up a social security plan and de- 1 liberately exclude from their deliberations de-liberations nearly all the men who really knew about the subject Those who knew had to be content con-tent to remain on the outside and point out the mistakes that were being made. And now, alngularly, every prediction of trouble has been sbundantly fulfilled. Good Ideas Scrapped A few experta on insurance finance fi-nance were called in. But the recommendations rec-ommendations they made were thrown Into the wastebasket In favor of proposals which cams I from men who had never thought ' about social security In their lives. ' But this all has happened. The thing to do now Is to undo what has been done as far as possible and recast the system. That ia a Job for congress. Congress should now do what the president refused ' to do. It should refuse to be stampeded Into hasty, ill-considered and uninformed un-informed action on this act It should call in the ablest authorities authori-ties on social security and unemployment unem-ployment and old age financing and. at least, learn what these men have taken a lifetime to learn. This is too Important and too valuable a reform to be made the football of politics as it haa been up to now. NEW YORK Congress now faces the duty of reforming snd recasting the social security act Th act ia so generally bad that the wis course would be to start at the beginning and make it over. But unfortunately, when so vast an enterprise Is started wrong, It ia difficult to go back. The tragic feature of all this Is that ths maladjustments and mistakes mis-takes in the social security act are not weaknesses which could not be foreseen. There is a disposition to say that this business of unemployment unemploy-ment Insurance and old age pensions pen-sions Is something new and that inevitably much had to be learned before It could be made right Not Novelties x But unemployment insurance and old age pensions are not new. England, Germany and many other countries have been operating operat-ing them for a number of years. An immense body of knowledge waa accumulated in 1934 when the government sat down to the Job of forming a plan for America. Moreover, there were In the country a number of men who had apent their lives studying the subject sub-ject Old sge pension laws had been adopted in aeveral states and other forma of social security were in existence. The business of insurance in-surance finance ia a atudy which elaima a large number of experts. But there were experta who knew whatever waa to be known about these matters. One of the strange episodes of these years is that a group of statesmen would undertake to set ( -