I mean, the very least the recipients of Social Security can do is buy SECURITY with it rather than scratchy tickets and slot machine tournament entries,”

Interesting statement, and to be honest with you, I’ve felt 100% like this towards SS beneficiaries in casinos for many years. But then one day I took into account what the nature of SS is supposed to be. Notwithstanding who can get SS these days, this was initially laid out to be something that’s not a “true” entitlement, but rather scaled to the taxes a person has paid over a lifetime.

I think that that sharp, depressing pang in the stomach I’ve felt when watching old people gambling their monthly SS checks in a casino, was really a moral response, rather than an unspoken argument against entitlement misuse.

Then it hit me that even the moral response is baseless, at least in my case. I got the standard amount of govt PEL subsidies in college and GOD KNOWS what complete bullshit I spent *that* money on. I cant even remember now, but can guarantee that it was spent on things that weren’t exactly “wise”. And that was a true entitlement to boot.

So what I’m saying is that the idea of a ban on senior citizens spending SS checks on certain things has no grounds on neither the Entitlement Standpoint, nor the Moral Standpoint.

*That said*, it would make me happier to see old people give more of a shit and instead hand those checks over to something far more redeeming (and compared to gambling almost anything else would qualify) than to put those checks straight into a slot machine.
———
This has little comparison to the actual article here, which is about EBT cards, which is pretty much a hardcore “entitlement” and which I pretty much am in agreement with.

But I have to agree that requiring that food aid be used for basics (like…food!) instead of luxuries is not exactly a unexpected requirement.

Social security is a citizen’s own money returned to him after theoretically being held “in trust” for decades. The money, once collected, is then immediately lent back out to the general fund, spent, and gone. That’s certainly an indictment of political management of citizens’ money, but it does not turn FICA into charity.

I mean, the very least the recipients of Social Security can do is buy SECURITY with it rather than scratchy tickets and slot machine tournament entries,