The Social Security Act Was Created by Industrial Relations Experts Working for Foundations, Consulting Firms, and Corporate Think Tanks

As for the Social Security Act, it was not the work of liberals and labor leaders, as currently believed due to the fact that they defend it and conservatives dislike it. Instead, it was created by industrial relations experts who worked for foundations, consulting firms, and think tanks funded by several of the largest corporations of the 1930s, including some of those that also backed the subsidy program for agricultural interests. True enough, the Social Security Act was opposed in testimony before Congress by a wide range of ultraconservative corporate leaders, but their objections on this particular issue primarily reflected their growing animosity toward Roosevelt for some of the New Deal’s other policies, particularly in relation to unions and collective bargaining, not substantive objections to the plans for social security created by the moderate conservatives of the corporate world.

--G. William Domhoff and Michael J. Webber, introduction to Class and Power in the New Deal: Corporate Moderates, Southern Democrats, and the Liberal-Labor Coalition, Studies in Social Inequality (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), Kindle e-book, 6.