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| The party could be over |
"Entitlement" isn't the dirty word conservatives would have you believe.
It isn't just about food stamps or Medicaid or other benefits for the
poor. At its most basic level, an entitlement is something to which
someone has a right, either by law or by the fact of earning it.
Of course, when people use the word in a derogatory way, it always
involves something being done for the poor or the middle class.
In many first-world countries, the rich don't begrudge help that is
given to the poor. In Sweden, for example, the attitude is that all
members of society — all the people who call themselves Swedish — have
in some way contributed to the general welfare.
And even if they haven't, they are still part of the national family and worthy of respect.Makers and takers?\ Not there.
A bad thing to help others, as
Ayn Rand suggested? Not there or in most other countries in which people consider themselves free.
In this country, not only do we take a far different attitude toward
helping people — the "deserving poor," for one — we act as if even
without our help, the poor are still better off than most of the rest of
the world.
Several clueless plutocrats, among them the Koch
brothers and Bud Konheim (CEO of Nicole Miller), cited the median US
income of $35,000 as a very good thing.
Konheim especially.
"We've got a country that the poverty level is wealth in 99 percent of
the world. So we're talking about woe is me, woe is us."
He then suggested that anyone unhappy with a $35,000 income should move to a poorer country where they would be better off.
Others talk about how good poor people have it, with air conditioning,
cellular phones and big-screen televisions. But that doesn't mean they
have better lives than the middle class in Europe, Australia, Canada or
even some Asian and South American countries.
It's all part of
the mythology. When I was 9 or 10 years old in the late 1950s, one thing
my mother used to say to get us to eat everything on our plates was
that there were children starving in Europe.
There had been, shortly after the war, but that was 10 or 12 years earlier.
Yes, we have been doing more for the poor and the elderly in our
society, but look back over the same period of time and you'll see more
and more being done for the rich.
Subsidies for corporate
agriculture, subsidies for tobacco farmers (even as we try to eliminate
smoking), subsidies for oil companies (even as they are making record
profits), subsidies for defense contractors to build weapons we don't
need or want.
Reducing income taxes for the rich, trying to eliminate the estate tax ...
Get the picture. We do far more for the folks who supposedly are succeeding on their own than for those who really need help.
It used to be that it paid off in them re-investing in their companies
or starting new businesses, but now they just keep it or spend it on
themselves. Hey, ask them and they'll tell you. They're entitled.
Read more: Entitlements? The rich get far more of them than anyone else does
