3 ms·
> It's much better for all of us that they be comfortable and (importantly!) consuming in the marketplace than that they be destitute and looking for work. Th
by archon 14y ago
> It's much better for all of us that they be comfortable and (importantly!) consuming in the marketplace than that they be destitute and looking for work.
This seems like a false dilemma: Either they're on disability and consuming, or they're not on disability and destitute, with no middle ground. Grandparent's anecdote is about disability that "could be remedied fairly easily," with the implication that the "remedy" in this case might be "rent is due next week."
* Edit for clarity
- ajross 14y agoRight, but the point of the second paragraph is that (in the aggregate) it's really not a dilemma at all. In conditions of very high employment (with the rising wages and physical mobility that entails) these people tend to go off disability (or not go on it at all) and enter the workforce for the simple reason that there is money available. My point isn't that it's a perfect system, just that it scales the way you want it to and we should be wary of changing it just to stick it to some lazy good for nothings. Right now, like it or not, disability backfills a lot of what a "welfare" or "guaranteed income" program would be doing, and mucking with it risks severe poverty for its users and economic damage to the rest of us.
- archon 14y ago> we should be wary of changing it just to stick it to some lazy good for nothings. I agree with you there, at least insofar as any change I can think of to stick it to them would also probably hurt the people the system was designed to help. I'd rather fund a few deadbeats than a genuinely disabled person go hungry, if given no other choice. I guess I just fail to see how reducing the number of people on disability could, taken in isolation, result in economic damage to the rest of us.