23 ms·

Part of the rise in the number of people on disability is simply driven by the fact that the workforce is getting older, and older people tend to have more heal

Part of the rise in the number of people on disability is simply driven by the fact that the workforce is getting older, and older people tend to have more health problems. This is probably one of the key points the article could be making, but it's kinda glossed over. As the baby boom generation (the one born ~1946 –> ~1959) nears retirement, it makes a lot of sense. That generation - my parents' generation - really did a large portion of the work involved with building out the physical infrastructure that allows our economy to operate as it does today: buildings, roads, power lines, mining, machinery, warehouses, etc. Physical work tends to create more injuries and disabilities than sedentary work, and people who do that kind of work simply cannot do it for as long as people who do sedentary work. How can we forget there was an entire generation of people who turned the 1940's USA into the one of the 1970s? I know I've mentioned this on here before but it's relevant: my dad hung sheetrock for living. He stopped going to school after 6th grade. There was no way he could have made to age 64 -- people thought he was crazy to be doing it until age 53 -- which is when he died, almost 10 years ago. From a combination of issues related to what his work did to his body. But the sheer idiocy of the system which has rewarded and continues to reward neat-suit Realtors and loan officers and salesmen (those "educated" ones who tend to work the sedentary jobs) -- instead of the workers meant that he was left with no options for healthcare, retirement, or even being able to leave his children a dime. It's not like none of them have a work ethic. . . many of them have worked long and hard already; they're just "prematurely" tired and worn out. Not to mention the system keeps trying to move the dangling carrot of retirement further and further away from their grasp by attempting to increase retirement age. [edit -- apologies for the awry double pasted text in the original post]

abbasaamer 14y ago
But the sheer idiocy of the system which has rewarded and continues to reward neat-suit Realtors and loan officers and salesmen (those "educated" ones who tend to work the sedentary jobs) -- instead of the workers meant that he was left with no options for healthcare, retirement, or even being able to leave his children a dime. I can understand the frustration you have and you make some thoughtful points, but I wonder how could you change "the system" to be any different? It's not as if these are government jobs. The prices are pretty much set by market forces so what can you do if the market doesn't deem the price high enough?
- nstf 14y ago
  The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is one example of how to do this. It effectively increases the earnings of low wage workers without distorting market prices. The EITC does not _directly_ address the retirement/disability problem, though.
  - markshead 14y ago
    Giving someone a windfall each year of several thousand dollars is not the same as increasing their wages. It gets spent on very different things.
lifeisstillgood 14y ago
they're just "prematurely" tired and worn out. Forgive me if I tread on a difficult subject, but your father passed away at an age somewhere between average and old for every generation before his. 40+ years of physical labour has and will always take its toll and there would have been nothing premature or unusual had he been an Elizabethen shipwright. Were this still the norm, then the focus would still be on working life health checkups and realising we cannot lift into our 70s. I think perhaps we are missing something there. I suspect it might be worth linking retirement payouts to total calories burnt over a working life. Sitting at a desk might not be such a good career move :-) Please again - I saw your point about your father as noteworthy and I wanted to recognise that - no offense or other comment meant
- joe_the_user 14y ago
  I have to object this comment. Previous life expectancy levels were based on poor public health levels and tended to be solved by improvements in public health. It is entirely reasonable to claim someone dying at fifty today is dying prematurely due being overworked. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy... "Life expectancy increases with age as the individual survives the higher mortality rates associated with childhood. For instance, the table above listed life expectancy at birth in Medieval Britain at 30. A male member of the English aristocracy at the same period could expect to live, having survived until the age of 21 1200-1300 C.E.: 43 years (to age 64) 1300-1400 C.E.: 34 years (to age 55) (due to the impact of the Black Death) 1400-1500 C.E.: 48 years (to age 69) 1500-1550 C.E.: 50 years (to age 71)."
  - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
    That was not the intent of the comment Interesting table though thank you
  - Retric 14y ago
    There is a vast difference in comparing live expectancy at 21 and 0. In that none of the 21+ population is going to die at 0.
rgbrenner 14y ago
"As the baby boom generation (the one born ~1946 –> ~1959) ... people who turned the 1940's USA into the one of the 1970s" I think your math is a little off. The one born in 1946 would have been 24 years old by 1970... And the one born in 1959 would have been 11 years old. Those kids definitely did NOT build all of the infrastructure.. that was their parents.
Androsynth 14y ago
> (The baby boomers generation) really did a large portion of the work involved with building out the physical infrastructure that allows our economy to operate as it does today: buildings, roads, power lines, mining, machinery, warehouses, etc > How can we forget there was an entire generation of people who turned the 1940's USA into the one of the 1970s? The baby boomers were just entering the work force in the 1970s. You are conflating two generations. Everywhere in the US that I am well familiar with (Portland Oregon, Minneapolis, Southwest VA, San Jose CA, greater Los Angeles) built most of their infrastructure between 1945 and 1970(schools, roads, highways, bridges). Anecdotally speaking, the infrastructure that came after 1970 consists of strip malls, suburban housing and airports. some highways were built in LA and San Jose. The 85 is the only one i can think of off the top of my head though. Lots of road projects to widen, adjust and fix earlier mistakes though.
- dripton 14y ago
  Actually, not a lot of major US airports were built after 1970. Denver International Airport is the only big one I can think of. NIMBY makes it really hard to build airports except in the absolute middle of nowhere, where there's no need.
  - Androsynth 14y ago
    they werent built, but they sure as hell were expanded upon.
- Helianthus 14y ago
  >Anecdotally speaking, the infrastructure that came after 1970 consists of strip malls, suburban housing and airports. some highways were built in LA and San Jose. That's not an anecdote at all, you're just apologizing for arguing from your experience and then doing it anyway. Nitpick maybe, but I'm tired of this "anecdotes don't matter" when clearly they're important enough that we keep relying on them.
- rdl 14y ago
  What did the baby boomers accomplish besides fighting in Vietnam and presiding over the general decline of the US in the 1970s-1990s? They still have their final act of bankrupting the stae left, true, but I'd argue they've done more than their share already.
mdasen 14y ago
I appreciate your post and your pain. However, one thing that I will point out is that one data point is not something one can draw conclusions from. A friend of mine's father (Ph.D. and desk job) died in his early 50s too. Looking at data, it seems that the sedentary-jobbed have a life expectancy of 79.3 while the manual workers have a life expectancy of 75 years. So, there is a difference of 4.3 years (males, UK 2002-2005). It should also be noted that life expectancy for the manual group has gone up about 7 years since 1972-1976 (the sedentary saw a similar 7 year increase). Governments aren't looking to increase the retirement age to dangle some carrot in front of people they consider too stupid to know better. If life expectancy is going up by 7 years, that means that a pension needs to provide income for more years. That means higher taxes, raising the retirement age, or putting more onus on the individual to save for retirement. There's a genuine question: where would the money come from to give someone a retirement at 50? To provide the average 50 year old male a $50,000 salary for the rest of their life costs over $1M - and that isn't $50,000 adjusted for inflation. What does that come out to per year? Assuming the kind of conservative planning that the government does, over $20,000 pear year. Essentially, we would need a tax of 40% for people to be able to retire at 50 and replace their income for life. Now, maybe 75% income replacement is ok and a 33% tax would do it. But then you have to think about providing inflation adjustments and healthcare for that period and it's just not good. Health costs are rising substantially faster than inflation. Should we lock people into the standard of care at the year of their retirement with newer, more expensive treatments unavailable to them? There's just a big money issue when it comes to retirement age that's hard to ignore. Ideally, none of us would ever have to work. Unfortunately, that isn't our reality. Not to become too weird, but it's really tragic when you think about it. We're these biological beings trying to strive against what would happen to us if we stopped working to survive. And we've created some awesomeness to make our existence a lot better (medicine, for instance), but it's a thin veil over the harshness of what happens to us in the absence of working to survive. To come back down to earth, it's really crappy that we can't have the same retirement age that we used to have. However, I'm not sure how to go about talking about retirement ages without talking about the money we need to support it. Maybe it's time we raised social security taxes realizing that we don't care as much about iPhones as we do about our retirement. Ultimately, it isn't about governments trying to hurt people, but governments not having the money to offer it. It should also be noted that a lot of these jobs pay better than similarly skilled jobs that are more sedentary. Construction salaries average $44,630. Office and administrative work averages $34,120. Sales $37,520. Personal Care $24,620. Part of the higher salary might be because of the nature of the work you speak of. The additional money per year could go toward providing an earlier retirement via individual means. I know that most people won't save and that's why I like social security. Maybe we should have a lower retirement age for certain professions along with higher social security and medicare taxes on jobs in those professions. -- I can't imagine how hard it is to lose a parent so young. I'm sorry.
Spooky23 14y ago
People like your dad get screwed on every level. In New York, the total value of benefits received by a disabled single mother with 2 kids is in excess of $55k. (One of the reasons why states like South Carolina encourage poor folk to migrate north) The old welfare system was replaced with "Temporary Assistance", but you still get disability, SSI, food stamps, basic cell phone, housing assistance and healthcare. Some counties will buy furniture and provide other goodies as well. That's pretty close to what a drywall guy makes, except a drywall guy who isn't in a union has to save for retirement, operate a car, pay for healthcare, and pay market rents. When a guy like your dad suffers a workplace injury or is worn out, he has to live with uncertainty for months or years while his case gets appealed, because the law judges are backed up handling the cases of people whose disability is being ignorant and lazy.

abbasaamer 14y ago

But the sheer idiocy of the system which has rewarded and continues to reward neat-suit Realtors and loan officers and salesmen (those "educated" ones who tend to work the sedentary jobs) -- instead of the workers meant that he was left with no options for healthcare, retirement, or even being able to leave his children a dime. I can understand the frustration you have and you make some thoughtful points, but I wonder how could you change "the system" to be any different? It's not as if these are government jobs. The prices are pretty much set by market forces so what can you do if the market doesn't deem the price high enough?

nstf 14y ago
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is one example of how to do this. It effectively increases the earnings of low wage workers without distorting market prices. The EITC does not _directly_ address the retirement/disability problem, though.
- markshead 14y ago
  Giving someone a windfall each year of several thousand dollars is not the same as increasing their wages. It gets spent on very different things.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

they're just "prematurely" tired and worn out. Forgive me if I tread on a difficult subject, but your father passed away at an age somewhere between average and old for every generation before his. 40+ years of physical labour has and will always take its toll and there would have been nothing premature or unusual had he been an Elizabethen shipwright. Were this still the norm, then the focus would still be on working life health checkups and realising we cannot lift into our 70s. I think perhaps we are missing something there. I suspect it might be worth linking retirement payouts to total calories burnt over a working life. Sitting at a desk might not be such a good career move :-) Please again - I saw your point about your father as noteworthy and I wanted to recognise that - no offense or other comment meant

joe_the_user 14y ago
I have to object this comment. Previous life expectancy levels were based on poor public health levels and tended to be solved by improvements in public health. It is entirely reasonable to claim someone dying at fifty today is dying prematurely due being overworked. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy... "Life expectancy increases with age as the individual survives the higher mortality rates associated with childhood. For instance, the table above listed life expectancy at birth in Medieval Britain at 30. A male member of the English aristocracy at the same period could expect to live, having survived until the age of 21 1200-1300 C.E.: 43 years (to age 64) 1300-1400 C.E.: 34 years (to age 55) (due to the impact of the Black Death) 1400-1500 C.E.: 48 years (to age 69) 1500-1550 C.E.: 50 years (to age 71)."
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  That was not the intent of the comment Interesting table though thank you
- Retric 14y ago
  There is a vast difference in comparing live expectancy at 21 and 0. In that none of the 21+ population is going to die at 0.

rgbrenner 14y ago

"As the baby boom generation (the one born ~1946 –> ~1959) ... people who turned the 1940's USA into the one of the 1970s" I think your math is a little off. The one born in 1946 would have been 24 years old by 1970... And the one born in 1959 would have been 11 years old. Those kids definitely did NOT build all of the infrastructure.. that was their parents.

Androsynth 14y ago

> (The baby boomers generation) really did a large portion of the work involved with building out the physical infrastructure that allows our economy to operate as it does today: buildings, roads, power lines, mining, machinery, warehouses, etc > How can we forget there was an entire generation of people who turned the 1940's USA into the one of the 1970s? The baby boomers were just entering the work force in the 1970s. You are conflating two generations. Everywhere in the US that I am well familiar with (Portland Oregon, Minneapolis, Southwest VA, San Jose CA, greater Los Angeles) built most of their infrastructure between 1945 and 1970(schools, roads, highways, bridges). Anecdotally speaking, the infrastructure that came after 1970 consists of strip malls, suburban housing and airports. some highways were built in LA and San Jose. The 85 is the only one i can think of off the top of my head though. Lots of road projects to widen, adjust and fix earlier mistakes though.

dripton 14y ago
Actually, not a lot of major US airports were built after 1970. Denver International Airport is the only big one I can think of. NIMBY makes it really hard to build airports except in the absolute middle of nowhere, where there's no need.
- Androsynth 14y ago
  they werent built, but they sure as hell were expanded upon.
Helianthus 14y ago
>Anecdotally speaking, the infrastructure that came after 1970 consists of strip malls, suburban housing and airports. some highways were built in LA and San Jose. That's not an anecdote at all, you're just apologizing for arguing from your experience and then doing it anyway. Nitpick maybe, but I'm tired of this "anecdotes don't matter" when clearly they're important enough that we keep relying on them.
rdl 14y ago
What did the baby boomers accomplish besides fighting in Vietnam and presiding over the general decline of the US in the 1970s-1990s? They still have their final act of bankrupting the stae left, true, but I'd argue they've done more than their share already.

mdasen 14y ago

I appreciate your post and your pain. However, one thing that I will point out is that one data point is not something one can draw conclusions from. A friend of mine's father (Ph.D. and desk job) died in his early 50s too. Looking at data, it seems that the sedentary-jobbed have a life expectancy of 79.3 while the manual workers have a life expectancy of 75 years. So, there is a difference of 4.3 years (males, UK 2002-2005). It should also be noted that life expectancy for the manual group has gone up about 7 years since 1972-1976 (the sedentary saw a similar 7 year increase). Governments aren't looking to increase the retirement age to dangle some carrot in front of people they consider too stupid to know better. If life expectancy is going up by 7 years, that means that a pension needs to provide income for more years. That means higher taxes, raising the retirement age, or putting more onus on the individual to save for retirement. There's a genuine question: where would the money come from to give someone a retirement at 50? To provide the average 50 year old male a $50,000 salary for the rest of their life costs over $1M - and that isn't $50,000 adjusted for inflation. What does that come out to per year? Assuming the kind of conservative planning that the government does, over $20,000 pear year. Essentially, we would need a tax of 40% for people to be able to retire at 50 and replace their income for life. Now, maybe 75% income replacement is ok and a 33% tax would do it. But then you have to think about providing inflation adjustments and healthcare for that period and it's just not good. Health costs are rising substantially faster than inflation. Should we lock people into the standard of care at the year of their retirement with newer, more expensive treatments unavailable to them? There's just a big money issue when it comes to retirement age that's hard to ignore. Ideally, none of us would ever have to work. Unfortunately, that isn't our reality. Not to become too weird, but it's really tragic when you think about it. We're these biological beings trying to strive against what would happen to us if we stopped working to survive. And we've created some awesomeness to make our existence a lot better (medicine, for instance), but it's a thin veil over the harshness of what happens to us in the absence of working to survive. To come back down to earth, it's really crappy that we can't have the same retirement age that we used to have. However, I'm not sure how to go about talking about retirement ages without talking about the money we need to support it. Maybe it's time we raised social security taxes realizing that we don't care as much about iPhones as we do about our retirement. Ultimately, it isn't about governments trying to hurt people, but governments not having the money to offer it. It should also be noted that a lot of these jobs pay better than similarly skilled jobs that are more sedentary. Construction salaries average $44,630. Office and administrative work averages $34,120. Sales $37,520. Personal Care $24,620. Part of the higher salary might be because of the nature of the work you speak of. The additional money per year could go toward providing an earlier retirement via individual means. I know that most people won't save and that's why I like social security. Maybe we should have a lower retirement age for certain professions along with higher social security and medicare taxes on jobs in those professions. -- I can't imagine how hard it is to lose a parent so young. I'm sorry.

Spooky23 14y ago

People like your dad get screwed on every level. In New York, the total value of benefits received by a disabled single mother with 2 kids is in excess of $55k. (One of the reasons why states like South Carolina encourage poor folk to migrate north) The old welfare system was replaced with "Temporary Assistance", but you still get disability, SSI, food stamps, basic cell phone, housing assistance and healthcare. Some counties will buy furniture and provide other goodies as well. That's pretty close to what a drywall guy makes, except a drywall guy who isn't in a union has to save for retirement, operate a car, pay for healthcare, and pay market rents. When a guy like your dad suffers a workplace injury or is worn out, he has to live with uncertainty for months or years while his case gets appealed, because the law judges are backed up handling the cases of people whose disability is being ignorant and lazy.