About the word “entitlement”

The word “entitlement” is an interesting word. Over the years it has gotten attached to a number of government programs, such as Medicare and Social Security. Politicians have used the word to imply that we are somehow “owed” these benefits, and therefore it would be immoral and illegal to take them away.

In fact, of course, we are no more “entitled” to these benefits than we are “entitled” to a million dollar mansion or a 200 foot private yacht. If we can afford the mansion or the yacht, we can buy them; if we can’t afford them then we simply can’t have them. So too with Social Security and Medicare and all the other “entitlements” politicians like to hand out to buy votes. If the nation can afford them, we can have them. If the nation can’t afford them, we can’t have them. And right now, the nation can no longer afford them.

With Social Security, there is some justification to the word “entitlement”, because we all paid into the system and were promised by Congress that our payments would go into a “lockbox” and be there to return to us in our retirement. The fact that Congress betrayed that trust, taking the money every year to pay for politically popular programs and leaving us nothing but paper IOUs in the “lockbox” doesn’t mean we are now “entitled” to Social Security. It just means we were suckered by our politicians and by our own carelessness and inattention into letting Congress get away with the theft.

In essence, no one is “entitled” to anything. We can have what we can afford, and we can’t have what we can’t afford. It’s the same lesson we learned with the subprime mortgage crisis. And like subprime mortgages, if we take on an obligation we can’t really pay for, it ends in disaster. That is the underlying reality behind our so-called “entitlements” like Medicare and Social Security. They are wonderful ideas, but only if we know how to pay for them.

There is a parallel here to our “rights”. Academics and philosophers can argue at length about what our natural “rights” are, but as a practical matter the only “rights” any of us ever have are the ones we can and are willing to defend, as a brutal world proves every day.