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A nitpick. Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements. One is a mandatory pension plan that people pay into and whose benefits are based on what you pu
by yequalsx 9y ago
A nitpick. Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements. One is a mandatory pension plan that people pay into and whose benefits are based on what you put in. The other is a mandatory health insurance plan that people pay into. As such it is wrong to call them entitlements.
- enraged_camel 9y agoNo, that is the actual definition of the term “entitlement”: people are literally entitled to those things.
- yequalsx 9y agoIf you don’t pay into SS then you don’t get retirement benefits from it. You are wrong on Social Securty. With Medicare you are entitled to enroll in it when you reach a certain age, even if you haven’t ever paid Medicare taxes, but you still have to pay the premiums. Medicaid is the entitlement.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements. SS and Medicare and the buy-in attached to them is what the term “entitlements” (in terms of government programs) was coined to refer to. Later, Republican opponents of those programs started using the term for general welfare programs in order to attach negative emotional loading to it and discredit SS and Medicare by association.
- yequalsx 9y agoYes. But I use terms as they currently mean in the common political discourse and as such Medicare and Social Security are not entitlements.
- dragonwriter 9y agoIn current political discourse, “entitlements” refers to all of the public benefit programs, whether buy-in or means-tested, that are not considered discretionary spending, Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment, Medicaid, and Welfare. You probably mean to say that the first three differ from the last two, which is true; the first three are contributory entitlements (the original sense of the term), the latter two are noncontributory entitlements (which, along with contributory entitlements, are included in the newer, broader definition.)
- yequalsx 9y agoAs I've heard the term used in the vernacular it is synonymous with 'welfare'. I attempt to clarify that there is a huge difference between a mandatory retirement pension plan whose benefits depend on how much you pay into it vs. say food stamps. Therefore I point out that Social Security is not an entitlement since that word has become distorted in the last 30 years to be synonymous with welfare. It connotes getting something without paying for it. Therefore I think it is wrong to call Social Security an entitlement. The meaning of the word has changed or is in the midst of being changed.