Posted on 08/29/2011 7:22:55 AM PDT by Poundstone
I earned these 'entitlements'
I believe that most citizens do not understand what a federal entitlement program is. There are earned entitlements versus a special government entitlement that is given to an individual who needs assistance that is mandated by law.
What is a government entitlement? Note below that some are free and some are not! Why the government is lumping these programs together is beyond me: Only Congress would think this was a proper thing to do. How can a program like military retirement be linked with food stamps? The programs I am associated with should never be diminished by the federal government because they are either paid for by me and my wife or I have earned them. Most citizens believe all the federal entitlements are giveaway social programs and that is not true.
(Excerpt) Read more at redding.com ...
Whose problem is it then? Mine? My kids? I don't think so.
If somebody (in this case, the greedy ass politician) owes you money and doesn't have it, it most certainly IS your problem.
You're greedy. You know - or should know - damn well that that money isn't there, and it can only be given to you by taking it from the next generation which is guaranteed to get nothing of value at all in exchange for what you wish to take from them.
It was your responsibility to keep tabs on that money and hold the politicians who spent it (much of that at a time when the people you expect to pay for it were too young to get a vote in the matter, if they were even born yet). You failed that responsibility. It is not the next generation's job to make up for your failures.
There are few evils more pernicious than intergenerational debt.
Or as they put it in Goodfellas, " F You, Pay Me!"
Do you realize that, by law, 75% of the costs of Medicare Parts B and D come from the General Fund? The premiums for those programs cover only 25% of the costs.
Excellent observations. Social Security and Medicare, as well as public pensions/medical benefits, are the very definition of “entitlement,” because the beneficiaries believe that, in strict justice, they have earned or prepaid for what they are now claiming.
This is a concept that could be discussed at the level of philosophy, if one had plenty of wine and snacks, smoking only in the pergola, please. However, at the level of reality, the taxpayers to support the systems as they stand do not exist. So what are you going to do? (That’s a rhetorical, rather than personal, “you.”)
Can we all at least agree to drop Medicare Part D - the prescription drug plan. This was passed without a funding mechanism (ie completely debt financed), so nobody has “earned” that entitlement.
Don’t be stupid. This kind of reform can be entered into gradually and by attrition. Whoever is employed today could keep whatever amount they’re presently vested. All incoming parasites can open a friggin’ IRA.
How many years have you paid into the system? Have you always paid at the top of the wage cap? Are you including both your and your employer's contribution?
And I love the comments about how some politicial wasted the money and that is not the seniors' fault. Seniors were not on some other planet over the past 30 or 40 years. They voted for these politicians. They received the benefit of deficit spending--low taxes and middle class entitlements. Now they want to say its not their fault.
The final point is this notion that Social Security and Medicare were "promised" to Seniors. B.S. If seniors want what they were "promised", we can go back to the baseline spending for Medicare for when it was first enacted. If we do that, we will spend about $120 billion on Medicare for the next 10 years. I'm OK with that if seniors are. Same with Social Security. If we want to go back to spending the baseline projections from 1967 or even 1983, fine. But your check is going to be cut by about two-thirds.
Yep SSI.
People that don’t pay a dime into the system collect for life.
It’s not an “entitlement” it’s welfare, pure and simple. The language has changed, the facts remain the same.
A good case could be made that a contract which demands the forceable expropriation of the property of others is null. This is what we’re talking about with government employee pension (salaries, other benefits).
A private company can form a contract with its employees guaranteeing this or that compensation; yet, if the company does not have sufficient income to meet the agreed payments, the employees do not have the legal option of taking the money from non-customers by force. The employees have recourse only against the employer, for whatever they can get.
contracts agreed to by elected types for unions types in exchange for voting the elected types in.
how convenient ... and corrupt
menawhile, i’m supposed to pay for them. that’s cute.
no
Does these figures include the monthly premiums paid by seniors for medicare each month (@ $100.00)?
Do the calculations of the amount paid in include the amount paid by the employer that never shows up on paycheck stubs? This is part of the cost of employing someone, and but for the payment into SS and Medicare, this money would have been paid to the employee as salary.
Back when my Daughter was about 4 or 5 years old (she turned 16 this year) was at a Q&A with a Politiclown that was running for the Rep Party nomination for my House District.
He was going on about how important Social Security would be to our children. I started asking questions about the SS program and it was quickly evident this clown had no knowledge of how it all worked. He was incredulous that I thought Social Security was a joke. He said he would go to Washington to protect my daughter's SS.
I had to the dollar of what I and my wife had paid into SS plus being an employer a ball park figure of how much I had matched in employee contributions.
I told him that if he could instead guarantee me that my daughter would never have her money taken from her by force to fund the "Ponzi Scheme" known as Social Security he could have every dollar I and my wife paid in plus all future mandatory payments we would have to pay in and we would call it even.
He just sputtered and told me I was being unreasonable. Yet many in the audience applauded and many of them were elderly Social Security recipients.
Gee...sounds like your afraid someone’s gonna pull you off the government (taxpayer1) tit! Tough!
It's even more simple than that.
Any "contract" which pretends to oblige a future legislature to raise a specific amount of revenue is void on its face.
The Supreme Court of the United States disagrees with you. See Flemming v Nestor.
They don't "owe" you a damned thing and you know it.
Thank you. My contracts-law classes were long ago, and I hesitated to overreach for fear of being totally dead wrong ;-).
One might put government/union contracts under the heading “for an immoral purpose,” like a murder-for-hire contract, and therefore not legally a contract at all.
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