BEHIND
THE 8 BALL: EARNED ENTITLEMENTS
In the news: many stories about war,
fighting, violence. Domestic, national,
international: doesn’t matter, such stories abound. In the 50 state capitols, a
different kind of fight: harsh words over budget deficits, each side blaming
the other. In the nation’s capital, the
same battle wages between parties, between political labels, between
personalities.
New ideas come and go; old ideas reappear, are measured, reshaped, discarded. The struggle develops its own nomenclature: “entitlement” becomes a key term. Are Americans “entitled” to Social Security, health coverage, retirement pensions, and benefits? Have we become “soft”, expecting too much?
New ideas come and go; old ideas reappear, are measured, reshaped, discarded. The struggle develops its own nomenclature: “entitlement” becomes a key term. Are Americans “entitled” to Social Security, health coverage, retirement pensions, and benefits? Have we become “soft”, expecting too much?
Can we make do with less even if it means losing a home, going without medical treatment, ending “retirement” to re-enter the workplace, reducing caloric intake and cutting pills in half, giving up on believing college will be affordable for their children? Are we expecting too much from our money economy, our culture, our country? Are we being selfishly extravagant to the detriment of national needs with financial emergencies piling up one on top of the other?
To what are we,
the people, entitled? How much should we
downsize our expectations, our earnings, our comfort level, our material
existence, to please the gods of high finance who wish to warn us via
Doomsday.net that our lives of sinful luxury and self-indulgence must soon end
lest the bankrolls of billionaires begin to shrink to unacceptable amounts!!
I would suggest we change the landscape of the debate by adding a new word to create a phrase that reads “Earned Entitlement” to counter any suggestion that the American people are part of a selfish arrogant aristocracy asking for something which they haven’t earned. Many four-letter words come to mind in response to this subtle nuance, this poisoned misuse of the word ENTITLEMENT, but suffice it to say, in regular prose, that any such suggestion is pure nonsense!
I would suggest we change the landscape of the debate by adding a new word to create a phrase that reads “Earned Entitlement” to counter any suggestion that the American people are part of a selfish arrogant aristocracy asking for something which they haven’t earned. Many four-letter words come to mind in response to this subtle nuance, this poisoned misuse of the word ENTITLEMENT, but suffice it to say, in regular prose, that any such suggestion is pure nonsense!
People who have
worked all their adult years paying into Social Security (and/or other pension
plans) have the RIGHT to expect a sizable chunk of money will be returned to
them when they retire: THEY HAVE EARNED IT.
Hence, let’s rename this social issue EARNED ENTITLEMENT or EARNED REWARD to take it out of the hands of those who wish to suggest that all of the nation’s economic woes are caused by working people because they expect some level of decency in their standard of living when they finally retire after a lifetime of work and a lifetime of contributing to the nation’s productivity and wealth.
Granted, each person’s rightfully earned expectations, multiplied by the million fold, can create its own economic currents—as a mountain is sometimes said to produce its own weather—but even so, that remains but half the story!
Hence, let’s rename this social issue EARNED ENTITLEMENT or EARNED REWARD to take it out of the hands of those who wish to suggest that all of the nation’s economic woes are caused by working people because they expect some level of decency in their standard of living when they finally retire after a lifetime of work and a lifetime of contributing to the nation’s productivity and wealth.
Granted, each person’s rightfully earned expectations, multiplied by the million fold, can create its own economic currents—as a mountain is sometimes said to produce its own weather—but even so, that remains but half the story!
What about the
enormous amount of wealth sucked out of circulation to be hoarded by the
wealthy? (luxury yachts, private jets, multiple mansions and villas, art and
jewelry collections, lavish parties on the grand scale, etc.) Tens of millions of working Americans remain
the real backbone of the economy: responsible for its productivity, producing
the goods that support the currency that we all use as our main medium of
exchange.
And yet millions of dollars are daily, hourly being sucked into the private caves, bank vaults, off-shore accounts, and hidden safes of millionaire-billionaires! Capitalism may be defined in many ways but certainly, especially during a crisis recession, we should never forget the most basic doctrine of all: the exploitation of working people by the rich!
And yet millions of dollars are daily, hourly being sucked into the private caves, bank vaults, off-shore accounts, and hidden safes of millionaire-billionaires! Capitalism may be defined in many ways but certainly, especially during a crisis recession, we should never forget the most basic doctrine of all: the exploitation of working people by the rich!
Imagine a desert
island where many survivors of a ship-wreck have arrived. There are hundreds of hungry survivors on the
south end of the island. At the other
end of the island are three persons who have amassed a huge amount of food of
every kind. They have enough food to
feed everyone for days, for weeks, for months or years, until rescue can be
affected.
They are obscenely rich in food! They have 100 times the amount of food they themselves could ever consume. The hungry people politely ask the three food-wealthy persons if they wouldn’t please share? To which they receive a resounding “No!” The food hoarders shout out at the top of their lungs: “This is OUR food, OUR property; this all belongs to us and we don’t have to share a single crumb! You are entitled to none of it, do you hear? To none of it!”
They are obscenely rich in food! They have 100 times the amount of food they themselves could ever consume. The hungry people politely ask the three food-wealthy persons if they wouldn’t please share? To which they receive a resounding “No!” The food hoarders shout out at the top of their lungs: “This is OUR food, OUR property; this all belongs to us and we don’t have to share a single crumb! You are entitled to none of it, do you hear? To none of it!”
Now imagine substituting MONEY for FOOD
and you get an idea of what America
As thousands of pounds of food are being kept from hungry people on the island, is it not true that millions of dollars of wealth are being kept from the American people?
As thousands of pounds of food are being kept from hungry people on the island, is it not true that millions of dollars of wealth are being kept from the American people?
Ask yourself:
what is a billionaire? From whence this
wealth? Whence the sense of ENTITLEMENT
that millionaires and billionaires have developed (and made “sacred”) that it
is perfectly all right FOR THEM to hoard millions and billions of dollars and
remove all this wealth from the currents of the national economy from where it
first originated, while all the while pretending that this selfishness on their
part has no effect on the American people or our national economy?
Why are working people, whose labor already suffers from a marked degree of exploitation (being underpaid the true value of their labor) being asked to make additional sacrifices in order to keep the rich people happy and their enormous wealth protected?
Why are working people, whose labor already suffers from a marked degree of exploitation (being underpaid the true value of their labor) being asked to make additional sacrifices in order to keep the rich people happy and their enormous wealth protected?
What is best for society? What happened to “caring and sharing”, as
ordinary people do for one another? What
happened to the language of the Declaration of Independence? Where do we, the people, get OUR sense of
entitlement? “We hold these Truths to be
self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty
That’s OUR source of entitlement: the very Birth Certificate of theUnited States of America
That’s OUR source of entitlement: the very Birth Certificate of the
Where do the rich get THEIR sense of entitlement? Not from the Declaration of Independence; not from the Constitution; nor from the American people, I daresay. Theirs comes from historical and social inequality, from past and present social stratification inherently and violently unequal wherein the wealth at the top came from the labor and misery of the millions of people at the bottom of society: serfs, slaves, peasants, laborers, factory workers, miners, textile mill hands, railroad employees: the list goes on.
Historically, the rich inherited their wealth based on the exploitation of the labor of the common people. That wealth is as much the people’s wealth as it is theirs, truth be told!
When we talk
about ENTITLEMENT in the future, perhaps we should more carefully distinguish
between the EARNED ENTITLEMENT and EARNED REWARDS of working people who paid in
to Social Security their whole working lives in order to create a viable source
of retirement funding for themselves and their families . . . .
versus the obscene SELF-AWARDED ENTITLEMENT of the wealthy who control the corporations and factories, here and abroad, and who constantly remove billions of dollars from the economy yearly while selfishly hoarding the most enormous amounts of wealth that are ultimately derived from the productivity of working people!
People who work for a living can look with pride upon the fact that they have EARNED their livelihood and their right to a decent standard of living when they retire.
versus the obscene SELF-AWARDED ENTITLEMENT of the wealthy who control the corporations and factories, here and abroad, and who constantly remove billions of dollars from the economy yearly while selfishly hoarding the most enormous amounts of wealth that are ultimately derived from the productivity of working people!
People who work for a living can look with pride upon the fact that they have EARNED their livelihood and their right to a decent standard of living when they retire.
LET’S CALL IT WHAT IT IS FROM NOW ON TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT:
THIS IS OUR EARNED ENTITLEMENT AND
EARNED REWARDS
AND NOTHING LESS!!!
PEOPLE ARE “ENTITLED” TO THAT WHICH THEY HAVE EARNED!!
Roger
