Katherine Sullivan

Until this point, most people just worked until they died or were cared for by their families or went to spend their last years in poor houses.

There wasn't yet a vision of older people moving to Florida en masse and organizing their lives around golf or pickleball.

But during this time, groups had begun to advocate for a government pension.

These groups came from all ends of the political spectrum.

One of the most popular and also one of the most outlandish was started by a man called Francis Townsend.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration was focused on pulling the country out of the Great Depression.

And to that end, the Townsend Plan had a straightforward demand.

$200 a month for everyone over the age of 60, funded by a 2% sales tax.

That's about $5,000 a month in today's dollars.

The catch?

You had to spend the whole benefit within the month.

Here's a newsreel of Dr. Townsend fielding questions about the program from senior citizens.

Townsend's slogan was Youth for Work, Age for Leisure.

The idea took off.

Over 7,000 Townsend clubs formed across the country, working to advocate for the plan.

They organized massive letter-writing campaigns to members of Congress and even set up trial versions of the program.

The movement put enormous pressure on lawmakers to create some sort of safety net for older people.

And the pressure worked.

In 1935, President Roosevelt signed Social Security into law.

This Social Security measure...