- Nov 26, 2011
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[What type of government handout program are you on? Chance are great that many in your family are on 'some type of government handout program not to mention many of your friends also.
The idea of entitlement conveys the sense of ownership. The recipient receives funds that were extracted at gunpoint by the government. Yet the recipients are assured by the government that they are recipients of lawfully earned funds. The real meaning of "earned" in this case is "earned at the ballot box." The defenders of this system have rewritten the commandment: "Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote."
The implication of an entitlement is that the recipient is owed support by the government. His situation — being without money — is not seen as his fault. It is society's fault. Full employment is a divine right, and the State is regarded as the god of the social order. When the State fails to provide full employment, its agents blame the private sector. It hands out entitlement checks to ease the pain.
The key to the welfare State strategy of extending government safety nets — another phrase for handouts — to the general population is to extract payments and call them insurance. There is unemployment insurance. This is widely accepted. Yet it means going on the dole.
There is old age insurance. Here, we enter the Orwellian world. The Social Security Trust Fund is officially called the Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund. Consider the word magic.
"Social" means State.
"Security" means statistical bankruptcy.
"Trust" means systematic deception.
"Fund" means nonmarketable government IOUs.
"Insurance" means revocable contract."
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Social Security is fully paid for by the insured. In fact, it has consistently run in the black, with its surplus plundered by every Administration, Republican and Democratic alike.
The only real reform needed to keep it running in the black is to raise the eligibility age to keep up with life expectancy.
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