58 years ago I was in charge of the unit at the Army Finance Center that physically produced and mailed over a million Federal Government Entitlements each month. I was an Army Master Sergeant (E-7) and NCOIC of a unit at Fort Ben Harrison at the time. The Entitlements were class Q and class E allotment checks. The recipient of each check was entitled to it. If you follow the logical thought process, unless it’s fraud, every payment the Federal Government makes is to an Entitled entity. Ergo, all government spending is an entitlement.
I have heard the term ’toxic asset’ mentioned in the news for the past several years and initially did not think much about it. It finally donned on me, a toxic asset is essentially, a ’bad loan‘. Okay I’m a little slow, but after all I AM an old man. I also realized if you told the public we have to bail out the banks because of toxic assets they may not pay all that much attention to the statement but if you said we have to bail out the banks because they made a bunch of bad loans, the public would be outraged.
The talking heads on my TV device are constantly saying “We have to do something about entitlements.” The term ‘Entitlement’ has become a subtle euphemism for Social Security, like ‘Toxic Assets’ is an alternative for ‘bad loans‘. If the heads said “We have to do something about Social Security”. everyone’s ears would perk up and people would pay attention to what was being discussed. Most folks would not much like what was being said.
Salaries paid to a Congress person is an entitlement. Moneys paid to Military Contractors are entitlements, and on and on. So the Republicans are right. We really have to do something about 'entitlements’. Just not the ones they would like.
Is the general public so preoccupied with other things they let these semantic deceptions slide by without notice?