Entitled to my Entitlements

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With President Obama making noises about budget cuts, the word entitlements is bandied about in the media with regularity, from some of the most notable minds of today.  They talk about the expenses for Social Security and Medicare as comprising two-thirds of government spending.  Cuts must be made, they say, even in these hallowed areas.  How else is the budget ever going to be balanced?

Excuse me?  "Entitlements" are being discussed as if we are, in fact, NOT entitled to these returns.  I am nearing retirement age, and I have worked and paid into Social Security and Medicare (approximately 15% give or take over the years) for my entire working life, half the prescribed amount as an employee, but the full amount for the past 23 years as a business owner.  As an American citizen, even if I had chosen to work overseas, my income would still be subject to American taxes.  Folks, that makes me entitled to whatever I can get as a benefit for my hard work.  Roosevelt, in his wisdom, wrote Social Security into law as a protective measure from the Great Depression.  But as such, future citizens did not have any choice of contributing or not -- the money was taken out of our paychecks automatically.  We are given the option to escrow or not our property taxes; but not Social Security or Medicare. 

Politicians have long known that Social Security is sacrosanct, as it should be.  It should be so because we have paid into it.  This is not free money that the government is giving us.  In fact, it could be said that the government has mismanaged our monies over the years by pilfering it, or not maximizing its potential returns.  At the current minimal interest rate environment, we are getting almost no returns on our monies.  And the program is supposedly going broke because of the diminishing population.

Several solutions have been proposed, among which was privatization, which was not received very well.  I suppose people are afraid of managing their own monies; or feel incapable of such feat; or the government does not trust us to take care of our own financial affairs; or the government does not want to hand over a relatively large chunk of money out of its coffers.  Any number of explanations is valid here.  But these are irrelevant.  What is relevant is that the program is maligned as just another "entitlement" program.  Forgive me, but I have owned a duplex that I rented out on the Section 8 program, and have therefore been on the giving end of that "entitlement" program.  There were some very able-bodied people taking advantage of the government's largesse, people who could get jobs, people who did have jobs but didn't report them -- in short, people who manipulated the system in order to get some free money.

What about people who cross our borders in order to get free medical care?  Are those not entitlement programs?  Did those people contribute the least bit into that care?

Please, don't insult my intelligence.  The Medicare system is closely tied to our medical delivery system, and as such, I can see the enormous waste generated in that area, the inefficiencies and downright fraud; doctors who order too many tests (I can personally attest to that); medical costs that are simply outrageous, almost criminal (an aspirin dispensed at the hospital for $85?!?).  If the government wants to get involved, let's see it control some of those costs.  But not what I have contributed with the sweat of my brow.

I wonder if anyone has proposed a wholesale refund to everyone who has contributed into the system, and simply doing away with it outright?  Just give out a lump sum of all your contributions to date, without recourse to any future assistance from the government.  Yes, it would be a large outlay, but there would be no further debt overhang, and the recipient would then be in charge of managing those funds and his or her retirement.  Of course, the fear mongers would tell you that wouldn't be the end of that, and those recipients would still be out there with their hands out looking for government assistance.  I don't know; I, for one, would rather manage it on my own.

Another thing: I know a few, shall we say, well-off individuals, people who have "made it."  A couple of friends of mine who are retired have a cumulative income of approximately $250,000 a year from pensions, Social Security and savings; and yet they choose to do nothing with their money - they don't travel, don't eat out, don't go to the movies.  Fine.  That's their choice.  But there are others who have made huge sums of money, and yet are still entitled to and receiving Social Security benefits.  Shouldn't people with incomes of greater than $X, be barred from receipt of benefits?  After all, there is a limit of $106,800 income above which Social Security is no longer paid.  So what if a person makes $1 million?  What about the likes of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett or George Soros or the (undeserving) executives on Wall Street who received those huge bonuses?  These are inequities which must be addressed fairly, rather than talking in sweeping terms about so-called entitlements.  It is not enough to lament the great expenditures that the government has.  It would be far more constructive to create some rigorous oversight conditions to the gratuitous doling out of monies from the government.  There is a reason why Medicare is so corrupted with fraud - government money is too easy to come by.  The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) is another example where banks received huge sums of money from the government, with very little oversight or accountability required, with the result that they have been hoarding monies, unwilling to lend, yet all-too-willing to enrich themselves by investing in the stock market and give enormous bonuses to their executives.  Methinks somethin' wrong here!