We are also allergic to the word “charity”. A lot of people want to benefit from free or subsidized health care (along with many other goodies) but would never want anyone to call what they receive charity. Charity is low status
Hence, health care spending shell game is popular. It is charity disguised as an entitlement.
Charity, “caritas,” is the recognition, acceptance and performance of obligations by individuals, based on a sense of “oughtness,” without coercion.
Every “entitlement” for some is based upon, or arises from, the ** imposition** of obligations upon others.
To paraphrase: Sooner or later we run out of “others” on whom to impose obligations in order to establish “entitlements.”
Charity is low status
As a parent of a handicap child, I will state you can’t count on Charity as well. There are concerns how the state has treated my child, but it is certainly better than charities have.
I heard someone get mad recently about calling SS and Medicare “entitlement spending.” Felt it was degrading. “I paid into the system” and all of that.
What’s wrong with that sentiment?
People did pay the money in.
They were told it was going into some kind of trust fund.
I guess we can bitch about them not understanding actuarial equivalence, but if the man on the street could understand that I wouldn’t get paid the kind of money I get paid.
“People did pay the money in.”
Yes, and they paid in far more than they would have if these programs had been need-based programs for the poor rather than universal programs. Having been forced against my will (under threat of law, police, guns, jail, etc) to pay large sums into non-need based programs for decades, I’m not going to feel bad or like I’m accepting charity when I’m finally on the other end of the deal. All that notwithstanding, I would like to see the both SS and medicare phased out–though I doubt I’ll live long enough to see it happen.
What makes me mad is the right wing’s success in turning a word that means “something which one entitled to, such as a car that has been paid for, as signified by the ‘title’ to it”, into one that means “something you get for free”.
Truly Orwellian, at least as I understand that term. Maybe it now has a different meaning.
Yes, Social Security and Medicare are the worst examples of this.
They take 15% of the first dollar and every dollar earned by 18 year olds and transfer it directly to the richest age cohort. And all so the actually poor elderly can pretend they are not on welfare.
Complete abominations.
What’s your solution?
If we cut SS and Medicare, what do you think we’d get in return?
I’m taking a wild guess that payroll tax cut isn’t the answer.
My solution for SS:
All citizens over 65 get $800/month.
My solution for Medicare:
Only cover procedures that have a string evidence of significant benefits, which I think would cut expenditures by close to 50%.
Are you familiar with the Social Security Trust Fund?
Yes, it’s empty.
Are you familiar with Ida May Fuller?
To be sure, Social Security will need to be phased out, not ended all at once, so that all those over 65 are untouched and all those over some other age get something back. But the end state should be means tested assistance from the general fund, not an economically inefficient and grossly unfair faux pension.
I think many people understand that entitlements, including public health care, are charity, but they favor entitlements because they’re guaranteed, while private charities open and close all the time and so cannot be relied upon as much.
What’s more interesting, imo, is when people who benefit from trade restrictions or unnecessary government jobs refuse to accept that they are beneficiaries of ‘charity.’
In any case, I wouldn’t mind converting Some entitlements into forced savings accounts with government insurance up to a certain amount, like a privatized social security type model; that way they wouldn’t be redistributive entitlements.
Y’know, whenever I read comments like these(not all, but most), I am truly happy that no country on the face of the earth was ever stupid enough to try libertarianism.
None of you guys ever had parents or grandparents?
Of course I know the oft mentioned(in these kind of rants) 18 year old sacrificing his hard earned money for SS never had parents or grandparents and will certainly never become one or the other. That is a given with you people.
Maybe you guys should take a look into our history and see the before as opposed to talking about the after. Nah, you could care less about the type of country you live in.