SOCIAL SECURITY
Social security is the establishment of a series of plans and measures designed to maintain social peace and general well-being. The term has different meanings depending on its application. In the new formulation of the problem, the concept can be said to have developed in the Anglo-Saxon countries after the last great war, following the alarms continuously provoked by market fluctuations and the insecurity of economic and political life, which are today generally attributed to the liberal regime of competition.
### I. THE FOUR FREEDOMS AND THE BEVERIDGE PLAN
The first solemn declaration to appeal to it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s message to the American Congress (6 January 1941), in which he proclaimed the so-called four fundamental freedoms of man (the Atlantic freedoms), including freedom from want and from fear.
This was followed by a broad movement of social and political studies and initiatives that, converging with new economic perspectives (cf. KEYNES), culminated in England in 1944, after the war, in the famous Beveridge Plan for full employment and social assistance from the cradle to the grave: the first example of an economic plan inspired by the idea of a necessary liberation of the individual from the major economic concerns against which the individual is today practically defenseless.
In Italy, however, by “social security” is generally understood the more restricted field of social insurance and assistance for wage earners, salaried workers, and the unemployed. In reality, social security exists not only for individuals but also for businesses and nations: individuals, enterprises, and peoples are equally and jointly exposed to serious and continuous risks arising from general economic and political imbalance and from periodic crises that destroy peace, wealth, and the possibility of work. Individuals and businesses, hard-pressed by unemployment and financial collapse, turn to the State for protection, support, and rehabilitation: States respond with increasingly broad-based social insurance and assistance, more comprehensive and complete measures, protective provisions for industries, and financing, and finally with economic plans specifically aimed at full employment.
In the supranational sphere, the well-known North American initiative of the European Recovery Program (ERP, or Marshall Plan), which was succeeded before its expiration (10 October 1951) by the Mutual Security Agency (MSA), is noteworthy. The MSA’s activities comprise four branches: military aid for collective defense; economic aid for an adequate system of mutual security; the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) for Southeast Asian countries; and measures related to the fourth point of Truman’s program for the development of depressed areas on all continents.
Not rigidly bound to fixed schemes, this activity does not replace the OEEC, the Schuman Plan (cf. EUROPEAN UNION), or the European Agricultural Pool; rather, it follows the financial, economic, and social needs of the assisted countries as they arise, in relation to the establishment of mutual security, balancing military necessities with social ones.
The MSA also aims to develop a unified economy in Europe, greater productivity, and broader liberalization of trade; and, as the economic instrument of the Atlantic Pact, it assumes the initiative for any emergency measures. In this sense, the concept of social security merges with that of collective security and attempts to correct the common defect of all social security plans, namely that they only remedy the most visible manifestations of global imbalance without addressing the underlying causes. These are primarily the excessively difficult and risky conditions imposed on savings, the limited mobility of capital, goods, and workers, the instability of currencies, and the artificial division of the single world economy into so many rival national economic policies.
Yet alongside the ingenious magnanimity of social security plans stands their extremely high social cost, generally disproportionate to the results they can achieve, making them prohibitive for the poorer countries that most need them. Manifestations of crisis and disorientation continue to occur due to the relentless action of the root causes, compounded by a dangerous moral upheaval stemming from the belief that social security is a primordial and universal right of all individuals against the State, and that individuals and businesses can demand guarantees and well-being from the State without any effective contribution of intelligence, labor, and loyalty on their part.
From the standpoint of economic technique aimed at full employment, there is a divergence between Beveridge and Keynes: the former suggests that the State intervene directly to fill the gap between savings and investment by socializing consumption, while the latter urges the State to pursue a policy of low interest rates in private financing and to contribute through taxation, measured inflationary measures, and the gradual socialization of production. Both systems limit and stifle the freedom of initiative, that is, the true and irreplaceable driving force of productive activity: thus they achieve a production that appears more orderly but is generally lower in quality and yield. Savings, the foundation and soul of economic life, are also diminished, replaced by onerous taxation. The policy of full employment, however, remains the only effective alternative in the debate between economic freedom and communism; but to fully meet practical needs, as well as charity, justice, and reasonableness, it should be based on universally valid and acceptable solutions in applied economics concerning savings, credit, and exchange, beyond and above any political system.
### III. THE ECONOMIC COUNCIL OF THE UNITED NATIONS
The United Nations addresses social security through one of its organs, the Economic Council, composed of 18 members elected for three years, with the aim of ensuring international economic stability and promoting humanitarian and social welfare initiatives. These noble aims, however, do not aspire to resolve essential problems. They do not expect anything from the technical progress of applied economics, nor do they seek to diminish the economic significance of rigid political borders of territorial sovereignty. A more marked attempt in this direction is seen in the Schuman Plan, which represents a victory for the federalist movement in the European Union (cf.), characterized by the progressive reduction of national sovereignties.
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