Interesting, isn’t it? Borrowing? They’ve been “borrowing“ from Social Security since Reagan was in office with NO plan to pay it back EVER. How, exactly, is this even legal? When did the GOP ever care about the middle class? Anyone?
As have we all. Trump’s clown car of a cabinet, AKA 2025 Billionaire Boys Club have absolutely NO interest in making everyday ordinary Americans lives better. They have ZERO interest in making your groceries more affordable, your housing, your gasoline, or anything else for that matter. Wake up.
Sorry, didn’t mean to imply you or everyone hasn’t contributed a ton to social security. While I despise Dump, this is something the Republicans have been saying for decades and it drives me insane that every single citizen isn’t up in arms about it.
What is your point? Taxpayers pay taxes and their taxes pay for government expenditure, e.g. defence, health, education etc, including social security, and one's entitlement to social security is governed by law.
Social Security is a different fund. They were never supposed to touch it and it would have self-funded if they hadn’t. Instead, they have used it to fund many things (voted on by Congress, of course) to “pay back later.” Since they can’t pay it back, they want to cut it… that’s the point.
Thanks, now I understand. Fun fact, we had something quite similar in Australia. It was called the National Welfare Fund. Sadly, it too is no longer with us. They changed the law and age pensions etc are now paid from the consolidated revenue (annual budgets).
It's a simple retirement plan/pension, that we and our employers paid for. A relative of mine is over 72 and thinks Social Security is a welfare entitlement and won't claim her benefits. She got mad at me for reminding her to claim the money that is hers. By not claiming, she gifts back to fund.
Yep. Please give me back all the money that I ever paid into SS for the ‘entitlement’ of others, who also did the same.
Politicians seeking SS abolition will swiftly find out how the people feel. All 68 million of them currently receiving benefits.
I hate that the gop has bastardized the language so much that an earned benefit is no longer the definition of entitlement in most people’s mind. 😡🤬 and now means a handout apparently.
Social security is a government investment program and I have the right to withdraw that investment and the interest it’s earned over 50+ years of investing.
An entitlement, on the other hand, is being an elected rep and getting millions in covid “loans” YOU don’t have to pay back.
But students do.
I call social security a "retirement trust account."
Instead of a bank, the US governement handles the Trust fund.
As people live longer, I think it's not unreasonable to up the age to draw the funds until full retirement age of 68 instead of 67, and vice-versa if life expectancy falls again.
If it was invested as such, you’d be 100% correct. But they’ve treated it like a slush fund since almost the beginning of the program, so I truly believe they think all we’re “entitled” to is what we paid in, sans interest (since it was never invested).
Some like me started working before IRAs. Counting on that $$ to survive my old age. It's appalling to see billionaires foaming at the mouth thinking of ways to manipulate it and make us suffer and fret in our golden years so they can play with it. While my pension goes to insurance 😒
Neither is Social Security "Spending", and neither is it the governments revenue. It is what we have worked for our entire lives and paid into on every cent we made, unlike the rich. Go ahead and play games, at age 69 I cannot wait to march in the streets, this one is well worth it.
I certainly earned it, been working my ass off since I was 14 and I am very close to social security eligibility. Fuckin Elon Musk, an immigrant, an outsider coming to America and telling us how to handle our business.
Me too! My hubby. He better not even THINK about fuckery when it comes to that.
Work out a problem to fix it. Not easy. Some of the proposals I’ve read about ain’t pretty.
Remove cap on high earners. Wouldn’t solve it but it’d be a great start.
Fat chance tho in this environment.
To Republicans, Social Security isn't a retirement fund - it's just spoiling the elderly with radical demands like "medication" and "not freezing to death." What's next, TWO meals a day? These seniors need to check their privilege...
Other info I’ve been thinking about lately; social security does not contribute to national debt and the system would be flush if Congress would repay the money it’s ‘borrowed’ from the trust fund.
It's a pot of money that these oligarchs want to take for themselves.
At the current state of political discourse in the U.S. it's entirely likely that Trump & Co will take it all and then blame the democrats - and get away with it.
I thought it was called an entitlement because it's legally written as Social Security title 1. Subsequent clauses are titles 2 through whatever number is final.
They are named legal titles so they are entitlements.
Really? It IS an entitlement. That's what it's called because people are entitled to it. That's what the word means. I'm surprised you got distracted by this semantic nonsense. Shocked even.
Social Security & Medicare are automatically deducted from each of your paychecks, your employer matches those deductions, then sends that $ directly to the US Treasury. Rs use the word 'entitlement' to make it sound like a government handout. It's not. It's your money.
We need to channel George Lakoff and think about language. Entitlement means what you are *entitled* to (b/c you earned it). Is there a synonym that wouldn't be such a strong trigger for the right? Think about it.
Damn right. I paid into it for 60 years, willingly, because I understood it to be a covenant between an honest government and myself and the millions of others who paid into it. Go ahead, mess with it MAGidiots. FAFO.
I hate the term entitlement, it should be labeled as investment. The wealthy have controlled the narrative in order to make everyone believe it's a bad thing.
Trump expressly said he wouldn't cut Social Security, idiots believed him.
When he uses Elon and Vivek and Dave McCormick as his proxies, those same idiots will believe he had nothing to do with cutting a program that Democrats ran on protecting because they are brainwashed. Or stupid.
He won’t likely cut my benefit because that would cause an uproar and noticeable hardship, but he will push retirement age back and reduce benefits for future retirees.
This is all he’s saying, but dummies don’t get it.Same as pre-existing conditions.They’ll be covered all right for a LOT more $.
The young people who work with me aren't paying attention. They're gonna have to work until they're 150 years old. They seem to depend on others (parents) for their survival when trouble comes their way.
I thought you were better educated. It is the very definition of an entitlement.
entitlement /ĕn-tīt′l-mənt/
noun
1. The act or process of entitling.
2. The state of being entitled.
3. A government program that guarantees and provides benefits to a particular group.
Entitlement is not a bad word.
The solution to SS shortfall (aside from Congress stop stealing from it) is to impose the SS tax on 100% of everyone’s income, not just on the lower paid people. It’s right in front of us and will not be a burden on the top earners. And they collect more in benefits than the average worker.
Which is an entitlement. Just like being entitled to a car you paid for, or food you paid for, or anything you paid for. The GOP has turned entitlement into a bad word, but they mean like trump feeling entitled to grope women.
My point is that it’s your money if you’ve invested into the system, yet it’s treated by those who want to cut it as if it’s people expecting (entitled to) handouts.
Change “invested” to “paid” and “handouts”to “payouts” and it’s both. It’s more of an IOU than an investment. There’s no pot of money that the government has invested in the market somewhere that “belongs to you” like an IRA. There’s only a government promise. Fwiw.
Did the money that was taken out of the fund by various parties over the years ever get put back? And those are the people proposing that it be privatized, right? Which is a means of getting it on the market to manipulate and funnel it to themselves. Work till death made reality
Great point! Framing money workers have put into a retirement system, involuntarily, for their whole lives as an entitlement is the first step to cutting it as a "government expense". Factually and morally wrong but persusasive to those who are not terribly informed or don't care.
Don't think of Social Security so much as an investment program. It's more of an insurance program. You pay the "premiums" during your working years and get to claim benefit payouts when you're old or disabled. As with normal insurance, some beneficiaries collect more than they pay in, some less.
FICA a directed tax, like gas tax which is put into a fund to maintain highways. In this case it funds a benefit to people of a certain age who have worked for wages, the disabled, and survivors.
The money you pay during working years pays the benefits of those currently receiving them. We need more revenue from current workers to pay current benefits because there are more old people relative to workers than before.
I remember when Al Gore was teased about his plan to put SS deductions into a "lockbox" rather than the General Fund... like a managed pension account, separate from operating funds. But he lost the 2000 election, so now SS payouts are just another "expense", vulnerable to cost cutting.
I like to point out that it’s called an entitlement because it is my hard-earned money, which I am entitled to.
The weaponization of the word is a strategy by evil-doers to one day separate us from our hard-earned money without an uprising.
If we follow in Russia’s footsteps, our pensions are next.
I don’t know how “entitlement” got turned into a “dirty” word but your explanation makes sense. The original accurate meaning is something that you have a legitimate right to, but it’s been construed to imply that it is something you feel “entitled” to by virtue of privilege.
Actually Social Security is a trust fund. Social security trust is paid to retirees & disabled. And based on history, SS states it was never intended to be a retirement, rather replace some of your income.
It makes no sense at all. From the very first paycheck to the last, we Americans pay into the Social Security system, yet our government seems to think that money belongs to them. WHY?
It's not quite so simple. The $$ I paid in FICA tax didn't go into an accounti n my name. It was pooled in a fund which paid out benefits to the retired & disabled while l worked. When I retired, those still working pay into the fund which pays me.
Yep, and not only are the Republicans trying to steal it from us, they've already "borrowed" 1.7 trillion that has never been paid back. Personally, I call that theft.
And yet, people and employers who have paid into the system are prevented from collecting their full benefits because of the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset. The bill to repeal is in the Senate, but Schumer won’t call for a vote. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senate-social-security-fairness-act-what-happens-next/
I completely understand your anger and frustration, but I don’t think leaving the party will make any difference. SS is in bigger trouble with the Republicans, which is why there’s such a push to reform #WEP_GPO now.
The WEP has taken over $10K from me in the past 2 years and if the repeal of the GPO & WEP aren't passed by the Senate before January 1 it won't get passed. So screw it. This is my red line. They failed me when they passed on Joe.
You misunderstood. Schumer has the power to right the wrong. He can move the bill forward that will correct the Republicans malfeasance, but he hasn’t. The bill passed the House with a bipartisan majority, 60 Senators that have co-signed. All that’s needed now is for Schumer to move the bill.
Yes, it’s a crazy schedule and a deadline on all things Democratic. This is likely to be the last chance to expand SS benefits for more than 2M people who have already paid into the system, at least until 2029. It’s been in Congress for decades and this is the closest it’s been to passage. Its time.
And here’s the thing: most government pension benefits years ago were cut with the explanation that workers would be required to start paying into SS, but that the pension cuts would be offset by SS so it all evened out.
And now suddenly it’s a “windfall”. This stinks worse than 🍊🤡’s diaper.
If they want to cut social security, they need to pay back every taxpayer who has paid into it…and they can start with me by paying me back EVERY cent that they have taken from my checks for the past 27 years.
SS is a tax that is transferred to current retirees. It’s a safety net, not a 401k.
It’s a social contract with the expectation that since you paid into it, you will get something back (based on whatever the working wage pool is when eligible).
But it is called an entitlement (no negative connotations). It would be good if those who attach negative connotations to the word (our current, weird social climate) look elsewhere to get riled! What matters is that we all get what we should expect based on years worked and what we put in.
It is absolutely an entitlement in that it is something to which we are entitled. Stop letting the GOP gives words new meanings. The existing meanings are just fine.
They act like we had a choice. It’s OUR money. They took it, and promised to give it back. They borrowed from it, and now want to take it away from us because they don’t want to have to pay back the funds they shouldn’t have borrowed in the first place.
I still cannot collect without deduction until 69 and 10 months of age. I will sacrifice my 45 years of contributions to cut it and watch MAGATS suffer. FAFO time
You must pay into SS with every check u get since age 16. The govt uses OUR money until we’re 65.Then what little they give back, u must PAY again for medicare
$200, medigap$150., still have no coverage for dental, hearing or vision.Then they FBCKING tax us- again.Plus no real coverage!
An entitlement program is not the same as an entitlement mentality, despite both terms often being shortened to just "entitlement." We should all know the difference between the two, and call out when they are conflated. Social Security is an example of the former, not the latter.
How could it even be considered an "entitlement"? I have the receipts of my deposits, Aka paycheck stubs.
It's like saying when I withdraw money from my bank account it's an entitlement.
It is sad to acknowledge that I know people who have been paying into Social Security for more than four decades and yet do not realize that is why they will get the benefit when they retire soon. It is so strange that this is not better understood, by everyone, especially those wearing red hats.
Comments
Borrowing without paying it back is what was called stealing back in the day.
It's not a handout given to you by the rich. In fact, the rich pay a much smaller percentage of their income into it than any of us do.
Sink or swim, baby.
/s
Politicians seeking SS abolition will swiftly find out how the people feel. All 68 million of them currently receiving benefits.
An entitlement, on the other hand, is being an elected rep and getting millions in covid “loans” YOU don’t have to pay back.
But students do.
Instead of a bank, the US governement handles the Trust fund.
As people live longer, I think it's not unreasonable to up the age to draw the funds until full retirement age of 68 instead of 67, and vice-versa if life expectancy falls again.
Work out a problem to fix it. Not easy. Some of the proposals I’ve read about ain’t pretty.
Remove cap on high earners. Wouldn’t solve it but it’d be a great start.
Fat chance tho in this environment.
At the current state of political discourse in the U.S. it's entirely likely that Trump & Co will take it all and then blame the democrats - and get away with it.
I am ENTITLED to the money because my employers and I paid it on MY behalf since I was 16.
They are named legal titles so they are entitlements.
When he uses Elon and Vivek and Dave McCormick as his proxies, those same idiots will believe he had nothing to do with cutting a program that Democrats ran on protecting because they are brainwashed. Or stupid.
This is all he’s saying, but dummies don’t get it.Same as pre-existing conditions.They’ll be covered all right for a LOT more $.
entitlement /ĕn-tīt′l-mənt/
noun
1. The act or process of entitling.
2. The state of being entitled.
3. A government program that guarantees and provides benefits to a particular group.
Entitlement is not a bad word.
Project 2025 has been put on steroids!
FICA a directed tax, like gas tax which is put into a fund to maintain highways. In this case it funds a benefit to people of a certain age who have worked for wages, the disabled, and survivors.
It is not money you invest and get to withdraw.
The weaponization of the word is a strategy by evil-doers to one day separate us from our hard-earned money without an uprising.
If we follow in Russia’s footsteps, our pensions are next.
They’re going to steal our savings. This cannot be allowed to happen.
It's less an investment than a pyramid scheme.
Suddenly, everyone who wasn't worried and voted accordingly has a long list of demands for Democrats.
And now suddenly it’s a “windfall”. This stinks worse than 🍊🤡’s diaper.
It’s a social contract with the expectation that since you paid into it, you will get something back (based on whatever the working wage pool is when eligible).
Deep cuts break promises to the current elderly.
I am entitled II get it.
$200, medigap$150., still have no coverage for dental, hearing or vision.Then they FBCKING tax us- again.Plus no real coverage!
It's like saying when I withdraw money from my bank account it's an entitlement.