3 ms·

I can attest that disability is a way of life in certain parts of the country. $15k/year may not sound like a lot, and it objectively isn't, but a household of

I can attest that disability is a way of life in certain parts of the country. $15k/year may not sound like a lot, and it objectively isn't, but a household of 2 adults and 0-2 kids pulling $30k/year in some parts of the country can actually get by pretty well. If you can get an extra $10-20k/year in free opiates that's either a great way to feed an addiction or to make money on the side. There are counties where almost half of the adult population is on some kind of disability and those also happen to be the counties hurt hardest by the opiate epidemic, and known for "pain clinics". But, I think there is a third part of the cycle that the article you linked mentions. Nobody grows up wanting to survive off disability and being an opiate addict - while the pain clinic/disability combo might enable people entering this state, the reason people give in to this is that they have poor life prospects. Going on disability is basically giving up. We need to figure out how to provide better job and educational prospects in the areas / for the kind of people who are incentivized to go on disability so that they actually have much better options. The average West Virginian isn't intrinsically less able than the average resident of Utah

LockNess0 8y ago
Reduce welfare and eliminate all payroll taxes and reduce income taxes with the savings. This will lower the marginal value of labour and encourage more hiring. Humans are rational creatures and will decide to work. Right now the pendulum swings too far towards welfare reliance in many areas.
- charliesome 8y ago
  And what if someone's unable to work? > Humans are rational creatures I think this claim needs to be backed up too. There is a lot of evidence indicating that we're incredibly irrational.
  - LockNess0 8y ago
    I don't see this as being the role of society, to provide a backstop for everyone. Make the difficulty of getting employed and earning an income as easy as possible, and the jobs and work will follow. If people are truly physically unable to work, they should rely on their family, community, religion or charity to provide for them. The welfare state is too costly to maintain and too rife with fraud. I suspect that the biggest cause of disability is simply obesity. Government has a role to clean up the food supply and agricultural system, not to give handouts to millions of people affected by its dysfunction.
    - chillwaves 8y ago
      > family, community, religion or charity If these are not enough?
      - chii 8y ago
        People still got by in the past before govt welfare existed. What happened today?
        lenticular 8y ago
        They didn't, actually. Severe poverty was widespread on a scale we don't really see today. Not having SS, especially, lead to extreme destitution being common among the elderly.
        matthewmacleod 8y ago
        I mean, many of them died. Or ended up in the workhouse.
        walshemj 8y ago
        They did not "get by" they died or where incarcerated on workhouses. Many of the BBC who do you think you are series have terrible stories of peoples ancestors in workhouses.
    - jjoonathan 8y ago
      > Make the difficulty of getting employed and earning an income as easy as possible, and the jobs and work will follow. Why should they? Demand elasticity is empirically very low for minimum wage workers. Lowering minimum wage a small amount does not create jobs, just as raising it a small amount does not eliminate them. See: the inverted funnel plot of Doucouliagos and Stanley https://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/02/18/business/economy/18economix-minimum/18economix-minimum-blog480.png https://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/02/18/business/economy/... https://www.ctdol.state.ct.us/lweab/Doucougliagos%20&%20Stanley%20Publication%20Selection%20Bias%20in%20Min%20Wage%20Research-A%20Metaregression%20Analysis.pdf https://www.ctdol.state.ct.us/lweab/Doucougliagos%20&%20Stan...
- JetSpiegel 8y ago
  The problem is not the marginal value of labour, is that the value those people create is close to 0. Even working for free, some people will just create negative value. The only solution is for the able to pay others to not work, through welfare. The improvements in technology should more than make up for this loss.
  - chii 8y ago
    There's no incentive alignment between those who own the tech (the source of productivity increase), and those who would need the welfare (who would presumably be consuming some of said productivity increase). The owners of the tech is highly likely to prefer to capture fully the output (by lowering taxes for example). I think there should be a way to align incentives - education paid for by owners of the tech, but also a contractual obligation to work for X years for their sponsors.
    - jjoonathan 8y ago
      Ah, yes, indentured servitude, a brilliant suggestion for uplifting a population out of poverty!
    - JetSpiegel 8y ago
      I think the incentive is basic empathy. Just because our fellow humans are economically worthless, does not mean they are lesser people. If the point is that those people produce no value, they shouldn't work at all. They could just dig and fill ditches, but that doesn't produce value. Amazon also leeches from the public goods, but that is somehow socially acceptable.
  - specialist 8y ago
    I've had employees that I would have been happy to pay to stay home. The NYC school system has the "rubber room", where unflushable employees are warehoused. One of the reasons I support UBI is because it's cheaper than welfare for keeping certain people out of the way.
- vernie 8y ago
  Is "green text" a pejorative on HN?
  - rictic 8y ago
    New account names (<2 weeks old) are colored green.
nradov 8y ago
The counties with highest disability rates were at about 26% of the overall population (not just adults) as of 2017. Washington Post has a good article about the human impact. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2017/03/30/disabled-or-just-desperate/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2017/03/30/disabled-...

LockNess0 8y ago

Reduce welfare and eliminate all payroll taxes and reduce income taxes with the savings. This will lower the marginal value of labour and encourage more hiring. Humans are rational creatures and will decide to work. Right now the pendulum swings too far towards welfare reliance in many areas.

charliesome 8y ago
And what if someone's unable to work? > Humans are rational creatures I think this claim needs to be backed up too. There is a lot of evidence indicating that we're incredibly irrational.
- LockNess0 8y ago
  I don't see this as being the role of society, to provide a backstop for everyone. Make the difficulty of getting employed and earning an income as easy as possible, and the jobs and work will follow. If people are truly physically unable to work, they should rely on their family, community, religion or charity to provide for them. The welfare state is too costly to maintain and too rife with fraud. I suspect that the biggest cause of disability is simply obesity. Government has a role to clean up the food supply and agricultural system, not to give handouts to millions of people affected by its dysfunction.
  - chillwaves 8y ago
    > family, community, religion or charity If these are not enough?
    - chii 8y ago
      People still got by in the past before govt welfare existed. What happened today?
      - lenticular 8y ago
        They didn't, actually. Severe poverty was widespread on a scale we don't really see today. Not having SS, especially, lead to extreme destitution being common among the elderly.
      - matthewmacleod 8y ago
        I mean, many of them died. Or ended up in the workhouse.
      - walshemj 8y ago
        They did not "get by" they died or where incarcerated on workhouses. Many of the BBC who do you think you are series have terrible stories of peoples ancestors in workhouses.
  - jjoonathan 8y ago
    > Make the difficulty of getting employed and earning an income as easy as possible, and the jobs and work will follow. Why should they? Demand elasticity is empirically very low for minimum wage workers. Lowering minimum wage a small amount does not create jobs, just as raising it a small amount does not eliminate them. See: the inverted funnel plot of Doucouliagos and Stanley https://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/02/18/business/economy/18economix-minimum/18economix-minimum-blog480.png https://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/02/18/business/economy/... https://www.ctdol.state.ct.us/lweab/Doucougliagos%20&%20Stanley%20Publication%20Selection%20Bias%20in%20Min%20Wage%20Research-A%20Metaregression%20Analysis.pdf https://www.ctdol.state.ct.us/lweab/Doucougliagos%20&%20Stan...
JetSpiegel 8y ago
The problem is not the marginal value of labour, is that the value those people create is close to 0. Even working for free, some people will just create negative value. The only solution is for the able to pay others to not work, through welfare. The improvements in technology should more than make up for this loss.
- chii 8y ago
  There's no incentive alignment between those who own the tech (the source of productivity increase), and those who would need the welfare (who would presumably be consuming some of said productivity increase). The owners of the tech is highly likely to prefer to capture fully the output (by lowering taxes for example). I think there should be a way to align incentives - education paid for by owners of the tech, but also a contractual obligation to work for X years for their sponsors.
  - jjoonathan 8y ago
    Ah, yes, indentured servitude, a brilliant suggestion for uplifting a population out of poverty!
  - JetSpiegel 8y ago
    I think the incentive is basic empathy. Just because our fellow humans are economically worthless, does not mean they are lesser people. If the point is that those people produce no value, they shouldn't work at all. They could just dig and fill ditches, but that doesn't produce value. Amazon also leeches from the public goods, but that is somehow socially acceptable.
- specialist 8y ago
  I've had employees that I would have been happy to pay to stay home. The NYC school system has the "rubber room", where unflushable employees are warehoused. One of the reasons I support UBI is because it's cheaper than welfare for keeping certain people out of the way.
vernie 8y ago
Is "green text" a pejorative on HN?
- rictic 8y ago
  New account names (<2 weeks old) are colored green.

nradov 8y ago

The counties with highest disability rates were at about 26% of the overall population (not just adults) as of 2017. Washington Post has a good article about the human impact. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2017/03/30/disabled-or-just-desperate/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/local/2017/03/30/disabled-...