A01=Edwin Amenta
Activism
Amendment
Americans
Author_Edwin Amenta
Ballot
Cambridge University Press
Category=JKS
Category=JP
Category=NHK
Collective action
Constitutional amendment
Democracy
Economic recovery
Economic security
Economics
Employment
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eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
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eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Financial transaction tax
Frank Merriam
Gerald L. K. Smith
Government
Government spending
Huey Long
Income
Incumbent
Insurance
Left-wing politics
Legislation
Legislator
Lobbying
Major party
Martin Shefter
Member of Congress
Midterm election
National Association of Manufacturers
National Government (United Kingdom)
Payment
Payroll
Payroll tax
Pension
Policy
Political agenda
Political campaign
Political party
Political strategy
Politician
Politics
Populism
Provision (contracting)
Publicity
Retirement
Russell Sage Foundation
Salary
Schedule TO
Share Our Wealth
Sheridan Downey
Social insurance
Social movement
Social policy
Social Security Act
Supporter
Tax
Tax cut
The New York Times
Theda Skocpol
Unemployment
Unemployment benefits
United States House Committee on Ways and Means
Wage
Ways and means committee
Welfare
William Borah
Works Progress Administration
World War I
World War II
Product details
- ISBN 9780691138268
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 21 Jul 2008
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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When Movements Matter accounts for the origins of Social Security as we know it. The book tells the overlooked story of the Townsend Plan--a political organization that sought to alleviate poverty and end the Great Depression through a government-provided retirement stipend of $200 a month for every American over the age of sixty. Both the Townsend Plan, which organized two million older Americans into Townsend clubs, and the wider pension movement failed to win the generous and universal senior citizens' pensions their advocates demanded. But the movement provided the political impetus behind old-age policy in its formative years and pushed America down the track of creating an old-age welfare state. Drawing on a wealth of primary evidence, historical detail, and arresting images, Edwin Amenta traces the ups and downs of the Townsend Plan and its elderly leader Dr. Francis E. Townsend in the struggle to remake old age. In the process, Amenta advances a new theory of when social movements are influential. The book challenges the conventional wisdom that U.S. old-age policy was a result mainly of the Depression or farsighted bureaucrats.
It also debunks the current view that America immediately embraced Social Security when it was adopted in 1935. And it sheds new light on how social movements that fail to achieve their primary goals can still influence social policy and the way people relate to politics.
Edwin Amenta is professor of sociology and history at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of "Professor Baseball" and "Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy" (Princeton).
