*sigh*
Where do I start?
Entitlement [en-tahy-tl-muh
nt]
–noun
1. the act of entitling.2. the state of being entitled.3. the right to guaranteed benefits under a government program, as Social Security or unemployment compensation.
Since no one else seems to be concerned with the question, I guess its up to me to ask. How is it that certain people became entitled to have their healthcare paid for by the taxpayer, on no other basis than their age or their income?
Certain entitlements are at least rooted in the country, and by extension the taxpayer, having benefitted and therefore owing the recipient a quid pro quo or two. These would be entitlements like the right to burial in a national cemetery, the G.I. Bill, or V.A. Benefits. There is at least a semblance of a corolation between the grantor and the grantees of this entitlement.
However, this doesn’t explain why it is that I am expected to reduce the options for my own family so that I can contribute to the care of Mrs. Jones up the street. Especially when Mrs. Jones is engaged in a “spend down” of her assets by making inter vivos transfers of her money, real property, and other assets to family members, so that “when the time comes”, she will be eligible for Medicare?
Don’t tell me it doesn’t happen. As part of my duties as an estate planning attorney, I have been asked to give advice to help the client to do just that, so that they can make sure that their kids and grandkids “get something”, which is frequently considerably more than merely. Even in today’s battered real estate market, a completely paid-for home can fetch a tidy sum, even when sold at a loss. And I know many attorney’s who can apparently give that advice without even thinking, let alone asking “What in the Hell makes you think I want to subsidize your gifts to your heirs by paying for your medical care?”
What I find to be the real “entitlement” is the too-often held belief that this is perfectly ok. Honestly, Mrs. Jones never even asks herself “Is this right that I make everyone else pay for my care, including these heirs that I want to give my assets to?”
For some it is a mindset. Like Social Insecurity, they have “paid into it” all their lives, and cling to the fantasy that there is an account somewhere in Washington D.C. with their name on it, and all they are doing is “getting back what they paid in”, despite ample evidence that no such account exists, that the benefits that many receive would far outstrip the amounts paid in, and that sticky fingered politicians long ago used their “payments” to buy votes from some other sucker they wanted to make dependent upon their largesse. This isn’t the case, and sadly, we’re rapidly approaching the point where this nation can no longer afford to indulge the fantasies of grumpy Mr. Wilburson, Mrs. Jones, or even our parents. The time has come and gone for some brutal honesty and tough love.
Medicare is failing. It isn’t just that the program is going broke, (which it is), but it is also the fact that payments on medicare claims are so delayed and so pitifully low that many healthcare providers refuse to accept medicare patients. They can’t afford to do it for free, and “I’ll gladly pay you next year for a cheeseburger today is a crummy business model.
I have long admired Harry S. Truman, if only for the fact that a common man could so flummox the establishment, time and time again, with a certain flair that few people could carry off. That doesn’t mean I agree with everything he did. Desegregation of the military? Thumbs Up. The Steel cases? Thumbs Down. Recognizing Israel? Thumbs Up. Pissing off the D.C. Establishment? Thumbs Up. Clemency for his would-be assassins? Thumbs Down. His enthusiastic support for Medicare? That deserved a Gibbs-style headslap, but the guy was a senior citizen, and I’m not a grandpa-beater.
I still challenge the notion of such an entitlement to begin with. It was a building block for other dubious entitlements, all generous, in part because of the myth that someone else was the one who had to pay for it. This is a delusion that is only harming the country now. Debt limits choices, as any law school grad is well-aware, and the nation’s growing debt doesn’t just limit our generation’s choices, it threatens the choices of my children and my grandchildren. Pretending that its ok to continue to borrow money from China so politicians can continue to buy votes from those they would enslave and pretending that there is no reason to change the practice is an unserious answer, and it is time to be serious.
And since some would say that conservatives never have proposals, here are mine:
(1) I understand that today’s retirees have planned on these programs, and although I find them extravagant and repellant, I would preserve them for anyone age 50 or over with means testing…real means testing, that will not permit a spend down, and that will only provide partial benefits based up on your ability to pay. Yes, I understand that means grandchildren and children like me might only get the photo album and a few small possessions, and I’m ok with that, if it means that the entitlement stops.
(2) For those age 50 to 21, you continue to pay into Medicare to support those on it, but it is with the understanding that it won’t be there for you. This means that you have to do your own planning. Maybe this means that you don’t have all the possessions that Grandpa and Grandma had, but at the same time, they wouldn’t have had them either, if they were actually saving for their own old age.
(3) Under 21, you don’t pay into Medicare, and maybe you have to help with taking care of your own Grandpa and Grandma when they get old. Worse sacrifices have been made, and they are your family.
I know. It will horrify those who like to talk about the wealth of this country, and how shameful such an idea might be. But keep in mind, these are the same people who know damn well that the wealth they are referring to actually was earned by and belongs to someone else, and for all their lip service about it, their only real interest is in confiscating it so they can buy votes with it. Say “No.” and reserve entitlements for something more significant than simply drawing breath and living long enough.
Taxes, Stupidity, and Death 
BiW,
You are painfully correct, sir! It HAS to stop, and soon. Folks are expecting very unrealistic things, and very soon. It’s not gonna happen. The money’s NOT there. If you did not plan for your own survival, the government is NOT gonna have your back.
As a Boomer, I know I’m ‘entitled to SS, but I’m not depending on it. That would be foolish. We’ve been saving since we were wage earners. Anyone who’s expect ‘Uncle Sam’ to have their back, is a fool, especially with this administration.
Unfortunately, the counter-pressure will be great — possibly too great to be withstood.
FDR, though entirely devoid of principle, was politically clever. The Social Security tax itself was the linchpin of his scheme. He viewed it as investing each and every payee with a moral and legal right to Social Security benefits. Thus, he forecast that the system would be untouchable — and so far, he’s been correct.
Once the “I paid in, now I want what’s mine” dynamic has been established, it’s horribly difficult to combat. Only an Alexandrian solution — cut the BLEEP!ing thing; there’ll be no unraveling it — will serve. However, our hypothetical Alexander would have to be willing to “fall on his sword,” and hope that his successors would refrain from casting away the fruits of his heroism.
Great post and all too true. The dynamic is so f@#$ed.
I’m paying in to both SS and Medicare, and I fully expect both systems to have failed by the time I am old enough to take advantage (and I do mean take advantage) of them.
For that matter, I fully expect my US Navy retirement pay to be gone by then as well. The treasury is already raiding federal retirements.
I fully expect that the only thing I will have to live on by the time I retire is what I have managed to save and invest, and I’m not so sure about the investments given the noise being generated about the USG raiding private accounts as well.
As the saying goes, the problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people’s money.
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Touchy subject, indeed.
Social Security and Medicare have gone far astray from their original intent … agreed. Nonetheless, they were originally constructed as contributory programs and there are many who paid into them and now depend on them. Problems result from the fact that there are also many recipients who have contributed absolutely nothing (same as with welfare).
Military retirement? Some agree with me that the term “deferred compensation” would be more accurate. In 20 years of service I accumulated less than $90,000 total from base pay. Not a lot there to set up a retirement savings plan of any sort, provided I lived long enough to benefit from it, and I payed income and SS taxes from all compensation (including my “retirement” checks).
Entire industries have grown up around Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and many industries have prospered. Government at all levels is still the primary source of debt and overspending.
I see nothing wrong with “means-testing”. Nor would I object to freezing benefits at current levels. And a restructuring of the above-discussed programs is necessary. Still, not everyone has the income (nor the abilities and/or education) to enable them to set up a retirement fund that will provide even bare necessities, let alone a comfortable life.
The first step must be halting government expansion and borrowing. Limiting expenditures is the basis success for any enterprise. “There isn’t enough money” is bull. Prioritization and spending limits would provide solution.
The ingestion of an elephant is best accomplished by one bite at a time. And it is imprudent to launch the baby along with the bathwater. Enough platitudes? They still reflect common sense.
mainenowandthen makes some good points, but i would like to dissect a few if you’ll indulge me, and ask a few questions about some of the assumptions he (?) makes.
Here is where I start taking exception. While I fully agree that not all people have the ability to save for retirement, what I disagree with is that retirement is some sort of human right, which if you cannot afford it on your own should be afforded for you at the expense of your peers and fellow citizens.
Retirement is a fairly new concept. It was more or less unheard of for people to just arbitrarily draw a line and stop working and live off of savings for the rest of their lives, before, say, World War II or so. Folks chose to keep on doing things, to keep on producing and making themselves useful, well into their twilight years. Granted, they didn’t keep working the same jobs that they were able to work as younger people, but they kept doing things and earning their keep.
Retirement is something that went from being unheard of, to something few people chose to do, to something that is now seen as a universal human right to stop producing for society in the prime of your working experience and knowledge, and then live off of the backs of your fellow countrymen for the next 30 years.
That being said, i fully intend to retire, myself. It feels like the right thing to do, but i have no intention to rely on, nor expectation of recieving, a stipend check paid for by my peers so that I may afford my 30 year vacation. If I cannot save enough to do it myself, then i won’t retire. I will keep working, part time, full time, whatever, as is necessary to maintain the quality of life that I choose to have. But I will not – WILL. NOT. – be party to forcing any other person to fund that choice for me, and i will not defend the decision by any other person, even one who cannot afford it by himself but would really, really like to retire, to hold the gun barrel of government against the heads of his fellow countrymen and demand that they pay for his choice to retire.
I do not insist that “retirement” is a human right and I did not so state anywhere in my comments.
“Retirement” can come in many forms and for a lot of workers in the past it was part of a stated agreement with their employer. That particular system has undergone changes and now an employer most likely offers 401K matching contributions or some other form of inducement rather than a retirement check after so many years of service.
Government participation in “earned benefits”, as I stated, has deviated from its original intent and targeted recipients.
Ceasing to work full time in one’s mid-to-late sixties and receiving Social Security benefits is hardly stopping “producing for society in the prime of your working experience and knowledge, and then live off the backs of your countrymen for the next 30 years”. The vast majority of us will never make it out of our eighties, for one thing. Also, a large portion of “retirees” continue to work part time and/or are very active in charitable or service organizations – hardly “non-productive”. Not to mention those who have held stressful/strenuous jobs that affected their health and find it difficult to perform demanding tasks. I doubt that there are many receiving benefits who could depend upon only that for subsistence. Finally, all recipients of Social Security and other government programs involving cash pay taxes on those amounts as well as on any money that they continue to earn.
“Goober”, can I deduce (I try to avoid assumptions) that you are equally fervent in your determination to avoid having to pay into ALL programs funded through the government, e.g.. the cost of defending our nation’s citizens (including you)? Or the costs of maintaining a serviceable national transportation system?
As I stated, I believe that changes need to be made in “benefits” programs. I would like to see promises made by the government upheld, since by voting (do you?) for members of the current government, as well as those past, you certainly have enabled the “gun barrel of government” to be leveled against taxpayers. I make no demands on any other citizen and do my best to continue to contribute to my community. If you want change, then work toward it, rather than blindly accusing those who have spent much of their life as productive citizens of avarice.
Agreed. I did not mean to insinuate that you had. I was merely stating that many people do seem to think that it is such – not you necessarily. I try not to put words into the mouths of folks, and wasn’t meaning to here.
401Ks are great. They are a defined contribution plan that allows a person to reture when they’ve managed to save enough to do so. If their employer takes part, then it is part of the employment agreement that an individual has with their employer and is great. I am heavily invested in my 401K at work, with the goal of being able to “sorta” retire at about 55. I’ll get on to what I mean by that in a second.
The problem that I have is with taxpayer-funded defined BENEFIT plans, where you get a stipend, funded by your peers against their will, and that stipend is not related to any actual contribution that you put forth. Yes, you contributed to the plan to be involved, but in a defined benefit plan, your contribution could be a tiny fraction of you eventual total benefit, meaning that other people are being forced to fund your retirement whether they choose to or not. Social Security has become just such a plan.
Okay. So for the next 15 to 20 years. I fail to see the difference other than the duration that a person is forcing others to pay for their time off. But moving on…
I wasn’t really trying to make the point that retiring is a bad thing, because people become non-productive or what-not. I won’t argue that many retirees are hard workers even after their retirement. What I will argue is that other people should be forced to fund their retirement. That was the point I was trying to make. Not that retiring is bad. Just that expecting to retire as if it is some God-given right and then expecting everyone else to pay for it when you haven’t earned it is what I take exception to.
I fail to see why this is anyone else’s problem but their own. My current occupation is on the top ten most stressful jobs in the world. I don’t plan on being able to do it past 55, so I am saving money so that I can retire at 55 and get a job doing something else that might not pay as well but won’t kill me at an early age. What I am NOT doing, however, is expecting anyone else to be responsible to pay me for that decision. I am planning on being able to do it myself or not at all. The immoral action isn’t the choice to retire and take respite from the stresses of the corporate grind. The immoral action is expecting others to pay for that choice. It is akin to slavery to take the earned wages of one to benefit the other – for however long it took that man to earn what you took from him, he was your slave. I will not fund my retirement by making others my slave.
I wouldn’t deduce as such were I you. My livelihood depends on the construction of the national transportation system. Were I against that, I’d be against every penny I’ve ever earned. As far as I can tell, there are provisions for defense and for the creation and maintenance of a highway system (post roads) in the Constitution – a document carefully crafted to ensure that the only valid forms of government were those forms that it could take without enslaving some men to the wills and desires of others. What I do not see in the Constitution is the provision where I should be able to demand that my daughter, and her generation, be forced to pay for my 30 year end-of-career vacation (or that I should be forced to pay for the current retiree’s, likewise).
Yes, for what good it has done me.
I was born in 1980. I was not allowed to vote until 1998. I fail to see how the excesses of the SSA (enacted in 1936) or any of LBJ’s “great society” enhancements could possibly be considered my fault, even partially, or how I could be expected to have been able to do a thing about these excesses when the boomers outnumber my generation and are currently collecting (or will be shortly) on these benefits. Democracy is simply two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for lunch. Currently, the Boomers (wolves) outnumber the X’ers (sheep) and so guess who is getting eaten?
And yet you expect to collect Social Security… can you not see the cognitive dissonance in those mutually-exclusive concepts?
As do I.
I fail to see how I am going to convince millions of people who feel entitled to my money through a government ponzi scheme why taking my money is a bad thing, especially when they use the excuse that THEY paid in, so why shouldn’t they get theirs? As far as I am concerned, the fact that you were made your parent’s generation’s slave does not mean that it is acceptable, just, or moral to do the same thing to your kid’s generation. The fact is, IF you feel like a person who has “spent much of their life as productive citizens” are entitled to have someone else fund their retirement then:
1.) You see retirement as a human right – not something to be earned, but a thing that should be granted each individual at age 65 – despite your statement that you do not.
2.) You are making demands on another citizen, whether you care to admit it or not, and by doing so, are making him your slave.
3.) As much as I am certain that you are a good person, and that I respect your years of service to this country (thank you, seriously. Thanks so much for your service), I cannot help but think that you are very, very wrong and misguided on this one thing. Social Security is slavery, irresponsibility, and entitlement all wrapped up in one big government snot ball. It is not good. It is not just. It is not moral.
That being said, I never meant any of this to be an impeachment of you or your years of service or any of that. I simply disagree with you. It really is nothing more than that.
We do indeed disagree and you have argued your position eloquently.
It is unfortunate that you appear to be convinced that your participation in our political process (by voting) is fruitless. I hope that you continue to vote and even to join like-minded citizens in protesting the Social Security system, if you are willing to make that kind of commitment.
In many Western nations there is some sort of government plan to provide aid for the older generation and I would characterize that on the basis that it would seem to stem from the concept of Christian charity. Labeling it as “slavery” seems harsh to me, but that is, of course, your prerogative.
I would dearly love to revisit the discussion with you when you reach whatever the retirement age will be in the future, but I do not expect to be available for comment when that time is reached.
You insist that I regard “retirement” as a human right, but I am adamant that I do not. I consider human rights to be those bestowed by our Creator. Anything that the government issues comes under the heading of manufactured “entitlements”.
Thank you for an interesting discussion.
I feel the same way, but it isn’t going to stop me from being involved or stating my case. It won’t always be this way. As in all things, this, too, shall pass.
No doubt you are correct, and I will not agree to any state of society that would allow people to live in poverty because they have become too old or infirm to work. I am glad to assist anyone who CAN’T take care of themselves without complaint. I also would be on board fully with a voluntary, defined CONTRIBUTION plan where you get back out what you put into the system with a guaranteed rate of return (sort of a government plan to hedge against the catastrophe of losing it all in the stock market). What I cannot get on board with is perfectly healthy, capable people who have not bothered to save anything for their own retirement expecting everyone else to pay for their lack of planning.
I agree that this sprang from the CONCEPT of charity, but bears no resemblance to real charity, which is voluntary and not compelled by threat of violence by the state. Social Security is not charity. It is the compelled mulcting of the wealth of some for the benefit of others, by threat of state violence.
I would dearly hope that time, age, and weariness will not change my opinion on the righteousness of enslaving my daughter’s generation for my benefit. Having never been in that situation, I cannot guarantee you anything. Give me a shout in 24 years and we’ll see. I hope that I am still able to be a voice for freedom and choice then, as i try to be now – but time will tell.
And you. It is refreshing to be able to discuss somthing with someone who disagrees with you and not have it degrade into a name-calling contest. Thanks for your service and have a great Memorial Day.
Excellent BIC. You touched on a subject that I believe will eventually be the end of Medicare as we know it – and it will happen long before the program runs totally dry. And it concerns me, because I now have a daughter starting med school.
Doctors are quietly and quickly refusing to take Medicare patients. Five times in the last decade and some, medicare reimbursements have been cut to my own primary care physician. So not only is the system quickly going broke, but the options for receiving health care are being dramatically minimized.
I told this story at Rutherford’s not long ago. It bears repeating why Medicare will soon be dead.
My mother had a colonoscopy – several months passed and she received a notice that reimbursement had been made to her physician. Medicare reimbursed her doctor the grand total of $67 dollars. Her supplemental insurance had paid another $24 dollars to the doctor. She paid nothing.
Now I ask. How long will doctors tolerate being reimbursed $91 for a time consuming procedure? I would guarantee the administrative costs alone exceeded $91.
My daughter will come out $200K in debt without her first real pay check until she reaches the age of 31. Doctors can not afford to work for cheap – what’s more, they won’t.