SAY WHAT?

Our President Elect, Obama, is muttering something very scary - about our social security benefits and medicare. The word the news is using, and I hope Obama is not using is "ENTITLEMENT PROGRAM"

A legal definition of Entitlement Program is: A federal program that guarantees a certain level of benefits to persons or other entities who meet requirements set by law, such as Social Security, farm price supports or unemployment benefits. It thus leaves no discretion with Congress on how much mo.....The legal term, however, carries no value judgment: it simply denotes a right granted. For example in the United States of America, social security is an entitlement program.[1]

Now, I'm not quite sure I understand this. A right granted to receive back our own money?

We pay a hefty sum of our earnings throughout our working lives into Social Security and Medicare with the expectation we will get this back in monthly payments or services at the end of our lives. Should we be "entitled" to receive these payments back - of course we should - we have already paid our federal income tax in addition to our Social Security and Medicare payments.

The government has "borrowed" all our money that we entrusted to them for our old age "security program," so, of course government doesn't have the money to make future actual payments to the retirees of baby boomer age and elders.

Perhaps the government of the U.S. is adopting this translation of "Entitlement":

In clinical psychology and psychiatry, an unrealistic, exaggerated, or rigidly held sense of entitlement may be considered a symptom of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

So when the government doesn't like things what do they do, change the law? Pur current President had quite a push for a while that we should be changing the program and place these contributions toward our retirement Social Security program into the stock market. Boy, that would have been a fine disaster for people who are retiring right now and in the future, would it?

Entitlement is a guarantee of access to benefits because of rights, or by agreement through law. It also refers, in a more casual sense to someone's belief that one is deserving of some particular reward or benefit.[1] It is often used as a pejorative term in popular parlance (i.e. a 'sense of entitlement').

How terribly cocky and presumptive of me, to think I would get back the funds I contributed all my life to these programs - yes, I confess, I do have a sense of entitlement -

I guess what our President Elect's exact plans will be remain to be seen. I will only say this: Obama, you said you knew what the common man goes through in trying to survive - don't let the nation's elderly population disappear into even worse poverty (granted, a few lucky or well planned people who have had no terrible life disasters still have their 401K's and savings left to rely on - but it doesn't take much to rob us of those nest eggs - that was the purpose of Social Security and Medicare - to provide a cushion in case of a failing economy!!!!!

Government can use our money to bail out banks who don't know how to manage their businesses - and then blandly sit back when the banks tell them that they just can't tell them where the money went - "into the pot" some said. I hope when Obama takes office he lets us have our own money - no more bank give aways, no stealing it for other uses - !