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Conservative attacks on entitlements have been so successful that
many progressives now shy away from using the term. Mark Karlin
prefers to call Social Security an "earned benefit." Lambert Strether
prefers FDR's concept of "social insurance." Anything but an entitlement.
But those who would reframe the term miss the point. What about
people who never paid into the system, never had a social position to fall
from, maybe never earned a cent at all? Do we leave them to beg on the
streets and sleep under a bridge? Do we let them starve? If they get sick,
do we let them die?
If they have children, do we let those children go to school barefoot
and hungry? Do we let their teeth rot and their dirty little noses run? Do
we put them to work cleaning toilets to pay their way through charter
school?
As citizens of the richest country on earth, we are entitled to food,
clothing, housing, medical care and education. The basic necessities of life
are not for government to give or withhold based on its current budget
situation. They are things we are entitled to have, no matter how
inconvenient it may be for our neighbors to pay for them.
So far as the United Nations is concerned, not just Americans, but all
human beings, are entitled to food, clothing, housing, medical care and
education - as well as rest, leisure and holidays. That's from the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. The United States voted for it way back in
1948.
In fact, we wrote it. Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the commission that
drafted it. Most of the work was done in Lake Success, NY. That's right:
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written on Long Island.
Entitlements are not political poker chips to be bargained away in
exchange for tax cuts or legislative victories. They are not problems to be
reformed. They are universal human rights.
Wall Street manipulates deficit angst with fiscal cliff fear
Deficit hawks rely on media allies to report budget doom to advance
their agenda of cutting Medicare and social security
Dean Baker