10 ms·

This seems like what journalism should be. This is shocking to me. An entire generation of people have slipped through the cracks, and I had no idea this sort o

This seems like what journalism should be. This is shocking to me. An entire generation of people have slipped through the cracks, and I had no idea this sort of disability-gaming was occurring. Is this common knowledge?

michaelochurch 14y ago
It's not "disability gaming" for the most part. These people have legitimate, serious health problems and, in this economy, no employer wants to accommodate them. There are a lot of people who are capable of delivering economic value, but not on a typical employer's terms. The sad truth is that the demand for most labor is crashing. The truth is that disability is a spectrum from 0 (no economic function) to 1 (full health). In 1950, there was high demand for labor and people at 0.7 could get full-time jobs with access to middle-class labor. Now, the 0.8's are unwanted and the 0.9's are trapped in secondary labor, unless they're extremely intelligent and can swing as free agents.
- bradleyjg 14y ago
  How is this not gaming? "Scott tried school for a while, but hated it. So he took the advice of the rogue staffer who told him to suck all the benefits he could out of the system. He had a heart attack after the mill closed and figured, "since I've had a bypass, maybe I can get on disability, and then I won't have worry about this stuff anymore." It worked; Scott is now on disability."
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    I don't know Scott's situation. Maybe there's a job for him that doesn't involve cardiac risk. Maybe there isn't. How the fuck am I going to know? Yes, some people abuse social welfare programs. In Williamsburg, there are goddamn middle-class hipsters who take food stamps and use their parents' money to buy drugs. It happens, but this idea that there's an epidemic of moochers or that most people on programs are degenerately gaming the system is off the mark.
    - bradleyjg 14y ago
      What if there's no job period which is what the article seems to suggest (at least not without going back to school -- which he "hates")? The disability program is supposed to be if you are medically unable to work, not if you can't find a job. Look at the charts in the article, there isn't an epidemic of disability in this country, disability is being used as a substitute for traditional welfare programs which have been eliminated. It isn't that I have no sympathy for people caught in the cracks, but we shouldn't have government programs that are de facto open only to those willing to lie and cheat.
      - michaelochurch 14y ago
        It isn't that I have no sympathy for people caught in the cracks, but we shouldn't have government programs that are de facto open only to those willing to lie and cheat. I agree with you 100%. We shouldn't have a minimum wage, food stamps, disability funds, or even 90% of the termination laws. In their lieu, we should have basic income, universal healthcare, free higher education for people with the ability, and affordable housing for everyone. Then, companies can hire and fire whoever they want, and the much simpler (if more radical) system is harder to game. But... the latter is not the world we live in, and we're not likely to see it in the contemporary US.
        SoftwareMaven 14y ago
        How is that different from what the Soviet Union tried? How do you keep from falling in the same traps that doomed it? I fail to see how, once the state has that much economic control, it will be held in check from taking more. That said, there is a real problem here with unemployable people and it's only going to get worse. It's no wonder no politicians want to talk about it. It can't be summed up in a ten-second blurb.
        positr0n 14y ago
        How is that in any way similar to what the Soviet Union tried? michaelochurch wasn't advocating a centrally planned economy.
  - tempaccount9473 14y ago
    > How is this not gaming? It is "gaming", in the same sense that every decision you make to optimize toward a desirable outcome is "gaming". 40 years he had a choice; go work at the mill for $25/hr, and come home tired and dirty, or stay home and be unemployed, and face the scorn of his peers. Now he has a choice, either go to "retraining" that is run by for-profit corporations hungry to suck up government funds, and whose "graduates" are still unemployable, or go on disability. Given the world he lives in, he made the best choice. Now his choice involved some meaure of dishonesty. But while I'd love to live in a world that rewarded honesty and integrity, that's not the world we live in. We live in a world that has no place for a unskilled but hard-working individual, so those people have to take welfare to survive, welfare that they would likely refuse if there were better options.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
ttcbj 14y ago
If you are interested in this story, here is an interesting podcast from an economist studying this issue: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/04/autor_on_disabi.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/04/autor_on_disabi.htm...
kevinskii 14y ago
Anecdotally, I am closely acquainted with several people who receive disability assistance from the government. They are all genuinely unable to perform moderate physical labor at present. However, without exception, their disability was brought about by poor personal decisions and could be remedied fairly easily. The financial assistance gives them a strong incentive not to try.
- tjic 14y ago
  > all genuinely unable to perform moderate physical labor I know of several people who spend all day sitting at home blogging or chatting on email because they're physically disabled. Yet I've employed multiple people as customer support techs who's job description is "sit at home and chat on email". Our government is unwilling to tell people that they're free to either work or not work, but if they choose not to work, they won't get paid. It's a collective action problem: no politician wants to be the first one to be "mean" and tell perfectly competent people that they can't live off of the stolen labor of others. ...so we continue to have "disability" for people who are entirely capable of working, albeit not at wages that they'd prefer to earn.
  - derefr 14y ago
    Did you have some sort of qualification bar for the people who you paid to "sit at home and chat on email"? Would these people pass it?
  - scotty79 14y ago
    > perfectly competent people that they can't live off of the stolen labor of others You mean like whole government, all government employees and everyone that is paid by or subsists on tax money?
    - john_b 14y ago
      Bad analogy. Government employees actually do something (at least nominally) in exchange for the money they get.
DanBC 14y ago
> disability-gaming You have 2 candidates for a job. They are entirely similar, except one of them discloses a history of MH problems which they claim are well managed by medication and monthly meetings with a psychiatrist. Which do you employ? There have been posts on HN from people saying they'd feel anxious about employing women of child-bearing age, or people who have had MH problems.
- Domenic_S 14y ago
  Very contrived scenario. No two candidates are perfectly similar. Further, it is not legal to ask about medical status in an interview, other than job requirements (can you lift 40 pounds, can you stand on your feet for 4 hours).
  - DanBC 14y ago
    > No two candidates are perfectly similar. The scary thing is that many employers would prefer a worse candidate over someone with a known MH illness.
    - cheald 14y ago
      ...which is probably why it's illegal to ask a job candidate about their health history.
riggins 14y ago
I had no idea this sort of disability-gaming was occurring a) I did think that people generally knew that disability claims go up during periods of economic dislocation. b) I wouldn't call it 'gaming'. Toy example: Economy starts at equilibrium A where getting a job takes difficulty A. The economy slows down so now getting a job takes difficulty A + 10. It's obvious to state that the people who were at the margin, that could get a job at difficulty A but can't get a job a difficultly A + 10, will now be more likely to consider other options (including disability). I'm sure there will be a bunch of comments to the effect that these people are malingerers but to me it's not black and white like that. IMO, it's unremarkable that a changed equilibrium is going to result in more disability claims. Policywise, I think Minsky had some good ideas. The short form was limit transfer payments (i.e. payments where the recipient does nothing) and replace that with the government as employer of last resort.
niels_olson 14y ago
> Is this common knowledge Depends on your experience. We so a good bit of it after Katrina. The middle-class homeowners were completely at a loss when it came to applying to FEMA. The folks who live have lived of these federal programs for years were showing the engineers and lawyers how to fill out the papers. "No... don't check that box. That tells them you think you can afford food. Don't wanna do that."
shardling 14y ago
It's not really gaming, because people don't necessarily want to be on it. They tend to be genuinely unable to find work. I have a friend who works as a disability adjudicator (i.e. he determines who qualifies or not), and he says that it's just barely enough to live on -- only the desperate sign up. The one type of systematic gaming he does see is parents pushing their kids onto disability; in that case it's just extra money.
yardie 14y ago
Is this common knowledge? I grew up on the other side of the tracks and it was common knowledge even to me over a decade ago. Quite a few of my friend who barely graduated school knew where they were headed in their future. If you're a guy you practically don't qualify for any aid, period. So with no future prospectes you get a job doing intense manual labor; roofing and warehouse were particularly popular. Do that for a year then "develop"[1] a back problem. File for workman's comp. Now your unemployed so you get UI as well. The UI money eventually runs out so you file for disability, bring your workman's comp dossier as evidence. I first started hearing about this in 2001 from some colleagues working in factory. They were actually looking forward to being injured. A lot of them were real schemers, too. So one of them told me that Clinton fucked them by changing the welfare laws. He put in a hard limit of 5 years and made it difficult to qualify. They took no joy in the factory but took the work serious because they needed at least 6 months to qualify for UI and workman's comp can be denied if you don't do follow procedures (ex. breaking your back by following off scaffolding and not wearing a harness or being clipped in). I have friends who are coming back from both wars and they are really fucked up, physically and emotionally. I can't imagine if there numbers fall under SS disabilities or VA disabilities.
jseliger 14y ago
This is shocking to me. An entire generation of people have slipped through the cracks, and I had no idea this sort of disability-gaming was occurring. Is this common knowledge? One reason SSDI has grown so much is because the rules changed in 1984; David Autor, who is quoted in the article, did an Econtalk interview about this: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/04/autor_on_disabi.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/04/autor_on_disabi.htm... : continuing disability reviews (CDR). So, previously a CDR was essentially a de novo evaluation of the case. In other words, you start from scratch and try to reach a new decision or not. Congress said: Well, now, CDR, to terminate someone based on a disability review you must prove that they have recovered from whatever state they were in at the time they were given benefits. So, if they were given benefits by mistake, that's not sufficient. They have to have recovered from whatever that state was to lose benefits. It really raised the bar for the SSA to administer any awards it had made. The whole podcast is worth listening to, and Autor's work worth following, if you're interested in the issue. Autor has also found that much of the growth comes from people in their 50s or older who don't have a high school degree—in other words, older people with few employment opportunities. In such circumstances, SSDI often looks like a better alternative than basically being forced out of the labor market.
MartinCron 14y ago
This seems like what journalism should be Remember this during your next NPR pledge drive :)
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

michaelochurch 14y ago

It's not "disability gaming" for the most part. These people have legitimate, serious health problems and, in this economy, no employer wants to accommodate them. There are a lot of people who are capable of delivering economic value, but not on a typical employer's terms. The sad truth is that the demand for most labor is crashing. The truth is that disability is a spectrum from 0 (no economic function) to 1 (full health). In 1950, there was high demand for labor and people at 0.7 could get full-time jobs with access to middle-class labor. Now, the 0.8's are unwanted and the 0.9's are trapped in secondary labor, unless they're extremely intelligent and can swing as free agents.

bradleyjg 14y ago
How is this not gaming? "Scott tried school for a while, but hated it. So he took the advice of the rogue staffer who told him to suck all the benefits he could out of the system. He had a heart attack after the mill closed and figured, "since I've had a bypass, maybe I can get on disability, and then I won't have worry about this stuff anymore." It worked; Scott is now on disability."
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  I don't know Scott's situation. Maybe there's a job for him that doesn't involve cardiac risk. Maybe there isn't. How the fuck am I going to know? Yes, some people abuse social welfare programs. In Williamsburg, there are goddamn middle-class hipsters who take food stamps and use their parents' money to buy drugs. It happens, but this idea that there's an epidemic of moochers or that most people on programs are degenerately gaming the system is off the mark.
  - bradleyjg 14y ago
    What if there's no job period which is what the article seems to suggest (at least not without going back to school -- which he "hates")? The disability program is supposed to be if you are medically unable to work, not if you can't find a job. Look at the charts in the article, there isn't an epidemic of disability in this country, disability is being used as a substitute for traditional welfare programs which have been eliminated. It isn't that I have no sympathy for people caught in the cracks, but we shouldn't have government programs that are de facto open only to those willing to lie and cheat.
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      It isn't that I have no sympathy for people caught in the cracks, but we shouldn't have government programs that are de facto open only to those willing to lie and cheat. I agree with you 100%. We shouldn't have a minimum wage, food stamps, disability funds, or even 90% of the termination laws. In their lieu, we should have basic income, universal healthcare, free higher education for people with the ability, and affordable housing for everyone. Then, companies can hire and fire whoever they want, and the much simpler (if more radical) system is harder to game. But... the latter is not the world we live in, and we're not likely to see it in the contemporary US.
      - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
        How is that different from what the Soviet Union tried? How do you keep from falling in the same traps that doomed it? I fail to see how, once the state has that much economic control, it will be held in check from taking more. That said, there is a real problem here with unemployable people and it's only going to get worse. It's no wonder no politicians want to talk about it. It can't be summed up in a ten-second blurb.
        positr0n 14y ago
        How is that in any way similar to what the Soviet Union tried? michaelochurch wasn't advocating a centrally planned economy.
- tempaccount9473 14y ago
  > How is this not gaming? It is "gaming", in the same sense that every decision you make to optimize toward a desirable outcome is "gaming". 40 years he had a choice; go work at the mill for $25/hr, and come home tired and dirty, or stay home and be unemployed, and face the scorn of his peers. Now he has a choice, either go to "retraining" that is run by for-profit corporations hungry to suck up government funds, and whose "graduates" are still unemployable, or go on disability. Given the world he lives in, he made the best choice. Now his choice involved some meaure of dishonesty. But while I'd love to live in a world that rewarded honesty and integrity, that's not the world we live in. We live in a world that has no place for a unskilled but hard-working individual, so those people have to take welfare to survive, welfare that they would likely refuse if there were better options.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

ttcbj 14y ago

If you are interested in this story, here is an interesting podcast from an economist studying this issue: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/04/autor_on_disabi.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/04/autor_on_disabi.htm...

kevinskii 14y ago

Anecdotally, I am closely acquainted with several people who receive disability assistance from the government. They are all genuinely unable to perform moderate physical labor at present. However, without exception, their disability was brought about by poor personal decisions and could be remedied fairly easily. The financial assistance gives them a strong incentive not to try.

tjic 14y ago
> all genuinely unable to perform moderate physical labor I know of several people who spend all day sitting at home blogging or chatting on email because they're physically disabled. Yet I've employed multiple people as customer support techs who's job description is "sit at home and chat on email". Our government is unwilling to tell people that they're free to either work or not work, but if they choose not to work, they won't get paid. It's a collective action problem: no politician wants to be the first one to be "mean" and tell perfectly competent people that they can't live off of the stolen labor of others. ...so we continue to have "disability" for people who are entirely capable of working, albeit not at wages that they'd prefer to earn.
- derefr 14y ago
  Did you have some sort of qualification bar for the people who you paid to "sit at home and chat on email"? Would these people pass it?
- scotty79 14y ago
  > perfectly competent people that they can't live off of the stolen labor of others You mean like whole government, all government employees and everyone that is paid by or subsists on tax money?
  - john_b 14y ago
    Bad analogy. Government employees actually do something (at least nominally) in exchange for the money they get.

DanBC 14y ago

> disability-gaming You have 2 candidates for a job. They are entirely similar, except one of them discloses a history of MH problems which they claim are well managed by medication and monthly meetings with a psychiatrist. Which do you employ? There have been posts on HN from people saying they'd feel anxious about employing women of child-bearing age, or people who have had MH problems.

Domenic_S 14y ago
Very contrived scenario. No two candidates are perfectly similar. Further, it is not legal to ask about medical status in an interview, other than job requirements (can you lift 40 pounds, can you stand on your feet for 4 hours).
- DanBC 14y ago
  > No two candidates are perfectly similar. The scary thing is that many employers would prefer a worse candidate over someone with a known MH illness.
  - cheald 14y ago
    ...which is probably why it's illegal to ask a job candidate about their health history.

riggins 14y ago

I had no idea this sort of disability-gaming was occurring a) I did think that people generally knew that disability claims go up during periods of economic dislocation. b) I wouldn't call it 'gaming'. Toy example: Economy starts at equilibrium A where getting a job takes difficulty A. The economy slows down so now getting a job takes difficulty A + 10. It's obvious to state that the people who were at the margin, that could get a job at difficulty A but can't get a job a difficultly A + 10, will now be more likely to consider other options (including disability). I'm sure there will be a bunch of comments to the effect that these people are malingerers but to me it's not black and white like that. IMO, it's unremarkable that a changed equilibrium is going to result in more disability claims. Policywise, I think Minsky had some good ideas. The short form was limit transfer payments (i.e. payments where the recipient does nothing) and replace that with the government as employer of last resort.

niels_olson 14y ago

> Is this common knowledge Depends on your experience. We so a good bit of it after Katrina. The middle-class homeowners were completely at a loss when it came to applying to FEMA. The folks who live have lived of these federal programs for years were showing the engineers and lawyers how to fill out the papers. "No... don't check that box. That tells them you think you can afford food. Don't wanna do that."

shardling 14y ago

It's not really gaming, because people don't necessarily want to be on it. They tend to be genuinely unable to find work. I have a friend who works as a disability adjudicator (i.e. he determines who qualifies or not), and he says that it's just barely enough to live on -- only the desperate sign up. The one type of systematic gaming he does see is parents pushing their kids onto disability; in that case it's just extra money.

yardie 14y ago

Is this common knowledge? I grew up on the other side of the tracks and it was common knowledge even to me over a decade ago. Quite a few of my friend who barely graduated school knew where they were headed in their future. If you're a guy you practically don't qualify for any aid, period. So with no future prospectes you get a job doing intense manual labor; roofing and warehouse were particularly popular. Do that for a year then "develop"[1] a back problem. File for workman's comp. Now your unemployed so you get UI as well. The UI money eventually runs out so you file for disability, bring your workman's comp dossier as evidence. I first started hearing about this in 2001 from some colleagues working in factory. They were actually looking forward to being injured. A lot of them were real schemers, too. So one of them told me that Clinton fucked them by changing the welfare laws. He put in a hard limit of 5 years and made it difficult to qualify. They took no joy in the factory but took the work serious because they needed at least 6 months to qualify for UI and workman's comp can be denied if you don't do follow procedures (ex. breaking your back by following off scaffolding and not wearing a harness or being clipped in). I have friends who are coming back from both wars and they are really fucked up, physically and emotionally. I can't imagine if there numbers fall under SS disabilities or VA disabilities.

jseliger 14y ago

This is shocking to me. An entire generation of people have slipped through the cracks, and I had no idea this sort of disability-gaming was occurring. Is this common knowledge? One reason SSDI has grown so much is because the rules changed in 1984; David Autor, who is quoted in the article, did an Econtalk interview about this: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/04/autor_on_disabi.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2012/04/autor_on_disabi.htm... : continuing disability reviews (CDR). So, previously a CDR was essentially a de novo evaluation of the case. In other words, you start from scratch and try to reach a new decision or not. Congress said: Well, now, CDR, to terminate someone based on a disability review you must prove that they have recovered from whatever state they were in at the time they were given benefits. So, if they were given benefits by mistake, that's not sufficient. They have to have recovered from whatever that state was to lose benefits. It really raised the bar for the SSA to administer any awards it had made. The whole podcast is worth listening to, and Autor's work worth following, if you're interested in the issue. Autor has also found that much of the growth comes from people in their 50s or older who don't have a high school degree—in other words, older people with few employment opportunities. In such circumstances, SSDI often looks like a better alternative than basically being forced out of the labor market.

MartinCron 14y ago

This seems like what journalism should be Remember this during your next NPR pledge drive :)

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]