Entitlement

entitle (ɪnˈtaɪt ə l)
— vb
1.	to give (a person) the right to do or have something; qualify; allow
2.	to give a name or title to
3.	to confer a title of rank or honour upon
[C14: from Old French entituler, from Late Latin intitulāre, from Latin titulus title ] This is a word which is erroneously being used in debates regarding Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Oooo, we have to cut those entitlements, oooo, we have to just go after all those 'entitled' people. Can someone finally call bullshit on this term? Let's think about how this all works for a moment. You work. A part of your money goes into social security, and THAT is like you're 'forced saving away for a rainy day' 'tax'... for when you retire, and you get it back, and it is your friggin' pension. You paid it in, you get it back. It's sort of like your mom and dad teaching you to be frugal so you HAVE something for a rainy day. Sort of. Because now they say you'll only get 90 per cent of what YOU paid in. Now somewhere along the way after I left that borne of misery that was my home city, people were coerced by their companies to opt for something called 401K's. I never knew what that was, but you can find the definition here. And it is what the Rethugs want to do with social security, and medicare, and medicaid, make no mistake. Put it in the hands of Wall Street, and give people a vision of vast profits on their investment. A Ponzi scheme, and no one has learned anything as a moral since Dicken's 'Martin Chuzzlewit'. In which that was a theme. The PROBLEM is... I saw what THAT does fairly early, but never connected it to what was really going on, because I didn't understand it, and tend to mind my own business. With results that make me cringe today. We have to do a flash-back to the mid-Seventies. I was in Hampshire Plaza for some reason, they have shops and a bank my aunt worked for. And the banks had to post their current status on a board, which was just gobbledygook to me. However.... I was with this whiz kid economics major from Berlin. He looked at it and said... 'this bank is bankrupt!' And I thought, 'yeah, right...' And I was corresponding with my only girlfriend in the years after, who was working in banks, and they kept getting swallowed up, and swallowed up, and it seemed to be very odd to me, but I thought, 'well, what do YOU know?' It was like the Brecht drawing, tiny fish getting eaten up by ever bigger ones in a long line ending with a whale. Zoom ahead many years later.... the bank my aunt worked for got swallowed up by ever bigger ones, and they tanked. And her 401K? Disappeared. It's black magic, Preciousses. And that is what the Rethugs want, and I can still kick myself for not having told her what HJ so clearly saw that day in the Seventies. So I think, it's either gamble or you lose big, or you play it safe and save for your retirement. And yeah, the other things are paid for by your taxes as well, and they are beneficial to everyone. Now let us look at the first definition of the word 'entitlement'. Are you given the right to qualify? Are you given the right to have it?` Did you have a choice or take a test to QUALIFY? Did someone ALLOW you? Well on the latter, maybe someone did. Like a congressional law way back in the Thirties. Words are powerful, Preciousses, oh yes, and there are nawsty little thieves out there who want to get in your pocketses. If you are paying for something, laying away for a rainy day... HOW can you use the word 'entitlement' as if someone were GIVING you something? You paid it in, it was YOUR money. Maybe I should lable this economics 101. Words are deceptive. The way the word is being used today is as if someone is giving people something they didn't deserve. It is a gross misuse of language, and I don't hear the outcry. The English language is rich and nuanced. But sometimes it seems to me that the media dumbed America down to a ten-thousand word vocabulary. And the sneaky ones know how to bilk the others. Semantics. There are a lot of other punch words I keep hearing that are misused. But you know what? It always comes from people who were entitled by their class, the schools they went to, the lack of social conscience, and their main goal is to get more, and if they get theirs, they could so give a shit if others fall through the cracks, because.... that's the way it works.