Entitlement: How a Definition Has Changed

The root word of "entitlement" is title. This word was defined in the 1930 Dictionary as "the feeling a person of privilege has when expecting reward to which they are due". Another definition that was common for this term fifty years ago was "the right or title" due in a monarchy or aristocracy. In short, a title that a person of noble birth has coming to them by law, by birthright. Entitlement in this definition is a right of passage, a title, like Duke or Duchess, that a aristocrat would assume according to feudal law and custom.

Today, entitlement has a totally different definition. Wikipedia, which remember is a digest of various Internet contributors, defines entitlement using Medicare and Social Security as examples. Welfare is also defined as an entitlement.

Yesterday, while visiting my golf club's urinal, I read on the cork board, an Internet "joke" using golf as a metaphor for the "entitlement society". Basically the hit piece said that high handicappers in an entitlement system, would get to win, no matter how bad they were, and the hard working low handicappers were screwed.

This echoes the conservatives rock solid belief that the "entitlement society" rewards the undeserving, the lazy at the expense of the hard working middle class.

Really? Social Security and Medicare are both social insurance programs, every participant pays a premium (payroll tax) into a fund. When you retire, the "entitlement" you receive is funded by the payroll tax contributions of everyone who pays, both the retiree and current workers.

There is no gift here. There is no giveaway. The system is predicated on current workers paying for the benefits of those who retire, and once a worker retires, they are guaranteed a certain base benefit as well. In the case of Social Security, the level of benefit is based on the amount you contributed when you worked. These two programs are even more essential today, with many middle class retirees having lost their pensions in the conservative caused recession.

Republicans have hated these programs since they were passed. I remember Ronald Reagan in the 1960s made a LP Record attacking the idea of Medicare. Republicans hate Medicare!

The reasons for which they were passed (the elderly dying in the streets, and the elderly going without medical care of any kind and dying) were totally ignored totally by the cons. "It is a government giveaway program, an entitlement" and must be destroyed! They said this in in the 30s and 60s, they still say it today.

Just yesterday, another "proposal" was made as part of a "budget" by a conservative fanatic in Congress, to destroy Medicare, privatize it, and basically kill it. This was supposedly to reduce the deficit that Republicans caused by a yet another mindless tax cut!

Meanwhile, America still has over 50 million uninsured, because like fools, we base our health insurance on private for profit companies insuring through employers. A retired person is not employed, so without Medicare (or being rich), NO HEALTH INSURANCE! Back to dying in the street!

But Fox News and the conservative propaganda machine has literally re-defined the word "entitlement" to not mean an aristocratic title given to the rich, but a government handout to the undeserving.

How middle class white old guys can get so worked up over this, while they are on Social Security and Medicare,is beyond me.

Every statistical, reputable scientific study of poverty and health care in the world, ranks the United States in the low twenties behind every developed country.

In short, America is the antithesis of an "entitlement" society. We are not even close!

The poor and those unfortunate enough to be unemployed or on welfare, receive far less in benefits and government help than over twenty like industrialized nations. To be poor in the United States is to live in an agony that is known only in third world nations.

But still, the middle class, angry at everything (including themselves) insists that the "entitlements of big government" are unfair, reward the lazy, and need to be repealed.

Here is a news flash for you: the entitlement society exists alright, for the rich and well-born. Tax policy over the past forty years has enabled a culture where inherited wealth is the norm. In fact, George W. Bush, got the "death tax" reduced to zero, allowing already fabulous rich spoiled brats to inherit all of daddy's money. Millionaires are now billionaires in America.

In a true sense, America's entitlement society is creating a real aristocracy, and returning the word's definition to the classic sense: aristocrats are protected by law in their inheritances and titles against any attempt at fairness or social equality. The Declaration of Independence and the Contitution are being discarded so the rich can have even more at the expense of everyone else. "We the People" serve the aristocrat, just like it was in 1775.

Fox News, and the conservative sound machine, have convinced middle class angry whites, that entitlements are for the poor, when in reality they are for the rich.

And again, every statistical study you can find, proves a huge shift in wealth from the middle class to the very rich.

So the next time you sneer at "entitlements", remember the root word is "title", as in Sir, Duke, and King...or is it Fuhrer!?