11 Sep 11
Since on RHP "entilements" is a dirty word, which of the following should we do away with?
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, most Veterans' Administration programs, federal employee and military retirement plans, unemployment compensation, food stamps, and agricultural price support programs.
Originally posted by badmoon"Entitlement" is a misnomer, since people who get Social Security and Medicare services* have paid into the system their whole working lives and so are hardly getting "something for nothing".
Since on RHP "entilements" is a dirty word, which of the following should we do away with?
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, most Veterans' Administration programs, federal employee and military retirement plans, unemployment compensation, food stamps, and agricultural price support programs.
The social security policy Republicans really want is a wood chipper in every town into which the elderly could be shoved the day after they became too old to be of use to the economy.
* The term "benefits" is another mendacious misnomer invented by Republicans to conjure images of freeloaders in the mind.
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Originally posted by badmoonA lot of people don't understand the difference between what we are entitled to and what we deserve. We are entitled to something because of what we are (a citizen, a person, etc.) -- and we deserve something because of what we do or accomplish that is of merit. This distinction makes it possible to stop thinking of entitlement as a dirty word. This differs from saying person has a "sense of entitlement."
Since on RHP "entilements" is a dirty word, which of the following should we do away with?
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, most Veterans' Administration programs, federal employee and military retirement plans, unemployment compensation, food stamps, and agricultural price support programs.
For example, TITLE II—FEDERAL OLD–AGE, SURVIVORS, AND DISABILITY INSURANCE BENEFITS is part of the US Social Security Act. This Title, along with others, creates an en-TITLE-ment program that specifies who is entitled, under what conditions, and what they are entitled to.
In a society that honors, in its written founding documents, human dignity and fundamental equality in that regard, everyone is entitled to be treated with that dignity. If we decide that respect for human dignity demands that no one is to go without shelter, food, and clothing, and if we entitle people to specific things that deliver on that fundamental entitlement in our statutes, then I would say that SS, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment compensation and food stamps programs implement entitlements. I would say that federal employment and military retirement, and the VA, are more like contractual commitments of employers which their recipients come to deserve by performing to the degree of merit required. I would call agricultural price supports a protectionist economic policy with the ostensible purpose of stabilizing the industry (but it may have other purposes.)
Originally posted by badmoonWhat purposes do entitlements serve, and in whose interests are they?
Since on RHP "entilements" is a dirty word, which of the following should we do away with?
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, most Veterans' Administration programs, federal employee and military retirement plans, unemployment compensation, food stamps, and agricultural price support programs.
First angle. Let's say that those opposed in principle to all entitlements were able to have them all removed at a stroke. What would happen? I don't just mean, what would happen to the people who no longer received entitlements ("why, they'd get off their lazy backsides and get a job!" - but see below), I mean, for a start, in their communities. Entitlements, as the right like to point out, are redistributive, but not only in the simple way of taking money you earn and giving it to the unemployed or those on disability allowance. The poor don't, as a rule, invest much. No, whole communities in the US are entirely government funded. The grocery store owner, the doctor, the lawyer, the bars, the supermarkets in some neighbourhoods - they are all, by one remove, beneficiaries of redistribution. The government radically distorts the market. It can't possibly directly employ the pizzeria staff or openly subsidise the booze shop, but that is, in effect, what they are doing. No doubt there are all sorts of plans as to how to fix all of this if entitlements were to be taken away, but I hope that they all involve giving away nearly as much to securing and maintaining peace and order, because it's not just the people whose benefits you take away who will suffer - there will be a whole queue of people signing up to the non-existent benefits. (You know when the auto industry left Detroit? Multiply that up across the States. No, worse than that. Try again.) Probably, if the fix is really clever, the instability would only last a quarter of a century or so.
Second angle. Those who spend a significant portion of their lives on benefits when they could work are probably better categorised as unemployable. When the axe falls on entitlements, ask yourself seriously if you would even consider employing someone who previously thought that it simply wasn't worth the bother of working when they could claim disability or unemployment benefit and be better off. (Even if not monetarily better off, such a person must have considered themselves better off overall to have made the decision they did. In many ways, for the employer, that it might not have been a purely economic decision is surely worse.) Don't shunt them off to a fictional KFC and hope they'll employ them unless you want to imagine yourself as the manager. (Anyway, see above - there's a lot less KFCs in this brave new world. It's basically a government department.) Again, I'm sure in 25 years or so things might have improved, and the US got back its work ethic.
Third and final angle. The political-economic sphere implicitly recognises this and other problems. That's why it factors in 10% of the population as unemployed. And the rest. It also factors in all those on medical benefits (including that not small number with various 'psychological problems'😉. It recategorises some of the unemployable as military staff. It has 'free-world' leading levels of incarceration. It classes those who work twelve hours a week in a store as employed. That's the system - it depends on exclusion, on under-reporting economic reality and rigging the game to make it seem normal. You depend on it, for security at least. What do you think the US credit rating would be without all this? It's actually not dissimilar to Saudi Arabia, where the government, on the side of the wealthy, pays off the poor just enough to prevent riots. In fact, until they monumentally misjudged things in a difficult market, it's what happened throughout the Middle East.
I'm not offering an opinion on which, if any, entitlements to take away, you'll note - just asking you to consider what functions of social control and order it perpetuates, and asking what, if anything, would take its place. What would the USA become if it were not a welfare state?
It would not look like it does today, only with less people milking the state, and thus you.
11 Sep 11
Originally posted by DrKFThis is a most intriguing and eloquent post!
What purposes do entitlements serve, and in whose interests are they?
First angle. Let's say that those opposed in principle to all entitlements were able to have them all removed at a stroke. What would happen? I don't just mean, what would happen to the people who no longer received entitlements ("why, they'd get off their lazy backsides and get a job!" - ...[text shortened]... t does today, only with less people milking the state, and thus you.[/i]
11 Sep 11
Originally posted by SoothfastIn 1850 French economist Fredrick Bastiate, in a short book called "The Law", wrote that Plunder became preferable to work when it was easier and less risky than work. The risk of course was that plunder, the theft of someone else's property, land or crops was not legal, and might be punished, as well as the risk that the victim had a right to self defense.
"Entitlement" is a misnomer, since people who get Social Security and Medicare services* have paid into the system their whole working lives and so are hardly getting "something for nothing".
The social security policy Republicans really want is a wood chipper in every town into which the elderly could be shoved the day after they became too old ...[text shortened]... mendacious misnomer invented by Republicans to conjure images of freeloaders in the mind.
He wrote that the greatest evil was that of legalized plunder, institutionalized theft. In the USA, Bastiate identified slavery, and tariffs as the two worst forms of legalized plunder. Now we can add, the income tax, and the Federal Reserve system.
Entitlement is hardly a misnomer. Medicare and Medicaid have always been transfer payment programs. Social Security just became one. The fact that many people get way more out than they ever put in, and others have no hope of getting close to their input amounts make it grossly unfair, and today future payments by Social Security will be possible only based on payroll taxes of currently employed.
Your accusation about Republicans doesn't pass the smell test. GWB proposed putting 2% of payroll taxes into private accounts on a voluntary basis. That was portrayed by Dems as raping and pillaging Social Security, but when one of their own suggests a two year holiday on payroll taxes, the same party isn't at all concerned about undermining Social Security.
11 Sep 11
Originally posted by DrKFI follow your line of reasoning, but wonder not what if entitlements were dropped today, but what will happen when there is no alternative but to drop or reduce them. We can get a pretty good vision looking at Greece, the UK, and the State of Wisconsin.
What purposes do entitlements serve, and in whose interests are they?
First angle. Let's say that those opposed in principle to all entitlements were able to have them all removed at a stroke. What would happen? I don't just mean, what would happen to the people who no longer received entitlements ("why, they'd get off their lazy backsides and get a job!" - ...[text shortened]... t does today, only with less people milking the state, and thus you.[/i]
The more people that are dependent, and the longer they are, the harder the transition becomes.
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11 Sep 11
Originally posted by DrKFVery insightful.
What purposes do entitlements serve, and in whose interests are they?
First angle. Let's say that those opposed in principle to all entitlements were able to have them all removed at a stroke. What would happen? I don't just mean, what would happen to the people who no longer received entitlements ("why, they'd get off their lazy backsides and get a job!" - ...[text shortened]... t does today, only with less people milking the state, and thus you.[/i]
In a democracy like some of us here are supposedly living in, saying the government does something like funding a community is shorthand for saying the larger society funds it. By the mechanisms of government, it drops a wad of money collected from taxpayers, on the individuals or families its duly adopted laws say are entitled, and the money flows to say, a grocery store, where it flows to wholesalers and employees and the power company and the owners and the landlords and the IRS etc; generally via companies employing and owned by people who are not themselves entitled to the wad. This is no doubt redistribution, and as you point out, it flows back into the larger society. Along the way, some of those people invest some of the flow.
This can be called a distortion of the market only by defining a market not having it as 'undistorted' or 'properly shaped.' IOW that is political talk. It can also be called a stabilizing influence. That could also be political talk, noting that you say that, too.
You are right, this is what the government, as a proxy for (in our case) the society, deems necessary to maintain stability. It reflects the founding principles of the country as implemented through its laws, and those founding principles were written by people who were willing to destabilize the existing government in order to establish a government based on them. That's why we have certain recognized rights and entitlements.
12 Sep 11
Originally posted by JS357That is insightful, and might carry some weight if over time there hadn't developed clear beneficiary and benefactor classes. Along with those classes, the incentives seem to be gone to leave the beneficiary class.
Very insightful.
In a democracy like some of us here are supposedly living in, saying the government does something like funding a community is shorthand for saying the larger society funds it. By the mechanisms of government, it drops a wad of money collected from taxpayers, on the individuals or families its duly adopted laws say are entitled, and the mon ...[text shortened]... a government based on them. That's why we have certain recognized rights and entitlements.
12 Sep 11
Originally posted by normbenignVeterans and the elderly are beneficiary classes? Zounds.
That is insightful, and might carry some weight if over time there hadn't developed clear beneficiary and benefactor classes. Along with those classes, the incentives seem to be gone to leave the beneficiary class.
12 Sep 11
Don't Americans pay taxes to keep roads working, sewers flowing and jobless people from looting?
It seems to me the whole aversion of paying taxes, only to have to pay for the same benefits through some other means is utter madness.
It only serves the rich. Only ever has only ever will.
Taxes are created to benefit the majority of people. And surely that's always better than benefitting a minority?
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12 Sep 11
Originally posted by normbenignAlong with incentives, opportunities to leave it are needed. The current economic situation is showing us that.
That is insightful, and might carry some weight if over time there hadn't developed clear beneficiary and benefactor classes. Along with those classes, the incentives seem to be gone to leave the beneficiary class.
13 Sep 11
Originally posted by SoothfastYes they are beneficiaries. You may want to argue they are justified in that status. I am old, but I don't see that being old make me deserving of support by youngsters other than my own offspring.
Veterans and the elderly are beneficiary classes? Zounds.
Veterans, sure their sacrifice warrants something. But what? Is it a blank check? What about all the veterans who are working and productive?
13 Sep 11
Originally posted by JS357Yes. Years ago, I thought the law placed a 4 year limit on direct welfare payments, during a lifetime. I was wrong, in Michigan new legislation is making that the law.
Along with incentives, opportunities to leave it are needed. The current economic situation is showing us that.
The constant extending of unemployment benefits, simply creates a new class of unemployables. After someone has gone two or more years without working, who even wants to take a chance on hiring this person?
13 Sep 11
Originally posted by shavixmirI go along with roads working, sewers flowing.....but jobless people from looting?
Don't Americans pay taxes to keep roads working, sewers flowing and jobless people from looting?
It seems to me the whole aversion of paying taxes, only to have to pay for the same benefits through some other means is utter madness.
It only serves the rich. Only ever has only ever will.
Taxes are created to benefit the majority of people. And surely that's always better than benefitting a minority?
How is it right to stop looting by the government looting for them? Looters should be punished.
Taxation is in itself not immoral, but looting one group for the benefit of another is immoral. Immorality can't produce a moral society. It rots the culture from within.