A contract requires an offer by one party, acceptance by the other, and mutual consideration (both parties getting something they value).
Social Security is not a contract. The government doesn’t “offer” Social Security enrollment, and participants don’t “accept” it. The law says everyone has to (other than a fairly limited group of federal and state employees), whether they “accept” the agreement or not.
There are some arguments that the right to receive Social Security benefits is guaranteed by law - but not contract law - but to date, they have all failed.
Look at it this way: if the federal government was on the verge of insolvency, do you actually think any court would order it to continue making SS payments?
The debate is about the meaning of the word “entitled.”
In the rules of Major League Baseball, a batter is entitled to walk to first base if he’s hit by a pitched ball. Obviously he’s not going to make it if the ball split his cranium or put him in a coma.
This is a view held mostly by people who are trying to deal with the cognitive dissonance of voting for people who want entitlement reform but want to believe the people they are voting for are only talking about “welfare queens”
Wasn’t it the late Senator Russell B. Long (son of Huey the Kingfish) who said
Don’t disentitle you, don’t disentitle me,
Disentitle that other fellow behind the tree!
?
I admit it’s not common anymore, but I definitely heard it a good portion of my life, and I my first memories are after Reagan.
The underlying concept continues, however, and Damuri describes it pretty well. Some people still seem to assume that welfare mostly goes to people who don’t need it. That’s why it’s presented as an entitlement, while Social Security is not.
The term now means “something I don’t think you should be entitled to.”
It’s about the change in definition of entitlement. It used to mean something you were entitled to. Now it means something you aren’t entitled to but want anyway.
This has been pretty clear in every post in this thread except for yours.
It means something “they” want and aren’t entitled to. It never is used in the first person. That’s the whole point of it.
It always means and has meant an advantage in the world. The change is about what it means to be entitled to something from the government, and about whether the government is entitled to do that, or whether we should dismantle it because government benefits people who we don’t like. We probably are underestimating and underreporting exactly what government has done for ***us ***in that scenario.
It’s used plenty in the first person when some entitled person is arguing with one of ‘them’.
Sure. It’s taken on a negative connotation so people don’t want to admit they benefit from entitlements, even though they have. Go back a few years to “Take you damn government hands off my Medicare”.
I know what it means, then and now. Someone else seems to be confused about this.