A sense of entitlement?

Politicians in Washington invariably use the term “entitlements” to refer to programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. On the face of it, it’s a neutral term: citizens are entitled to certain benefits if they fit a certain category of need, hence the benefits might reasonably be called “entitlements.”

Yet the word carries ideological freight—an implication that people are lazy or self-indulgent to expect these things. Exploiting that vein, Mitt Romney used to complain about an “entitlement society” that fosters dependency, which he contrasted to an “opportunity society” that fosters initiative. 

The negative implication of entitlement has been around for a few decades, according to the folks at the Language Log website. The negative meaning seems to have been fostered by psychologists who used the phrase “sense of entitlement” to describe people who operate with an overblown sense of what they deserve in life.