When President Roosevelt proposed it in 1935, the former head of the chamber of commerce, Silas Hardy Strawn, dubbed the plan an effort "to Sovietize America." Other critics cried socialism, and Senator Daniel Hastings of Delaware said passing the plan would "end the progress of a great country." Despite such dire predictions, most Americans supported the program, and Social Security sailed through both houses of Congress with votes to spare. Roosevelt signed it into law on Aug. 14, 1935. "Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure." --Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology, on Edison’s light bulb, 1880. "The ordinary “horseless carriage” is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle." --Literary Digest, 1899. "While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming." --Lee DeForest, American radio pioneer and inventor of the vacuum tube,1926. And today we have...........Obamacare. Deja Vu.
Posted on: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 17:00:44 +0000
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