Quote from CaptainObvious:
Depends how you define benefit. SSN is not a benefit as we are taxed to pay for it, and our employers pay into it which is lost wages for the employee. Same with unemployment. Employers are taxed to pay for it and that money is lost wages for the employee. So-called "Veterans benefits" are definitively not benefits. Those of us that are veterans paid in spades for any education or health-care services provided to veterans. Anything that is taxed cannot be considered a benefit.
A benefit would go to someone like Trump. A guy pretending to be a corporation who continually runs his business into the ground, and then get's to "reorganize" to do it all over again. Now that's a benefit!
I think your comment reinforced the point of the article. You and I don't want to give up what we paid for. The article's point is that most of the Govt. spending is sending checks and not gettting something in return; ie, SSN.
Seneca