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CDC gets list of forbidden words

(www.washingtonpost.com)
382 points js2 | 3 comments | 16 Dec 17 02:17 UTC | HN request time: 0.648s | source
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tptacek ◴[16 Dec 17 03:56 UTC] No.15937484[source]▶
If I understand this well, and it's likely I don't, but for the sake of argument assume I do? Then the most important thing to know about this story is that it's about the President's budget document (which is assembled with input from all the Executive Branch departments).

That budget is one of the more elaborate charades in Washington. Congress controls the budget by passing laws allocating funds to departments. The President can't not spend money allocated to those departments. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of the budget goes to stuff that is effectively non-discretionary; for instance, to Medicare and Social Security entitlements spending.

Banning words, and these words in particular, is batshit. I'm probably not alarming many people on HN when I say this is a batshit administration.

But this is about the words the administration is soliciting from a department for an elaborate marketing document. Someone tell me why, apart from the principles and precedents of it all, any of this matters?

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yequalsx ◴[16 Dec 17 05:37 UTC] No.15937941[source]▶
A nitpick. Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements. One is a mandatory pension plan that people pay into and whose benefits are based on what you put in. The other is a mandatory health insurance plan that people pay into. As such it is wrong to call them entitlements.
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dragonwriter ◴[16 Dec 17 05:50 UTC] No.15937993[source]▶
> Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements.

SS and Medicare and the buy-in attached to them is what the term “entitlements” (in terms of government programs) was coined to refer to.

Later, Republican opponents of those programs started using the term for general welfare programs in order to attach negative emotional loading to it and discredit SS and Medicare by association.

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1. yequalsx ◴[16 Dec 17 15:44 UTC] No.15939999[source]▶
Yes. But I use terms as they currently mean in the common political discourse and as such Medicare and Social Security are not entitlements.
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2. dragonwriter ◴[16 Dec 17 20:42 UTC] No.15941961[source]▶
In current political discourse, “entitlements” refers to all of the public benefit programs, whether buy-in or means-tested, that are not considered discretionary spending, Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment, Medicaid, and Welfare. You probably mean to say that the first three differ from the last two, which is true; the first three are contributory entitlements (the original sense of the term), the latter two are noncontributory entitlements (which, along with contributory entitlements, are included in the newer, broader definition.)
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3. yequalsx ◴[16 Dec 17 21:44 UTC] No.15942314[source]▶
As I've heard the term used in the vernacular it is synonymous with 'welfare'. I attempt to clarify that there is a huge difference between a mandatory retirement pension plan whose benefits depend on how much you pay into it vs. say food stamps. Therefore I point out that Social Security is not an entitlement since that word has become distorted in the last 30 years to be synonymous with welfare. It connotes getting something without paying for it. Therefore I think it is wrong to call Social Security an entitlement. The meaning of the word has changed or is in the midst of being changed.