Joe doesn't understand the difference between $1000 spread over 1000 people WHO work is different than $800 spread over 100 people who don't. In "deep-thinking" PROG terms more money is spent on the former and it's JUST NOT FAIR.
In Joe's world more money needs to be moved from WORKING entitlements to NON-WORKING entitlements, because when you're PROG love the victim and misery loves company, so let's throw a bone out there enticing others not to work.
You know, all that exhaust you used to breathe in has effected your cognative abilities.
These things are not "Working entitlements", they are wealth transfers. In a job, you are only entitled to your salary- that's it.
Take, for instance, Social Security. You pay 6% of your income into it, and your employer matches it with 6%. So let's say for sake of argument you are making $50K a year average over your entire working life. Which mean every year, you've paid in $3000.00 for Medicare. In a work life of 45 years, you've contributed $135K to Social Security. Assumes you work every year and aren't collecting unemployment (which you don't pay into at all.) If you get an average monthly benefit of $1400, You pretty much use up everything you paid in in 8 years. That sounds nice, but not really. You have gotten all your money back by age 73, but the average lifespan is 78 years. That means 5 years of living on the dole.
Medicare, it gets even more complex. You pay in 1% of your income into Medicare, so over a 45 year work life, you pay $500 a year and your contribution comes out to $22,500. Well, surprise, surprise, that works out well if you never get sick and get shot by a jealous husband at age 90 (which is how I want to go out.) However, even a minor illness with a hospital stay is going to wipe that out in a couple of weeks. The average cost of a cancer treatment is $150,000. If Medicare wasn't there, we'd have a lot of middle class families deciding whether or not to just let Nana die.
SO, yes, what you loving call "Working Entitlements" are just an other form of welfare for middle class people. Which is fine, that's the society we've decided we wanted. And it worked fine in the 1960's when only 9% of the population was over 65 and the average life span was only 69.
But today, 17% of the population is over age 65 and the average life span is 79 years.
In 2026, about 19.2 percent of the American population was over 65 years of age.
www.statista.com
From the mid-19th century until today, life expectancy at birth in the United States has roughly doubled, from **** years in 1850 to **** years in 2025.
www.statista.com
Now, going back to that Non-working entitlement you go babbling on about.
Um. Not really. Most people on relief programs are only on it for a few years.
40 States have work requirements to get SNAP, and 40 of SNAP households have at least one family member with a job. .
There are a lot of falsehoods out there about food stamps and the people who receive them. So let's separate the myths from the truth about SNAP.
justharvest.org
52% of HUD/Section 8 recipients are elderly or disabled. Only 15% are non-working people.
So let's bottom line it, because if sure WTF-Prog checked out of this conversation the minute I started bringing numbers into it.
We spend a lot of money keeping Middle Class people middle class than we do keeping poor people from living on the streets.
