And they will still suffer from some unemployment, because this in an unavoidable characteristic of a system of free enterprise. All of these hazards, when they eventuate, result in loss of current income to workers' families. We must make certain that workers' families are protected against loss of current income to the extent necessary to prevent physical want. In so doing, a nation protects its most priceless natural resource, the moral and physical vigor of its citizens. Thus, it is evident that social security means not only freedom from want but conservation of manpower.
Human beings are both consumers and producers.
But it would be a mistake to assume that full production or full employment or increasing wealth in themselves mean abolition of poverty or of want. While these conditions are essential, abolition of want also depends upon effective distribution and the assurance of continuity in the distribution of the necessities of life. All of this is necessary in any human society in which livelihood depends principally upon employment and wages, if physical want and fear of want are to be prevented and if that human society and its economy are to be made secure. Social security as a specific program is in essence simply a social budgeting of costs already being borne by the individual citizens of a nation. Whether they have a social security system or not, the citizens of every nation are confronted with the economic burdens of old age, premature death, physical and mental disability, sickness, and unemployment.