Conclusion

Abstract

In the final days of the Pension Bureau, old age was itself considered an infirmity eligible for pensions. The age and service pension system paved the way for the creation of the modern American welfare state via the Social Security Act of 1935. Though many attribute the Social Security Act’s exclusion of agricultural and domestic workers to Southern congressmen, the real culprit was the Committee on Economic Security (CES). President Franklin D. Roosevelt had charged the CES with creating a system to administer relief to the elderly and unemployed, along with others needing assistance. The resultant creation of a two-track welfare state and the exclusion of 20 million people—half the workforce—from Old Age Insurance (i.e., social security benefits) not only worked to institutionalize racism but also to establish a modern, heavily bureaucratized American welfare state that burdened its clients and profoundly disempowered its citizens. Means testing has always been a threat to democracy.