3 ms·

Step 1: Oh my god we can't pay for retirement! Step 2: Raise the age of retirement. (Phew!) Step 3: Oh my god unemployment is raising! (Those no-longer- reti

Step 1: Oh my god we can't pay for retirement! Step 2: Raise the age of retirement. (Phew!) Step 3: Oh my god unemployment is raising! (Those no-longer- retirees must find a job, right?) Step 4: Get rid of unemployment insurance (in part or in whole). Step 5: things get real ugly real quick. --- Seriously, raising the age of retirement in the face of raising technological unemployment is nuts. Those who push for this are either stupid or evil. Given the army of counsellors they have at their disposal, I'm not sure stupidity is a valid explanation. Some of them must have some nefarious purpose in mind.

VLM 10y ago
Step 4 was implemented in the USA with SSDI. There's heavy emotional baggage to tag people as permanently totally disabled merely because the economy is too small to let them participate. Also its kinda a mess mixing essentially fake claims (from a medical disease perspective) vs real claims. So the same program takes care of a guy with 100% disability back pain who sells his pain pills (a whole nother problem) and plays video games all day but is actually physically healthy while merely economically dead, with another dude missing some limbs or brain damaged. Its weird but mostly seems to be working rather than your step #5. Around 1 in 20 people in the USA are on SSDI. The exact ratio of who's economically damaged vs physically damaged is unclear but you can guess by looking at rate graphs over the last couple decades, since the 80s perhaps.
- loup-vaillant 10y ago
  > Step 4 was implemented in the USA with SSDI. That's not what I was talking about. I was talking about "no job, no pay" policies. Like, "work or starve". England kinda went down that route, doing their very best to throw people out of their meagre unemployment benefits. SSDI as you describe it is actually a form of (covert) unemployment insurance: a way to have money even if you can't get a job. While the stigmatization sucks, the money is better than nothing.

VLM 10y ago

Step 4 was implemented in the USA with SSDI. There's heavy emotional baggage to tag people as permanently totally disabled merely because the economy is too small to let them participate. Also its kinda a mess mixing essentially fake claims (from a medical disease perspective) vs real claims. So the same program takes care of a guy with 100% disability back pain who sells his pain pills (a whole nother problem) and plays video games all day but is actually physically healthy while merely economically dead, with another dude missing some limbs or brain damaged. Its weird but mostly seems to be working rather than your step #5. Around 1 in 20 people in the USA are on SSDI. The exact ratio of who's economically damaged vs physically damaged is unclear but you can guess by looking at rate graphs over the last couple decades, since the 80s perhaps.

loup-vaillant 10y ago
> Step 4 was implemented in the USA with SSDI. That's not what I was talking about. I was talking about "no job, no pay" policies. Like, "work or starve". England kinda went down that route, doing their very best to throw people out of their meagre unemployment benefits. SSDI as you describe it is actually a form of (covert) unemployment insurance: a way to have money even if you can't get a job. While the stigmatization sucks, the money is better than nothing.