# Job losses from cutting entitlements **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 18, 2018, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-losses-from-cutting-entitlements/823161 "2018-10-18T18:54:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2018, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-losses-from-cutting-entitlements/823161/21 "2018-10-20T21:38:39Z")
> [@Itself](#): > > Because you haven’t paid enough to cover what you take out (on average, anyway), and it’s literally an entitlement: the government pays out anyone who meets the criteria, rather than allocating a specific, bounded amount of money for the programs. Social Security accounting is complicated, but Medicare is definitely not self-financing; it takes a significant amount of money out of the general fund. Actually, counting interesting, you might well have. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-losses-from-cutting-entitlements/823161/22 "2018-10-22T00:12:48Z")
> [@XT](#): > > I don’t recall any of those programs actually being on the chopping block. Most of the cuts were aimed at large government agencies like Department of Labor, Interior, State, HUD, etc. Are you asking the question assuming a different cut list than actually exists, or what the effect would be on the actual cuts? > > Assuming you are talking about SS, Medicare and Medicaid, and assuming this would be politically even possible, I’d go with…it depends. Are we assuming they are completely cut with no more SS, Medicare/Medicaid? And further assuming that, if completely cut, there is nothing to replace them, either government or private? I’d guess that just cutting Social Security would potentially cost 100’s of thousands of jobs, since you’d suddenly have a bunch of people who depend on their SS retirement without any means of support. Leaving aside that this is complete and ridiculous fantasy, the trickle down effects of that are hard to even quantify, but think about just the effect on companies that directly support older people who are using their SS to live. > > If you are talking about lesser cuts, then it’s, again, going to depend…how much would be cut and where? I don’t think there is really a GQ answer to what you are asking as you’ve laid it out here…it could run from no real effect to dogs and cats living together. It’s really going to depend on what, exactly, you are proposing is cut and from where (leaving aside how the GOP would cut those programs in the first place). Didn’t mean to be vague, I sort of assumed that everyone would have been familiar with McConnell’s recent statements since they rang my own personal bell so hard. See [McConnell Blames Entitlements, Not GOP, for Rising Deficits](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-16/mcconnell-blames-entitlements-not-gop-for-rising-deficits): > [@](#): > > Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blamed rising federal deficits and debt on a bipartisan unwillingness to contain spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and said he sees little chance of a major deficit reduction deal while Republicans control Congress and the White House. > > “It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem,” McConnell said Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg News when asked about the rising deficits and debt. “It’s a bipartisan problem: unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future.” > > McConnell’s remarks came a day after the Treasury Department said the U.S. budget deficit grew to $779 billion in Donald Trump’s first full fiscal year as president, the result of the GOP’s tax cuts, bipartisan spending increases and rising interest payments on the national debt. That’s a 77 percent increase from the $439 billion deficit in fiscal 2015, when McConnell became majority leader. > > McConnell said it would be “very difficult to do entitlement reform, and we’re talking about Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid,” with one party in charge of Congress and the White House. > > “I think it’s pretty safe to say that entitlement changes, which is the real driver of the debt by any objective standard, may well be difficult if not impossible to achieve when you have unified government,” McConnell said. He is specifically calling out Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid as where the cuts need to come from to balance the budget, displaying that characteristic GOP obliviousness to reality in which tax cuts under first Reagan, then W and now Trump have greatly reduced the government’s revenue. He says a lot of things that could be fodder for debate, but I didn’t want to explore the advisability or political possibility of cutting these programs- I think that’s a no-brainer. I wanted to look at what real-world effects such a move would have. We’re talking about cutting about a trillion a year from these three programs, which isn’t going to just cost government jobs but will leave millions of people sick and with little or even no income. Seems like a great way to sabotage the American economy, but what are the numbers? What kind of quantifiable effect would that have? Seems like we can make a better counter-argument if we answer these questions. More broadly, it seems the GOP is determined to wring a trillion a year out of the American public one way or the other for their billionaire donors- either by cutting it from ‘entitlement programs’, or else by jacking up the debt so high that bondholders are owed $1 trillion a year by the US treasury, close to the same thing. I think that is the grand option the GOP is presenting us. But I digress. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m asking about national job losses from cutting ~$1 trillion a year from these three programs. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-losses-from-cutting-entitlements/823161/23 "2018-10-22T01:22:21Z")
All the term “entitlement” means in this context is that if you qualify, you get it, period. ---
**Author:** ![DavidwithanR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3bc359/32.png) [@DavidwithanR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidwithanR)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-losses-from-cutting-entitlements/823161/24 "2018-10-22T01:38:55Z")
> [@racer72](#): > > Not the place for a nasty retort, but why is something that I have paid into for over 45 years and have earned, considered an entitlement? Only in the literal sense, that you truly are entitled to it, that you should be viewed as holding title to it. You’re certainly not entitled as in spoiled-brat entitled, though anyone who wants to paint others as such is going to do so. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-losses-from-cutting-entitlements/823161/25 "2018-10-22T02:02:03Z")
Most people don’t understand the true origins of the term entitlement…in the current context. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2018, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-losses-from-cutting-entitlements/823161/26 "2018-10-27T20:58:32Z")
But again, devil in details. How do you “cut” entitlements? If it’s across the board, then poor people starve in the cold dark. If you increase the clawback, you create a “dead zone” of those with enough to have to pay back but not enough to live comfortably. Or are you aiming for the same effect as public schools make it so crappy that people no longer rely on it (cue starving mobs) while the slightly better off demand that the feds stop deducting for something they’ll never collect on, thus killing it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/job-losses-from-cutting-entitlements/823161.md?page=1)