So Uncle Sam plans to embezzle our earned retirement

The DesNews this morning publishes one of those wise uncle editorials about how we just can’t really reduce the Federal deficit by more taxes or salary freezes, etc, but must come to grips with those monster entitlements, you know – social security, medicare, medicaid. Trouble is they define entitlements as government-bestowed benefits so long relied on that people feel entitled to them as a matter of right.

Whoa! Stop right there. Social security is not a dole, a benefit dished out just because you got old. You worked and paid for it. And reliable studies show that if your funds had been invested even willy-nilly in blue chip stocks you would have wound up with more than the SS benefit you get now.

So DesNews and everyone else, if you’re going to put SS benefits on the bargaining table to balance the budget, you had better acknowledge up front and give full weight to the fact that it always was a right, bought and paid for. And if you cause Uncle Sam to welch on that obligation, you’re performing what would be treated as criminal fraud in almost any other context.

In too many of these instances Congress and the White House just shrug and say in effect, “Oh yeah, but this is government.”