The real origins of Social Security, Universal Healthcare, etc.

[Hexen]

So what are the real origins of these? Since I know for a fact that the Unions were created because of workers struggles which they fought and died for perhaps the same could be said about SS, Universal Healthcare, Medicade, etc? Since I have a feeling that no politician is going to give you that and they never will because it doesn't work that way.

[gendoikari]

wellfare and universal healthcare came about as bainaids to curb the worse excesses of capitalism.

[agnixie]

So what are the real origins of these? Since I know for a fact that the Unions were created because of workers struggles which they fought and died for perhaps the same could be said about SS, Universal Healthcare, Medicade, etc? Since I have a feeling that no politician is going to give you that and they never will because it doesn't work that way.

One of the first country to have extensive social covers like that was the second German Empire, as part of Bismarck's bid to improve the health of Prussian army conscripts and to weaken the social democrats' electoral prospects - essentially a bandaid to keep power for the upper class.

[Rusty Shackleford]

they came about because with the depression, labor was becoming more and more powerful. As for universal healthcare, those came about from social democracy and also it was part of anti-soviet/warsaw pact reforms to make the west(like the FRG) more appealing and all that. of course, those wont last if this crisis gets more and more extreme. and since there is no soviet union, why bother?

[syndicat]

Social Security was passed in 1938, along with the Fair Labor Standards Act (overtime pay, unemployment benefits, minimum legal wage). These came about in the wake of the massive working class rebellion of 1934-36 -- general strikes, a quadrupling of union membership, over 500 workplace occupations.

We don't have "universal healthcare" here in the USA. Medicare & Medicaid were passed in the late '60s in the wake of the rebellions of that era.

[Lucretia]

The best book on this issue is Colin Gordon's New Deals.