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What gets on my nerves is the number of freepers who have paid into social security -- and are "entitled" to get money back.

You think when citizens are forced to give up their hard earned dollars on the promise it will be returned decades later, they should not expect their money to be returned? You consider that an entitlement, when they paid for it in advance?

Do you think the same of private investment plans and 401ks?

I think everyone got conned, and I am sympathetic. It's not like my situation is different. I'm in the same boat as everyone else.

Private investment and 401ks are fundamentally different. There is an account, with your name on it, and that money is yours. Short of government theft, no one can take that stuff away from you, because it absolutely is YOURS.

But the government doesn’t have any money. There is no box with your name on it. There is no stash of YOUR money. The government isn’t dipping into the pile that YOU paid into and giving you YOUR money. What the government is doing is dipping into MY pocket, taking MY money and giving it to YOU.

And you think the government is entitled to do this, because you are OWED.

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Supreme Court Rulings
The “analogy between social welfare and ‘property’ cannot be stretched to impose a constitutional limitation on the power of Congress to make substantive changes in the law of entitlement to public benefits.” Furthermore, “[t]he fact that social security benefits are financed in part by taxes on an employee’s wages does not in itself limit the power of Congress to fix the levels of benefits under the Act or the conditions upon which they may be paid. Nor does an expectation of public benefits confer a contractual right to receive the expected amounts.”
—Richardson v. Belcher, 404 U.S. 78 (1971)
“It was doubtless out of an awareness of the need for such flexibility that Congress included in the original [Social Security] Act, and has since retained, a clause expressly reserving to it ‘[t]he right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision’ of the Act. 1104, 49 Stat. 648, 42 U.S.C. 1304. That provision makes express what is implicit in the institutional needs of the program.”
—Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603 (1960

You think when citizens are forced to give up their hard earned dollars on the promise it will be returned decades later, they should not expect their money to be returned?

Dr. Walter E Williams often points out that taxation, is basically theft. Why trust a thief to return your money? For a short, easy to understand (compared to my posts) explanation:

http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/09/TheNationalPonziScheme.htm

And the problem with entitlements in general: http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/11/OurMoralDilemma http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/11/HandoutsMoralityAndCommonSense