An Approach to a Philosophy of Social Insurance [Discussion]

The paper of Mr. Farley and his colleague Mr. Billins in "Proceedings" No. 59 presents a thoughtful and statesmanlike analysis. It is the more significant and welcome because it comes from men engaged in the insurance business, a group up to now all too rarely represented in serious discussions of social insurance matters. One can comment only with approval on the breadth of the authors' approach to these complex and pervasive economic and social issues; on their insistence on the responsibility of the citizen for sound decisions on these issues and on the obligation of our national (that is our political) leaders to handle them honestly and thoughtfully. That the authors, in the nature of the case, give us a counsel of perfection makes the counsel not a bit less valuable. Some of the difficulties in the way of intelligent citizen participation in a discussion of social insurance questions, as will be evident in the following discussion, arise from the fact that men do not agree readily, or indeed ever, on matters of philosophy. Even if those who think about social insurance most and soundest (by their own standards at least) should come to agreement, there would still be the very considerable task of transmitting and translating their ideas and recommendation to the rest of the nation. The difficulty here is that social insurance is not a simple idea or a simple institution. To master the problems of American social insurance is a task as great, as the authors suggest, as to master those of American democracy itself.