23 Years Ago In Time

The debate about the future of SOCIAL SECURITY is not new. During the Reagan era, TIME raised similar questions in a cover story.

Ronald Reagan last week called it "a political football" kicked around by "demagoguery" and "falsehoods." To one of the President's advisers it is "the most sacred cow we have around here" ... The subject is Social Security, the nation's biggest, broadest and probably most successful social program. To some 36 million people, the Social Security system now provides a monthly check promising that old age, widowhood or disabling injury will not throw them into poverty. To 116 million others who pay Social Security taxes, the system offers assurance that they too will be taken care of when they become too old to work. But after more than 40 years during which such protection has been taken almost for granted, the nation faces a distressing question: Just how much Social Security can it afford? The answer: not as much as the formulas now written into law would provide in the future. --TIME, May 24, 1982

Read the entire article at time.com/years