Rights and Entitlements

Christopher Pang

Misconceptions of capitalism, rights and entitlements

The “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) movement has been well over a month and protestors seemed to be garnering more support than ever. These “occupants”, some of which are protesting, in hope of a “fairer system” that provides health care, education and opportunity for all. Obama and other Republican presidential candidates, in a bid for presidency elections, started on class warfare as a populist move, to get the rich to pay their “fair share of taxes to pay for a jobs bill.

“What’s true is we’ve also got to rein in our deficits and live within our means, which is why this jobs bill is fully paid for by asking millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share. Some see this as class warfare. I see it as a simple choice.” President Obama

Therefore my questions to this misguided group of people and President Obama are “What is a fair share?” and “Why should everyone be ENTITLED to healthcare and education?”

In order to answer the questions above, we need to identify the natural rights of individuals and how entitlements are basically promises by government to violate rights of one particular group of individuals to benefit another group of individuals. Every individual only has the basic inalienable rights to life, liberty and property.

Life: Everyone is entitled to live once they are created.
Liberty: Everyone is entitled to do anything they want to so long as it doesn’t conflict with the first right.
Property: Everyone is entitled to own all they create or gain through gift or trade so long as it doesn’t conflict with the first two rights.

Many people misunderstood the right to live by insisting since they have a right to life, denying healthcare to them is denying them the right to life. The state therefore must provide the necessary healthcare for them. The right to life only applies to a human being’s right not to be killed by another human being. It is a form of “negative right”, which protects us from coercion from others (including government) to do something for another group of individuals, acknowledging others have the same rights as us.

Healthcare provided by government is an entitlement. How is it fair that an individual who did not pay a single cent of taxes to the healthcare program be entitled to free healthcare while many others who are paying much higher for their healthcare than it should be? How is it fair that the rich is paying higher amount of taxes but getting less in government handouts? Is it because the rich is rich, therefore they can afford it? And because they can afford it, therefore it is fair. Similarly it is definitely unfair that a group of comfort food consumers have to pay for the bills of healthcare consumers. Healthcare, like all other goods and services, is not unlimited and follows economic laws of scarcity. Health care is a need, like water or food. And like water or food, it isn’t free. Doctors/nurses have to go through proper training, medicines need to be researched and tested, before procurement and production, hospital beds do not appear by waving a magic wand just because it is government funded.

Similarly if Warren Buffett wants to contribute more tax voluntarily, no one is stopping him because it is his own property and he should be free to do whatever he wants with it. However enacting into a tax legislation and to force high income earners to contribute the same through income tax is pure coercion. The rich is not obliged to share their wealth with the rest of the society. The rich can only acquire their wealth by serving others in a capitalism model, providing what others values who are willing to pay a premium for this good/service, resulting in profits for the capitalist. The misconception that everyone has a right to be distributed a portion of the wealth of the rich is immoral. Similarly this applies to bailouts for the banks on Wall Street for socializing losses. These banks should have failed in 2007 if not for the Federal Reserve intervening and providing emergency funding. Two wrongs do not make things right by taxing the rich. Not every rich individual acquired their wealth from Wall Street and not every individual who acquired their wealth from providing financial services on Wall Street received bailout funds.

No one should be entitled to any freebie just because he has a Social Security number in USA or has a pink I/C in Singapore. For some reason or another, people today believe they should have entitlements to healthcare, education and housing. If something must be provided to us at the expense of someone else in order for us to have it, then it may be an entitlement, a privilage, or an act of charity – but it is not a “right”. Unless we correct our misconceptions on rights and entitlements, we will continue to give up our rights to liberty, property and eventually our lives to our political leaders in exchange for these entitlements.

“No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce.” Thomas Sowell