Budget 2015: Why do we call social security payments 'benefits'? They are a right, not a reward

We’ve become so used to the term ‘benefits’, we can’t see how misleading and dangerous it is. It’s misleading because in any other context, ‘benefit’ means advantage or profit; something extra; a special payment or gift, perhaps to reward good behaviour. It’s dangerous because when we frame social securities in this way, we move away from seeing them as basic rights and start talking about them as bounteous rewards. And consequently, we have paved the well-trodden path for discussions about incentives, who deserves what and who doesn’t.