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January 05, 2006
FDR: The First Advocate of Personal Accounts
The idea that personal ownership and free-market innovation can improve society is not new. Indeed, the importance of freedom and the right to control one's future has been emphasized since our country was founded, which makes one wonder: who was the first advocate of Personal Retirement Accounts?
Believe it or not, it was Franklin Delanore Roosevelt.
On January 17, 1935, while outlining his vision for Social Security, FDR made the following statement to Congress:
"In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.." (emphasis added)
FDR was a realist as well as a visionary. As his statement to Congress makes clear, in the long run he believed self-supporting annuities could and should play the role in a social insurance system.
Now if only policymakers would listen...
Posted by Nicola Moore at January 5, 2006 10:13 AM
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