4 ms·

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 the

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.
        digikata 14y ago
        The Soviet Union didn't fail because of the funding of social safety nets, it failed because it had a command economy where too few people made resource decisions and they made them poorly. It matters little wether that command concentration comes from government or private sources. If the distribution of wealth becomes too skewed, the same economic failure could happen in capitalist economies. It's possible we've already seen the early symptoms of that kind of failure in the economy now.
        14y ago
- 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]

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.
      - digikata 14y ago
        The Soviet Union didn't fail because of the funding of social safety nets, it failed because it had a command economy where too few people made resource decisions and they made them poorly. It matters little wether that command concentration comes from government or private sources. If the distribution of wealth becomes too skewed, the same economic failure could happen in capitalist economies. It's possible we've already seen the early symptoms of that kind of failure in the economy now.
        14y ago
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]