Warning: You
may find my liberal perspective objectionable.
My friend Shelly Ann
Becker wrote,
“Word of the day. Entitlement!! Why do some people think they are
entitled?”
This is my response.
Our elected
representatives enact laws which require the government to make payments to some
people. These are correctly called entitlement programs because the people are
legally entitled to the payments.
Conservative
politicians ignore that fact that these people are legally entitled to payments
and instead claim and focus on the idea that vast numbers of people feel they
deserve support. The politicians claim that the fact that these people feel
they deserve support is morally objectionable and use this as an argument for
eliminating or curtailing entitlement programs.
To explore
these issues, let’s start with a dictionary definition:
Entitlement
noun
the fact of
having a right to something.
"full entitlement to fees and maintenance should be offered"
synonyms:
right, prerogative, claim;
·
the amount to which a person has a right.
"annual leave entitlement"
synonyms: right, prerogative, claim;
·
the belief that one is inherently deserving of
privileges or special treatment.
"no wonder your kids have a sense of entitlement"
The topic of
entitlement is not new. Around the time that Social Security was enacted, in
1935, there were poor houses and people who received government benefits were
said to be on the dole. So, the issue is not new. It is the use of the term
entitlement that is fairly new.
The term
entitlement is fairly new to political discussions. As far as I can remember,
and as far as I can determine, Reagan was the first president to use the term
much. I remember being confused by the term in the 80’s.
Since the 80’s,
conservative politicians have worked to shift public opinion about the meaning
of the word entitlement towards the last definition. They exploit peoples’
feelings that they are being taking advantage of. The politicians blame a
group, such as immigrants, or members of a religion, or an ethnic group and
accuse them of taking advantage of the rest of us. Indeed many articles say that entitlement
programs are legal theft by the poor from hard working middle class citizens. By
making the word entitlement imply negative feelings, they thus imply that all
entitlement programs are bad. This is a typical propaganda program. My sense is
that the right wing think tanks basically took a legal term and twisted it into
a new meaning so they could have a confusing way to attack government programs
they didn’t like.
Let’s look
at the definition of entitlement’s root word:
Entitle
verb
give
(someone) a legal right or a just claim to receive or do something.
"employees are normally
entitled to severance pay"
synonyms:
qualify, make eligible, authorize, allow, permit; enable, empower
"this
pass entitles you to visit the museum"
I believe
most people would agree that people are often legitimately entitled to
payments. For example:
You pay into
a retirement savings program throughout your career. When you retire, you are
entitled to receive payments from your savings.
After having
built a life with your spouse, you grow apart. You are both entitled to share
the assets you accumulated during your lives together.
You engage
in a contract with a legal entity that requires that entity to make payments to
you. You are legally entitled to those payments. If the other part does not
make the payments, they are in breach of contract.
Our elected
representatives, acting on the will of most of the people, enact legislation
which requires the government to make payments to some or all citizens. Those
citizens are entitled to those payments; they have a legal right to expect
those payments to be made.
The last
case leads to the issue of whether the government should be in the business of
creating, funding, and administering entitlement programs. If you google
entitlement, you can find hundreds of articles that claim that the Federal
budget is being overwhelmed by the cost of entitlement programs.
The largest
cost in the Federal budget is Social Security. Conservative politicians claim
that Social Security is so expensive that it will bankrupt the government and
so must be eliminated or curtailed. In fact, Social Security is funded by the
country’s citizens’ payments into the program and is not paid for with income
tax revenue. The system’s funding may need to be fixed (or we may need to stop
politicians raiding the system’s funds for other purposed), but this does not
mean that entitlement programs are inherently bad.
The second
largest cost in the Federal budget is health care. The leads to the issue of
whether the government should be in the business of subsidizing people who need
support. Conservative politicians claim big government is bad and imply this
means government should not help the less fortunate. They further claim that
vast numbers of people feel they deserve support when in fact they may only
feel that they are legally entitled to support because the laws say they are.
It’s
important to remember who is being supported and which entitlement programs the
conservative politicians would like to reduce. In addition to social security
and health care and welfare, think about government subsidies to the energy, steel,
automotive, farm, pharmaceutical, and military equipment manufacturing
industries. Don’t the members of these industries feel entitled to continuing
governmental support? Are those subsidies actually entitlement programs? Should
we eliminate or curtail them too?
I understand
that I did not address the question Shelly originally implied, “Why do some
people feel they deserve special treatment?” I argued that people are legally
entitled when laws exist in their favor. I also argued how conservative
politicians use propaganda to try to eliminate or reduce entitlement programs. To
answer Shelly’s question I suggest you google “Why do people feel they deserve
special treatment?” Plenty of reputable psychologists have written about this
topic.
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