What is an entitlement?

Now that Christmas  is over, it's good to see that serious people are getting back to the job of trying to fix the mess this country is in. And as I noticed Speaker Boehner has decided that he doesn't need to be there, I started thinking of one of the central tenets of the GOP: Cut entitlements. But this got me thinking: What is an entitlement?

In its basic form , an entitlement is something that you get for doing nothing. If a person pays into the government for something through taxes, is anything in return an entitlement? A person pays into social security every time they are paid with a paycheck. So, how can what you get back form this be an entitlement? The government can run a surplus or a deficit on these funds, but that's not an entitlement. In the same way, medicare is run the same way, although less money goes to fund medicare. No retirement pay can be entitlement, either. This is simply money not given to a person while working and put away for when they meet a requirement to receive the money.

So what are actual entitlements? In one respect, a tax break is an entitlement, both corporate and personal tax breaks. A person or company pays nothing in to receive the money, or to not pay taxes on the money. So yes, in my thinking, that means deductions of children, research and development, charitable contributions, and other deductions are entitlements.

So GOP, do you really want to cut entitlements? Well, tell me what you think an entitlement is, and I'll see what I think about it. But really, I doubt an entitlement to you is an entitlement to me. So GOP, what's an entitlement to you?