BRATTLEBORO — I recently had a birthday.
One of my “traditions” is to eat ice cream at the Chelsea Royal Diner's outdoor stand.
It was a beautiful day - Vermont at its best with a clear blue sky and just warm enough for comfort.
Birthdays do call up thinking on the past. As I reveled in the family surrounding me, the diner itself seemed to speak. It is such a humble edifice. It speaks of earlier times and good, affordable meals.
This led me, by some circuitous path, to musing on Social Security.
Social Security and I are the same age. I was born in July of 1935. I was a month old when the Social Security Act was signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt on Aug. 14, 1935. Taxes were collected for the first time in 1937, and the first one-time, lump-sum payments were made that same year.
I wish I could enter a time machine and shake President Roosevelt's hand. No, give him a grateful hug. For I shudder to think where I would be today without Social Security.
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I don't draw a huge amount of money from Social Security. The years I was a stay-at-home mom are telling. That's my one regret in life, that I didn't go back to work earlier. The years I worked, from when I was 40 years old to when I was 70, made the difference.
The money I paid into the program allows me to avoid feeling impoverished. True, I can't take exotic trips to faraway lands. I can't buy a Picasso. But I can spend a weekend at the ocean. I can buy a vase by a local potter or a watercolor by a local painter. I can eat out with friends now and then.
These small things enlarge my life. Just as the public library does. Just as the local theater companies do.
I live in Vermont. A wealth of vision is mine from mountains to rivers to an early-morning glimpse of a deer. None of this would mean very much if I were deprived of a place to live and food to eat.
I owe the ability to live my life this way to the money I earned during my working years and to Mr. Roosevelt.
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I don't know who first coined the word “entitlement” to describe Social Security. I know they said it with a sneer. That sneer accompanies that word today no matter who says it.
Yes, Social Security is a “government program,” but it doesn't “provide benefits.” It returns the money I provided while working. And I trusted the U.S. government to manage and use those deductions in an honest and economically safe way.
Webster defines entitlement in this way: “A government program providing benefits to members of a specific group.”
I object to the use of the word “entitlement” in the context of Social Security. “Entitlement” hints at someone getting something without earning or deserving it. Why is it that we allow someone who wants to dismantle the program to call it an entitlement, and then have journalists the world around echo that pejorative term?
It baffles me.
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I can't personally thank FDR, but I can thank our own U.S. senator, Bernie Sanders.
“They told us that Social Security would go broke, that it could not possibly succeed,” he once said. “These critics were wrong [then], and they are wrong today.”
“While we often take Social Security for granted, we must not forget that Social Security today is providing dignity and security to tens of millions of Americans,” he continued. “It is a program that is working and working well.”
As one of those tens of millions, I say, “Go Bernie!”
And thanks.