entitlements

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American Entitlement


In my advancing years I am looking for new and better ways to be “of service” and how I can be a productive member of society in the long-term.  It will not be long before I am “entitled” to Medicare, but I am at odds over being deserving.  While it is true that I have paid into this program my entire adult life, I have a pretty good insurance policy that will see me through the rest of my life, provided I continue to pay into it, which I will.  This entitlement called “Medicare” seems a bit redundant to me although I confess to not knowing a lot about it.  It is my hope I will never find the need to figure it out for any personal use.

I never got an allowance, and to be perfectly honest, the concept of such a thing when I was a kid was totally foreign to me.  True, I begged money from my parents from time-to-time, but once I figured out how I could earn it for myself, in general I stopped asking.  And so, from about age 12 onward I always had ways to putting money in my own pocket without my parents help.  This concept seems relatively lost on today’s generation.  Why is that?  Why do they feel entitled to an allowance and a whole lot more?  I suspect a lot of the blame lies in my generation’s permissiveness.

Once again this year I have to send the government money to pay for my federal and state taxes.  Consider that I am living off social security and a modest retirement plan.  I do not begrudge the government a cent of this money.  It seems to me the benefits I have reaped far outdistanced anything I have paid in taxes.  Having lived in, and visited, several dozen foreign countries, I can attest to the fact that we have things better than anyone else in the world.  But I do not understand why paying your fair share is such a hard concept for the Republican party to get its arms around.  They seem to be the party of tax loop-holes and unequal levying of taxes on individual.  This goes back to millionaires, and billionaires, who literally figure out how to pay nothing, or very little, it taxes, while low and middle-income families are required to pay anywhere between 15 and 28% of their gross income.  The entitlement of the rich is astounding.

The Reagan administration was the champion of laissez faire when it came to corporate and financial America.  It was, in their minds, somehow un-American to make them answerable for their actions.  When Wall Street imploded in 2007, so adept was Wall Street at double-talking, they invented the phrase “too big to fail” which was, and is, a euphemism, bail me out and do not hold me responsible even though I have acted anywhere from irresponsible to absolutely criminal.

I have this strange believe that with the entitlements one gets just from being born in America, goes a responsibility to serve, at least for a little while, at the federal, state, or local level.  I chose the military to do that.  People these days love to criticism the military and lump it together as the “military-industrial complex.”  To be certain, industrial America is, and unfortunately, always has taken advantage of defense dollars and spending them as if they need not worry about responsibility for responsible spending.  I am not now, nor have I ever been, a part of that.  I chose to serve on active duty in the army for 11 years, another 4 in the national guard, and have just recently returned to a unit of the Massachusetts State Militia known as the Massachusetts State Defense Force.  For my participation in this organization I am paid absolutely nothing except when ordered to duty by the governor.  I do this because I feel responsible and this is how I respond.

The only things I feel entitled to are those things I have worked for and earned.   If I have to pay higher fares to keep the MBTA running, fine.  Do not misunderstand, I want its debt to be brought under control, but in the meantime, I will pay my way.  If I have to pay a little more in federal taxes to improve the condition of the roads I drive on, so be it.  What I expect in return from congress is a more responsible approach to the letting of contracts.

I want an end to all corporate welfare, without exception.  Corporate America should be entitled only to equal protection under the law, but no financial compensation for being in business.

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Entitlements Are Bankrupting America


According to the December 14 2012 issue of US New & World Report, nearly two-thirds of the U.S. Budget goes to payments of entitlements, social security, welfare, etc.  In 1960 that amount was less than one-third.  One of the biggest problems has been congress’s unwillingness to properly deal with entitlements.  At that rate our annual federal budget will, in the not too distant future, have 90% going out to various entitlement programs.  That fact is, we simply cannot afford to continue at this rate.  We have got to come to terms with the fact that we cannot be all things to all people.

Since its inception, social security has been the one entitlement program where Americans have contributed a portion of their income into it.  But the problem is, that money is not banked but used as funding for other federal programs.  This should be the first, and easiest, program to fix.  While I do not agree with the Republican plan to privatize social security, I do believe that the government should take that revenue stream, and through a dozen or so investment firms, set aside this money for future use.  Although I do not know, I suspect there is some federal law that prohibits such transactions at this point.  That can be cured by Congress passing a law that allows for the investment of social security revenue alone into private investment firms.  This would not resolve the short-term problems of social security funding, it would most definitely help in the long-term.

The next entitlement program that needs tackling is welfare and its various programs.  I think this program can be reigned in by turning over most of the program’s management and fund distribution to the various states.  Each state would be responsible for identifying individuals eligible for welfare.  They would also contribute, say 20%, to the funding of the program.  That all by itself should help with accountability in the programs.  Each month every state would submit a listing of those eligible to start receiving, or continue receiving, welfare benefits.  The federal government would in turn issue the checks.  But each state would be responsible for food subsidies to include who is eligible and how the program is administered in their states.  That state would submit its annual welfare budget to the federal government for payment.

We also need to end all forms of corporate welfare, particularly oil subsidies and farm subsidies.  The farm subsidy started in the late 1930s when the federal government needed to reign-in what and how much of any particular crop was grown.  Farmers, for example, had been growing wheat on land that could no long support the crop and driving down prices to a point where few people made a profit.  But since the 1950s, and the evolution of modern farming techniques, American farmers are much more responsible with what and how they grow their crops.  Farm subsidies are an anachronism and need to end now.

Where oil subsidies are concerned, Republicans claim that ending them will necessarily drive up the price of gasoline.  In the short-term, they are probably correct, but in the long-term market forces will help set reasonable prices.

Democrats need to take a much more pragmatic view of America’s entitlement programs if we are to ever get some control over the federal budget and the federal debt.  And for their part, Republicans need to moderate their demands away from the draconian and towards a form that conservatives and liberals alike can work with.