[Kon-Peki]

I wasn't being sarcastic at all. When the IRS classifies some things as earned and others as unearned, they are using the definitions of those words as provided by Congress in the law that was passed.

We have the liberty to assign whatever meaning we want to words, but at the same time we need to come to agreements on what those words mean to be able to communicate effectively. In the US, laws almost always have a table of word definitions at the beginning. Some of them are longer than the actual law!

It's almost paradoxical to rail against the IRS text as socialist propaganda. You are imposing your definition of "earned" on everyone, but the US government is saying "you will use the English language however you wish, but just to be clear, when you read this law (and only when you read this law) this is how to interpret the words"

I think we agree with each other quite a bit :)