Social Security Is An Entitlement

And that is a good thing for everyone.

So, this is just a short post on a political pet peeve topic. For many years I have seen arguments, messages, and memes proclaiming “Social Security is NOT an entitlement.” Its often accompanied by some other text talking about how its your money, you earned it, etc.. The thing is, the fact that it is an Entitlement is why its going to be your money, that you earned, and the government can’t easily take it away from you. Let’s dig in a bit as to why.

What does Entitlement mean?

The core meaning of an entitlement is something you have a lawful right to. If you pay for a carton of milk, you are entitled to one carton of milk to take home. When you pay into Social Security for long enough, you are Entitled to get money from the system when you retire. Social Security is officially classified, along with a handful of other government programs, as Entitlements exactly because you are legally owed the benefits you qualify for. If you don’t get what you are owed, you can sue the government to get it. That is not true of other government programs that are not legal Entitlements. Being Entitlements makes them special and far more protected than other benefits programs the government runs.

What people seem to think it means.

These long running slogans and memes are playing on the idea that Entitlement means something you falsely think you are owed. When people complain that they should be given the sun and the moon, we often say, “They are very entitled.” Unfortunately its one of those cases where we’ve come to use the word to mean the opposite of its real meaning by shortcutting language. We really should be saying something like “They feel a false sense of entitlement.” If someone really were entitled, then it means they are absolutely owed the thing they are demanding.

This definition is still a legitimate meaning of the word, and its used both in common speech and in psychology to describe a false sense of self entitlement. But it’s still not the meaning that applies to Social Security.

Apparently, someone saw that these are Entitlement programs and assumed that was some kind of attack on those programs, or possibly, opponents of those programs intentionally tried to use that misunderstanding to smear these programs as being for greedy and undeserving people. Whatever the case, its taken on a life of its own for nearly as long as I’ve been alive.

Why does it matter?

For starters, I just like to share things I’ve learned about subjects like government programs and law when I can. I think its good to be informed and understand how programs like Social Security work. We all pay quite a bit into these programs and they are very important in many people’s lives.

Secondly, I have some worry/suspicion that even though these memes are often spread in order to uphold social security, they are actually undermining it by making people think that entitlement programs in general are a bad thing and possibly leading them to support efforts to take away entitlement status from such programs at which point they would be easier to dismantle without legal recourse for the beneficiaries.

One reason I decided to make this blog entry is so that I can just share the link to it whenever I see one of those memes and save myself the trouble of typing out the explanation. I’m never going to be able to stamp it out, but now I can at least push back on it with a bit less effort.