It was 70 years ago today (well, probably yesterday by the time I post this) that FDR signed the Social Security Act. It has been changed many times but the Social Security programs we have today are basically the same social insurance programs envisioned by Roosevelt and his Brain Trust — an individual safety net for elderly, retired people.

However, an often overlooked function is the safety net social security provides for the economy. By putting billions of dollars into circulation, social security (and other social insurance programs, like TANF), creates spending, thus fueling the economy. These programs create a kind of “spending floor” — no matter how bad the economy is, checks get sent out, providing some minimum amount of spending power. This stabilizes the economy, and is one of the many reasons we haven’t seen another a 1930s-style depression.

Or at least, that’s how it is supposed to work. Bush would eliminate this program and replace it with some sort of magical private accounts that would grow like crazy in our ever expanding economy. Only, our economy isn’t growing so fast, and it’s not clear what would happen to workers with little or no investing savvy. Not only would this harm people, it has the potential to do great damage to the economy by removing the stabilizing spending floor.

Social Security is a program that works, on multiple levels, and tinkering with it is a bad idea.