Roots of the Social Security Myth

This is a concise critical history of the federal program of Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI), popularly known as Social Security. It focuses on a crucial but under-examined aspect of the program: how Social Security was marketed to the American public, the false consciousness which that marketing created, and how that false consciousness is a cause of the current political quagmire — and the likely meltdown of the program sometime in this century and its subsequent inability to pay full benefits on time to the retiring baby boomers.