If Social Security returns so little compared to the alternative, leaves nothing to one’s heirs, and rests on a financial foundation this precarious, why is it so popular?

What is the difference between a right and an entitlement? This contemporary application episode takes the concept of natural rights inherited by the American Founders — introduced on Saturday in “The Golden Thread” — and applies it to the most consequential category confusion in modern politics: the belief that a government benefit funded by other people’s labor is a right. Using the 2026 Social Security solvency debate as its spine, the episode walks the hardest case honest