Social protection

“ The Republic provides for the social protection and social security of citizens in accordance with the principle of social justice.
The Republic guarantees the right of assistance to citizens who are infirm or unfit for work. ”

“ The safeguarding of the rights of our citizens must be accompanied by an equal regard for their opportunities for development and their protection from economic insecurity. In this Nation the ideals of freedom and equality can be given specific meaning in terms of health, education, social security, and housing.
Over the past 12 years we have erected a sound framework of social security legislation. Many millions of our citizens are now protected against the loss of income which can come with unemployment, old age, or the death of wage earners. ”

“ Children shall be granted a legal status by law which does justice to their growing capacity for understanding through the recognition of increasing independence. (5) Children shall enjoy state protection against physical and mental neglect and maltreatment. Child labor shall be prohibited. Article 23 (1) The community respects age. It respects disability. (2) Every citizen has the right to social security against the consequences of illness, accident, invalidity, disability, need for care, old age and unemployment. ”

“ Can political independence ever become subordinate to social welfare? Are there any spiritual bonds that can hold more strongly than national ambitions and national pride? Such questions as these carry the student of society into a wider range of corporate life than the average man enters, but a range of life in which the welfare of every individual is involved.
315. The Significance of National Life.—The nation is a group of persons, families, and communities united for mutual protection and the promotion of the general welfare, and recognizing a sovereign power that controls them all. ”

“ And, finally, the third principle is to use the agencies of government to assist in the establishment of means to provide sound and adequate protection against the vicissitudes of modern life—in other words, social insurance. ”

“ It does other things which are believed to be for the general welfare. It looks out for education, transportation, sanitation, the care of the infirm, and so forth; it works for better social, industrial, and class conditions. The state, in other words, is felt to have a right to do all those things which will promote the welfare of mankind. Mill said, “... it is not admissible that the protection of persons and that of property are the sole purposes of government. The ends of government are as comprehensive as those of the social union.” ”

“ The objective to be sought is the fullest measure of protection to those engaged in dangerous occupations with the least burden of cost to society, because after all the social organization must pay for it. ”

“ Here, for a generation, all workers whose income was less than a specified amount, have had to insure against sickness, accident, and death. This compulsory insurance forms a part of the extensive programme of social legislation which Germany has promulgated for the protection of her industrial workers.
The insurance funds are maintained in part by the workers, in part by the employers, and in part by the government. Under the compulsory provisions of the law no man can by his incapacity or death plunge his family into poverty or throw them upon the community for support. ”

“ While the ever mounting taxes are hardest on the large middle class, they are needed to finance the comprehensive but still expanding social welfare system. Already one of the most pervasive and generous in the world, and social policy of the government ranges over a broad field, including social insurance, comprehensive health care programs, family and child welfare, public relief, and labor placement and protection. ”

“ In this respect, particular attention should be paid to vulnerable groups which are socially or economically disadvantaged so as to afford them the protection of the laws and social measures in force, in particular with regard to housing, employment and health, to respect the authenticity of their culture and values, and to facilitate their social and occupational advancement and integration, especially through education. ”

“ Many safeguards that are easily obtainable are neglected. Protection for the workers and indemnities for injuries when they occur can be insured by well-made laws, properly enforced. Sanitary regulations and pure-food laws need to be strengthened and more fully enforced. ”

“ Every citizen of the German Democratic Republic shall have the right to the protection of his health and working capacity.
⁠ (2) This right shall be guaranteed by the planned improvement of working and living conditions, public health, a comprehensive social policy, the promotion of physical culture, school and public sports activities and tourism.
⁠ (3) Material security, medical aid, medicaments and other medical benefits are granted free of charge in case of illness and accidents on the basis of a social insurance system. ”

“ In recent years governments, municipal and other authorities, industrial corporations and voluntary associations of all kinds have been compelled to make ever-extending provisions for industrial protection, social insurance, public health service, housing improvement, recreation and various other forms of organized social effort. All these activities have created the sphere of a new profession, that of the trained social worker. ”

“ The public authorities shall guarantee, through adequate and periodically updated pensions, a sufficient income for citizens in old age. Likewise, and without prejudice to the obligations of the families, they shall promote their welfare through a system of social services that provides for their specific problems of health, housing, culture and leisure. Section 51
1. The public authorities shall guarantee the protection of consumers and users and shall, by means of effective measures, safeguard their safety, health and legitimate economic interests. ”

“ The individual economic security assured to the beneficiaries of this Act will buttress the collective economic security of the nation. The Social Security System is protection to labor and provision to capital. ”

“ Special measures of protection and assistance should be taken on behalf of all children and young persons without any discrimination for reasons of parentage or other conditions. Children and young persons should be protected from economic and social exploitation. ”

“ Primarily, governments exist for the maintenance of social order. Hence it is that the obligation of the government to protect life, liberty, and property against the conduct of the indifferent, the careless, and the evil-minded may be regarded as lying at the very foundation of the social compact. A recognition of this supreme obligation is found in those exertions of the legislative power which have as an end the preservation of social order and the protection of the welfare of the public and of the individual. ”

“ Though society is not founded on a contract, and though no good purpose is answered by inventing a contract in order to deduce social obligations from it, every one who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit, and the fact of living in society renders it indispensable that each should be bound to observe a certain line of conduct towards the rest. ”

“ This means that, in many cases, society must provide pensions, insurance against accident and sickness, legislation to check social abuses, and, above all, proper facilities for education. Here comes in the need of child-labor legislation, of better housing, of industrial insurance, of industrial education, and the like. ”

“ The obligations on the part of the community extend to the provision of employment, mental and physical health care, social security, fair wages, rest and recreation, and a host of other reasonable expectations on the part of the individual members of society. ”

“ The common right is nought but the protection of all radiating over the right of each. This protection of all over each is termed Fraternity. The point of intersection of all aggregated societies is called Society, and this intersection being a junction, the point is a knot. Hence comes what is called the social tie; ”

“ They are proceeding to feed school children, to segregate and protect the feeble-minded, to insure the unemployed, to give State pensions to the aged, and they are even asked to guarantee work for all. ”

“ As human beings have become dependent on one another, the well-being or the degradation of one individual or family does not stop there. It strongly influences the welfare of other individuals and families. For their own protection people have not only the right, but the obligation to make a government that shall foster and advance the common welfare. ”

“ For the purpose of conserving health and the ability to work, of protecting motherhood, and of guarding against the economic effects of age, invalidity and the vicissitudes of life, the Commonwealth will adopt a comprehensive system of insurance, in the management of which the insured shall predominate.
ARTICLE 162
The Commonwealth commits itself to an international regulation of the legal status of the workers, which shall strive for a standard minimum of social rights for the whole working class of the world. ”

“ The law shall establish the forms of participation of the persons concerned in Social Security and in the activities of those public bodies whose operation directly affects quality of life or general welfare. ”

“ On the principle of autonomous administration by the insured, a unitary and comprehensive social insurance system serves to maintain the health and strength of the working population, to protect motherhood, and to provide against the economic consequences of old age, disability, unemployment and other vicissitudes of life. ”

“ But whereas in earlier years our social welfare program was taken cynically as synonymous with hopelessness and failure, today it is looked on by a con­siderable segment of our people as the promise of a new life. ”

“ Our basic objective--toward which all others lead--is to improve the welfare of the American people. In addition to economic prosperity, this means that we use social security in the fullest sense of the word. And people must be protected from excessive want during old age, sickness, and unemployment. Opportunities for a good economy and adequate medical care must be readily available. Every family should build a decent home. ”

“ But here we are met by a fact which forbids us thus to put in the foreground the welfare of citizens, individually considered, and requires us to put in the foreground the welfare of the society as a whole. The life of the social organism must, as an end, rank above the lives of its units. ”

“ The personal, economic and cultural welfare of the private person shall be fundamental aims of public activity. In particular, it shall be incumbent upon the public institutions to secure the right to work, housing and education, and to promote social care, social security, and a good living environment.
The public institutions shall promote the ideals of democracy as guidelines in all sectors of society. ”

“ All welfare work, in the end, whether it be the salvation of the worker from accidents, the teaching of individual or196 community hygiene, the care of the sick, financial compensation for the injured, the teaching of languages, trades, sciences, or the inculcation of thrift, has for its object the making of better men and women, the giving to the worker born under unfavorable social conditions the opportunity to lift himself above these conditions. And from this both the employer and employed must benefit together. ”

“ Or should the welfare of the majority give way as a social ideal to the welfare of the best—the most capable, the most upright, the most enduring? Is it possible to evolve a social order in which the greatest good of all can be well served, since biological inequalities are so very great? ”

“ All these conditions are abnormal, wholly unfavorable to a fair consideration of what will promote welfare. Even if socialistic methods might work fairly well when all were favorably disposed, there is great question whether they would work as well as present social methods, under equal good will. ”

“ Man and woman and child may thus be more and more protected against the destructive abuses of our economic scheme. Their physical health and their mental energy may be kept in better and better working order by social reforms, by state measures and strong organization. ”

“ True, the law is sacred to the bourgeois, for it is his own composition, enacted with his consent, and for his benefit and protection. He knows that, even if an individual law should injure him, the whole fabric protects his interests; and more than all, the sanctity of the law, the sacredness of order as established by the active will of one part of society, and the passive acceptance of the other, is the strongest support of his social position. ”

“ The State shall take all kinds of measures to protect the disabled, the war veterans, the elderly people and those unable to work, and to render children in need of care and protection useful to the society. ”

“ An unprecedented number of civil cases are stalled, affecting the lives of tens of thousands of Americans, from the family seeking life insurance proceeds, to the senior citizen trying to collect Social Security benefits, to the small business protecting its right to compete. ”

“ These aims of welfare policy shall be attained through the constant improvement and equalization of the conditions of life and work, the transcendence, on the basis of solidarity and reciprocity, of differences stemming from economic un-development and other unequal conditions of life and work, the equalization of possibilities for education and work, and through the prevention and elimination of social differences which are not based on the application of the principle of distribution according to work performed. ”