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Welfare has always been a bad word. During the last century, being on the dole was a shameful thing that branded you as the lowest of the low.
Protestant Work Ethic teaches us welfare is a very bad thing. It divorces individual self accountability and sufficiency from work. The natural tendency for most human beings is to do as little work as possible; thus if you reward sloth it only creates more of it.
If for some reason persons cannot support themselves they ought to be set to some sort of employment in exchange for payments. Community service comes to mind. Perhaps if exhausted from a full days work there would be less breeding of children these persons cannot afford but expect the rest of us to pay.
I'd love to be able to "entitle" myself out of SS and use this, my own money, to invest and save on my own. Am I acting......too "entitled" to believe in such a thing?
An entitlement is a payment to which you are legally entitled, that's all. Social Security is an example. Some people read more into the word, I would argue incorrectly.
Apparently you didn't really read my post. I don't need the small SS payment, which is irrelevant except that it qualifies me for Medicare. I have a teacher's pension from the state of California which is larger than the maximum SS retirement benefit.
I was at a large meeting yesterday to help a relative with changes in medical coverage.
Backstory: relatives spouse worked for a Fortune 100 company. (Actually in top ten) The company is transitioning company paid insurance for retirees to Medicare with additional financial support offered by the company to assist in the change. Several hundred in attendance
Before the meeting, people were milling around talking over coffee.
A group of younger retirees complained that they didn't want to go on welfare and Social Security (to them) was welfare. Not knowing them, I walked over and explained that all Americans pay into SS and will collect benefits at certain ages.
One man argued that he had his pension that his union fought hard to get. I asked if he also paid into SS, "YES, OF COURSE" he said. I told him that he will also get SS Benefits including Medicare. He loudly stated that he will not go on welfare. There was nothing else I could say, so I walked away
Reading many posts in C-D and seeing stories on the news, T see that more and more Social Security and Medicare are being called entitlements (I won't go farther than that idiot's claim of welfare)
Entitlement, my a$$! I worked and paid my taxes and Social Security deductions for almost 60 years. My money was supposed to be put in Trust for me, it wasn't but that's another ***** that I have. I earned my Social Security benefit over years and years of hard work. For many years 60-89 hours a week.
My benefits are not welfare. My benefits are not entitlements. My benefits are a pay out of an insurance policy that my employers and I paid for over that period of time
Why I am being taxed on payments that were taken out in my tax, I don't know.
But, I sure as Hell do know that it is not welfare or entitlements. I paid for it and I earned it!
End of rant
Absolutely right, and the only ones who I know that insist they are 'welfare' are right wing extremist/neocon Republicans!
Entitlement, my a$$! I worked and paid my taxes and Social Security deductions for almost 60 years.
And you were duped as were millions of other Americans.
In two important cases, Helvering v. Davis and Flemming v. Nestor, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Social Security taxes are simply taxes and convey no property or contractual rights to Social Security benefits. Benefits are at the sole discretion of Congress.
FICA is nothing less than a "tax and bribe" scam.
Eventually, this "tax and bribe" program will collapse the nation.
You cannot penalize the productive and reward the non-productive indefinitely. You cannot authorize a government to TAKE from one to GIVE to another, without implementing a "benevolent" totalitarian police state. How else do you enforce such an abomination? Wheedle "pretty please, with sugar on top?"
You're seeing the long term consequences all around: A complex collection of laws to hide behind; A masked, black garbed "police" force that seeks anonymity in its implementation of GESTAPO tactics (aka "SWAT" dynamic entry - up to hurling grenades into baby cribs); Internal passports ('government I.D.') and the demands to produce same; A legal system bent on extracting revenues from the accused, whether guilty or not.
Welcome to the PDSRA!
The People's Democratic Socialist Republic of America
- sans that pesky "charter of negative liberties" (saith BHO, that "constitutional scholar" in the White House, ably assisted by Chief Justice Roberts ). Your "right to life" has become a government granted privilege, as all other aspects of your life. All that is not mandatory, shall be licensed (+ taxed) or forbidden. You already need a license (or pay a tax) to live, work, travel, buy, sell, operate a business, transmit radio, fly a plane, trade in healthcare, buy medicine, cut hair, build a house, hunt, fish, marry and / or own a dog. You have to accept being groped to fly on commercial airliners. The worst is yet to come... oh, right, and when you die, they take a chunk of your estate, too.
And do not forget your papers-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s!
{P.S. - it was all done by your consent, saith the law.}
I understand your frustration. The original description of the term entitlement is as dpm1 stated. However, it's been converted in the media to mean payments also made to people who never contributed anything in, such as illegal immigrants.
If the 2nd meaning now used of entitlements is what's construed, you're darn right, I paid this money in myself. In fact, I paid in double to most since I'm self employed with my own corporation.
Exactly. Many people discuss entitlements as a person believes they are entitled just because he/she is living (the majority using the word in that type of way), even though they have done nothing or did nothing to deserve it, the true meaning was high jacked.
Result: people believe it is socialism/welfare and it is okay to do away with it or accept its demise.
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