6 ms·
They're called "entitlement" because people explicitly pay into them and then the government has to pay those benefits. That's not relevant if you're talking ab
by lutorm 8y ago
They're called "entitlement" because people explicitly pay into them and then the government has to pay those benefits. That's not relevant if you're talking about the discretionary budget.
- tomohawk 8y agoI'm kinda surprised that anyone still believes this, although politicians do say it all the time. What actually happens is that people pay a tax. The tax goes towards covering people who are currently receiving payouts. The collected tax does not cover the payouts and has not for quite a while. In other words, you're not "paying in" to anything, other than that if you pay the tax for 3 years, you're eligible to receive benefits. And the payouts are a really bad investment if you are a Gen Xer or younger. You're going to get a lot less out than you put in. It was a really great deal for the WW2 gen, as they paid in hardly anything and got decades of payouts.
- lutorm 8y agoSure, it's not the same dollars that I pay in that I'll be getting in the future. That doesn't change the fact that these these taxes have to go into the SS trust fund and is not part of the discretionary budget. When people say things like "the government spends most of its money on entitlement programs" like it's a bad thing, they're completely misrepresenting the situation. If they weren't spending the tax that's explicitly supposed to fund social security on social security, that would be a bigger story because that would be fraud.