patrick.net

It's all Obama's fault!!!

The system is being abused today.

People are going on disability after their unemployment runs out.

So, 11 million on disability, 9 million unemployed (officially) 92 million out of the workforce.

What could possibly go wrong??

zzyzzx says

The number of Americans receiving disability benefits continues to exceed the populations of Greece, Tunisia and Portugal, and is approaching the population of Cuba, which according to the CIA World Factbook is 11,047,251.

Hmmm, let's compare with countries a fraction of our size. OK then, what's the disability per capita in those countries?

I don't know. I read that Greece considers pedophilia a disability, but they do have a certain history there....

Vicente says

OK then, what's the disability per capita in those countries?

http://disabilitycompendium.org/compendium-statistics/international-disability-statistics/14-2-international-disability-statistics-disability-benefit-recipients-as-percent-of-the-working-age-population-in-selected-oecd-countries

But data is only current as of 2007. I am sure it's higher everywhere by now. Interesting to see how much higher it is in the US vs Mexico, Korea, or Japan. Would still need stats on China, India, and Brazil

zzyzzx says

Would still need stats on China, India, and Brazil

zzyzzx says

Vicente says

OK then, what's the disability per capita in those countries?

http://disabilitycompendium.org/compendium-statistics/international-disability-statistics/14-2-international-disability-statistics-disability-benefit-recipients-as-percent-of-the-working-age-population-in-selected-oecd-countries

But data is only current as of 2007. I am sure it's higher everywhere by now. Interesting to see how much higher it is in the US vs Mexico, Korea, or Japan. Would still need stats on China, India, and Brazil

Do they even have disability in India, China and Brazil. Brazil maybe but I don't think they have it in India and China.

Many programs/mandates that started in the west, from alimony, disability, free hospital visits to emergencies, unreasonable child support etc etc. -these things have run amok and taken a life of their own.

When welfare brings in more than min wage and you can go smoke pot and party all day-why work and deal with bosses, customer service etc etc.. The gubmnt is turning this nation into a nation of bums .

This is why illegals need to go back. The fact that there are illegals here, means there are millions of jobs. Americans on persistent welfare should be asked to take those jobs or lose their benefits. You don't get to sit in Malibu, get 1800 a month in sec 8 housing, food stamps, etc etc etc and get to choose. Lots of rural jobs.

its why they want to ban horse carriages-the bums can't understand an animal working for a living-instead it should be abum and mooch of others.

I'm so angry at people at and below my income level that I could spit, if I didn't have this dry-mouth situation since my fall - can't do much but sit around these days.

Oooh, man, I need another Vicodin for my back.

In all seriousness (for a change), I have noticed a high rate of painkiller overprescription/addiction/abuse among my coworkers, including the relatively young and healthy.

I have seen: one man take 5 Vicodin a day, year after year; an athletic young man comparing notes with a colleague (with drastic mood swings due to her painkiller use) about their Percodan prescriptions and how they couldn't even go to work without it; several cases of taking time off to do rehab for painkiller addiction; plenty of alcohol abuse, often enabled by the company - "Let's head out for Moscow mules and tequila shots on the expense account."

There is definitely abuse of the disability system, but people are being ground down, working long hours under pressure using keyboards and mice, which are poorly designed for humans to use, and more of the ones who are simply hanging on, using whatever substances get them through the day.

And then the motorcycle guys, who commute to work "on the bike" to feel the wind in their hair, and then the asphalt on their skull - I know several people who have spent time on disability due to motorcycle accidents.

(And, yes: anecdotes are data. They're just data selected with a confirmation bias and a small N.)

I suspect that, along with actual abuse, there is higher use of the disability system because those lucky enough to have jobs are thrashing harder to keep them.

A few years back, China declared that blind people were needed to join the work force, as part of their full employment plan. Schools were opened for therapeutic massage and reflexology and hundreds of thousands of blind people were trained in these arts. Now they provide relaxing massages for hard working Chinese. They are no longer fully disabled, but are contributing and valued members of Chinese society, whose services are prizes over the sighted because they have more sensitive hands.

Here, if a kid is sorta stupid, he's disabled. People who are actually quite healthy can be 100% disabled if they make the right claims.

Iosef V HydroCabron says

often enabled by the company - "Let's head out for Moscow mules and tequila shots on the expense account."

At Sprint Sites in Dallas where I worked as a temp from October 2000 to February 2002, they called these "Team Builders", and I loved them. We would leave with our supervisor about noon and spend the rest of the day "team building"--one day we bowled at a beautiful rink for the rest of the day, another time it was some kind of thing where we rode in some kind of little battery powered cars with a plastic bat or something and had to hit balls around--I don't like dodging things and having things hit at me so I made myself scarce and left early. Another afternoon was spent at the Arboretum which was like an inside jungle with real birds flying around--sure enough, one took a dump on my head and shoulder and after I'd cleaned up one of the employees brought me a T-shirt that had "You were a hit at the Dallas Arboretum" on it!

Quigley says

A few years back, China declared that blind people were needed to join the work force, as part of their full employment plan.

Man, the programmed loathing of America among conservatives has reached such a pitch that the Chinese government and Putin are held up as models.

Iosef V HydroCabron says

Quigley says

A few years back, China declared that blind people were needed to join the work force, as part of their full employment plan.

Man, the programmed loathing of America among conservatives has reached such a pitch that the Chinese government and Putin are held up as models.

Missed the point! People need work to be happy, and to have self respect. It's part of our programming. People without work for a long time often drop into a downward spiral. This is why the ghettos are sad and dangerous – because of the people who live there. Because of their generally damaged psychology. No matter if your needs are being provided, being told over and over that you are of no use to anyone is tremendously demoralizing.

Quigley says

This is why the ghettos are sad and dangerous – because of the people who live there.

I agree with the above part.

lostand confused says

Americans on persistent welfare should be asked to take those jobs or lose their benefits.

Many many Walmart and McDonalds employees use assistance programs. Their companies even encourage it and help them with paperwork. BILLIONS of dollars worth. What do you want to do with them?

The Scrooge answer, kick Tiny Tim's crutches out and he'll learn to walk.

Vicente says

Many many Walmart and McDonalds employees use assistance programs. Their companies even encourage it and help them with paperwork. BILLIONS of dollars worth. What do you want to do with them?

I'd like to see the government definition of poverty redefined to reflect global standards. After which, no taxpayer funded assistance will be necessary.

Vicente says

The Scrooge answer, kick Tiny Tim's crutches out and he'll learn to walk.

You are conflating two different issues. Corporate welfare for low wage employers applies to people who are working, i.e. not on disability. The relevant issue is corporate welfare for PhRMA, in which case the "crutches" are often either useless or worse. "Social Security has a set of disability listings for mental disorders, ranging from depression-related illness, anxiety-related disorders, and psychotic disorders to autism, ADHD and learning disabilities, and mental retardation (intellectual developmental disorder) and low IQ." As Rx pills have been advertised on TV for many of these conditions, and aggressively marketed including incentives for prescribers, the diagnoses have proliferated. Further, as many of the toxic prescriptions cause real and permanent problems, the diagnosis of disability can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Vicente says

Many many Walmart and McDonalds employees use assistance programs. Their
companies even encourage it and help them with paperwork

Take it away. Then people won't look at that as a career-but as a stop gap or step up job. if they can't find enough people, they will have to raise wages on their own. Govt dependence for life is not the answer.

zzyzzx says

I'd like to see the government definition of poverty redefined to reflect global standards. After which, no taxpayer funded assistance will be necessary.

That's so stupid.

I'd like to see our cost of living drop to 1/7th what it is. After that very little taxpayer funded assistance would be needed.

Go ahead morons dislike this.

A guy I know lost his job when he stopped showing up for work after his girlfriend left him. He went on unemployment for about a year and the signed up for disability seemlessly.

When people ask how he qualifies for disability he laughs and says cause my girlfriend left me!

I think he get almost 2000 a month. Oh, and gets around 175 on an EBT card also. NICE!

marcus says

I'd like to see our cost of living drop to 1/7th what it is. After that very little taxpayer funded assistance would be needed.

Lower taxes and regulations could easily lower the cost of living, probably by quite a bit. Not nearly as much as your 1/7 though.

zzyzzx says

Vicente says

Many many Walmart and McDonalds employees use assistance programs. Their companies even encourage it and help them with paperwork. BILLIONS of dollars worth. What do you want to do with them?

I'd like to see the government definition of poverty redefined to reflect global standards. After which, no taxpayer funded assistance will be necessary.

Then you are a sociopath. Global poverty is malnutrition, lack of basic healthcare, lack of clean drinking water, and terror campaigns by corrupt authorities intent on ensuring that the poor never protest their conditions or seek any place at the table in determining the future of their country. If you believe that life should be brought to the USA, the richest nation in the world, you are a true monster.

futuresmc says

Then you are a sociopath.

Then maybe you should set up a private charity to support deadbeats, instead of forcing all taxpayers to support people too lazy to work at rather luxurious levels.

Government seems to have no problem fudging inflation and unemployment numbers, so why not just define the whole poverty problem away?

zzyzzx says

futuresmc says

Then you are a sociopath.

Then maybe you should set up a private charity to support deadbeats, instead of forcing all taxpayers to support people too lazy to work at rather luxurious levels.

Government seems to have no problem fudging inflation and unemployment numbers, so why not just define the whole poverty problem away?

Throw out your tired old lazy-American-worker myth; most people on public assistance DO work; they just don't earn enough in the private sector to support themselves and their families. A wage that permits basic subsistence is not 'luxurious', not in a nation so rich. True deadbeats are trust fund babies who never work a day in their lives but get pissy when a single mom working two or three jobs wants to be able to ensure her kids have asthma inhalers AND dinner each night and so collects food stamps and government subsidized healthcare.

If poverty was redefined to a global standard, charities would never be able to keep up with the need, especially when you consider that the people that are most apt to donate to charity are the same people who would see their wages plummet in your ideal system, leaving them in need of charity themselves.

Globalization is a race to the bottom by its very nature. Near slave labor, prison labor, and sweatshops are global reality. If America sunk to global standards in terms of defining poverty, that would require casting millions of Americans into direct competition with these abominations. There is no way an American worker can do that and make enough to survive. There needs to be a floor nobody can fall beneath and private charity can't guarantee that. Only government, as flawed as it often is, can. It's like that old joke about democracy being the absolute worst system for human society to form itself around... except for every other system humans have tried since the dawn of time. Governments suck, but without them, there is nothing but human-on-human predation without limit.

I think you missed part of my point altogether. Deadbeats have a very high standard of living by US standards. I just want them to live closer to a 1950 lower middle class standard. They don't need phones, air conditioning, and their own place at the taxpayers expense. They can live in something closer to a dorm.

And you just don't get it that there is a significant % of people who are not in any way ambitious, and won't do something to better themselves once everything is provided for them. But thanks to programs for deadbeats, they don't have to work at all. Those people can work jobs that are mostly currently being done by Mexicans, and earn enough to support themselves (like Mexicans here seem to be doing).

futuresmc says

a single mom working two or three jobs wants to be able to ensure her kids have asthma inhalers AND dinner each night and so collects food stamps and government subsidized healthcare.

Don't you ever question why those inhalers cost so much, and who really benefits from that? If you haven't seen Michael Moore's movie Sicko, I recommend it. He brought a woman who couldn't afford her inhalers to Cuba, and when she got there and learned the price of an inhaler, she cried because she had been sacrificing so much to overpay in her own country. People who travel to Mexico are amazed to find that the total retail price for whatever they need is less than their insurance co-payment. You blame the people who complain about having to pay the overinflated price, but you should be blaming the lobbyists who use our government as their tool to maximize revenues. The purported beneficiaries are not the real beneficiaries, they are props to jerk your sympathy, in fact they are hostages whose desperation ensures they continue to vote for their captors. The real beneficiaries are lobbyists and politicians and their patronage networks, including the political nepotism that uses your money to buy your votes and robs you blind and gets you blaming the wrong villain. Every time you overpay American prices for things that cost almost nothing elsewhere, and endorse HeritageFoundationCare, you enable that same system to grow larger and more powerful, and to take more from you and everyone else. It is literally killing hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, and all some people can say is "more."

curious2 says

People who travel to Mexico are amazed to find that the total retail price for whatever they need is less than their insurance co-payment.

Why did your mom always say.. " Be a doctor or lawyer. dont be a bum ? "

futuresmc says

Globalization is a race to the bottom by its very nature. Near slave labor, prison labor, and sweatshops are global reality. If America sunk to global standards in terms of defining poverty, that would require casting millions of Americans into direct competition with these abominations.

This look slave labor to you? You should understand they are willfully competing against us, while you pathetically thinking its slave labor. Your being naive...

thomaswong.1986 says

futuresmc says

Globalization is a race to the bottom by its very nature. Near slave labor, prison labor, and sweatshops are global reality. If America sunk to global standards in terms of defining poverty, that would require casting millions of Americans into direct competition with these abominations.

This look slave labor to you? You should understand they are willfully competing against us, while you pathetically thinking its slave labor. Your being naive...

The workers in these photos are engaged in work that requires a higher skill set than what we've been discussing. This is not the garment worker or fast food server. An intelligent, well educated, very lucky few do the jobs you have pictured here and are paid a living wage or more for it. My quoted comment was geared towards the workers at the lower-skilled end of the spectrum and whether or not their labor can pay enough to feed, clothe, house, and keep them in the kind of health they need to continue working. In America, the answer would be no, despite full time, physically demanding employment.

curious2 says

People who travel to Mexico are amazed to find that the total retail price for whatever they need is less than their insurance co-payment. You blame the people who complain about having to pay the overinflated price, but you should be blaming the lobbyists who use our government as their tool to maximize revenues. The purported beneficiaries are not the real beneficiaries, they are props to jerk your sympathy, in fact they are hostages whose desperation ensures they continue to vote for their captors. The real beneficiaries are lobbyists and politicians and their patronage networks, including the political nepotism that uses your money to buy your votes and robs you blind and gets you blaming the wrong villain.

Oh, I agree that rent seeking is a MAJOR problem, but when people like you argue for America to adopt a global standard to our funding of anti-poverty programs, it never works out well. All starve the beast ever accomplishes is a lower standard of living for the people who use those programs, even when they work long hours and do the right thing. We can agree on fighting rent seeking towards the goal of bringing down prices for the working poor so that their labor alone can sustain them and their kids, but if you also vote to cut government spending on the poor, you won't be chastening the rent seekers as you hoped. Look at food stamp cuts and the reduction in section 8 vouchers. All those things did was leave workers working at multiple low wage jobs and living in cars, unable to feed their kids 3 squares. Big agra lost nothing and rents continued to climb undisturbed. Attacking rent seeking requires politically bloody, direct confrontation. Anything else and the rentiers game the system. So join with me to fight big pharma and big agra and oversubsidized real estate developers, but leave the poor out of it.

futuresmc says

America to adopt a global standard to our funding of anti-poverty programs, it never works out well.

It should get lazy people off of "disability" and doing jobs that Mexicans currently do, and that should be very good for the US. Why do you hate American workers?

This is why the USA is so great! Pay folks who do nothing with money we do not have. Winning!

Who do you vote for, if you agree the goal should be to fight back against rent seeking??

Surely not democrats who confuse monopolistic rent seeking, with capitalism

Lolololololol

Blurtman says

This is why the USA is so great! Pay folks who do nothing with money we do not have. Winning!

In 2015, we'll spend $20 BILLION dollars to keep 10,000 American troops in Afghanistan.

That's about 2 million a head.

My niece was on disability for 2 months recently due to a VERY SEROUS health condition that could have ended her life. The meager disability payments she got helped out but were in no way a replacement for her salary. She is back at work now.

Frankly I'm glad my niece had a little bit of help and she wasn't sitting around for fun.

I have NO idea what those soldiers do in Afghanistan right now except hunker down in compounds and race down the road in convoys hoping they don't hit an IED. If you can point to some lists of important military objectives achieved recently by our troops over there that would be great.

zzyzzx says

It should get lazy people off of "disability" and doing jobs that Mexicans currently do, and that should be very good for the US. Why do you hate American workers?

Americans would be happy to do those jobs for a living wage and adequate worker safety laws. Unfortunately, American employers don't want to be forced by a limited labor market to offer either, so they hire illegal foreign workers and lobby for visas to bring in guest workers legally. If our government would adopt an American worker friendly attitude, we could significantly cut our anti-poverty programs by strictly limiting the foreign competition within our own borders and giving our workers bargaining power to attain the wages that would feed their families without government assistance. Unfortunately, all you want to do is cut spending on anti-poverty programs while at the same time allow totally unfettered labor arbitrage. That is a recipe for destitution of the majority of Americans, no matter how hard they work, and that is morally indefensible.

"My niece was on disability for 2 months recently due to a VERY SEROUS health condition that could have ended her life. The meager disability payments she got helped out but were in no way a replacement for her salary. She is back at work now."

That's great that she received some help, but it is unlikely that the record number of Americans on disability is due to a sudden increase in illness and injury.

Blurtman says

"My niece was on disability for 2 months recently due to a VERY SEROUS health condition that could have ended her life. The meager disability payments she got helped out but were in no way a replacement for her salary. She is back at work now."

That's great that she received some help, but it is unlikely that the record number of Americans on disability is due to a sudden increase in illness and injury.

Exactly, that is the scenario for which welfare programs exist-not have people using it for generations.

lostand confused says

Exactly, that is the scenario for which welfare programs exist-not have people using it for generations.

If you know of some trick to pass down disability status have at it.

Frankly nobody in this thread has proved that disablity is some epidemic of Welfare Queendom.

Maybe more people are on disability now because more people are sick and need it. How do we separate "real" illness from fakers?

I see all the time not-poor fliers trying to take what seems a 3 year old onto the plane as a "lap child". Because they can get away with it? And yet I don't assume every child I see being carried onto a plane has lying thieving parents. Maybe they are big for their age.

Cerebral palsy, is that a character flaw? Perhaps we should kick some crutches out and see. Sometimes people over-magnify the abuse cases they do see, because you don't really see the many people who are severely disabled and need it.

Vicente says

Maybe more people are on disability now because more people are sick and need
it. How do we separate "real" illness from fakers?

If we used stalinist era enhanced interrogation investigative technique, I am sure that we could "sift" the real from the fake....

I know several people on disability. They're not really disabled.

One came to Santa Cruz as a young rebel and got involved with the Mexican drug gangs while she became an addict. She is now "bipolar" and gets disability. However, she never had the manic episode and detatchment from reality that bipolar people have that actually need meds to control episodes.

Another I know graduated UCSC late, she did the normal fun things and bullshit jobs in town then decided to get a degree. She worked for a while but would fight with her boss, etc. She also flipped out briefly when her boyfriend dumped her. She's a pain in the butt sometimes but she gets total disability. She lives in a great building in Capitola, has free fast wifi, owns iPhone, a car, a roku, two flat screen TVs.

Another one I know claimed to have "lyme disease" although it's almost impossible to prove by tests. He just happened to be selling mortgages around 2007 and by odd coincidence when his work situation went to hell he said he was incredibly tired. Now that he's got disability he goes to the gym and posts on facebook pics of him flexing. Of course he's not gonna give up his disability lifetime annuity payments.

To receive disability payments you should be 1. blind 2. crippled 3. have IQ under 90

futuresmc says

people like you argue for America to adopt a global standard to our funding of anti-poverty programs....

Ugh - if you actually paid attention to HeritageFoundationCare (which includes everyone) and how many of those poor kids you pretend to feel sorry for are hooked on toxic pills that cause lifetime side effects by the teenage years, you might reconsider whom you think you're arguing for and against. In Mexico for example, healthcare for poor children is often better than here; Mexican kids get more vaccines and fewer pills, and at lower cost. And here's a hint: instead of re-framing other people's arguments in a false frame of your own invention, you might consider limiting your presentation of their views to what they actually said. It might lack the creativity of your false framing approach, and of course strawmen of your own fabrication are usually easier to argue against, but integrity does come at a price.