http://reason.com/blog/2013/03/25/th...dern-disabiltyIn the past three decades, the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job, and new laws have banned workplace discrimination against the disabled. Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government.What follows is a riveting and disheartening story of how the disabilty system "disappears" people from the workforce and making them permanently impoverished. Disability has become a defacto welfare system:
The federal government spends more money each year on cash payments for disabled former workers than it spends on food stamps and welfare combined. Yet people relying on disability payments are often overlooked in discussions of the social safety net. People on federal disability do not work. Yet because they are not technically part of the labor force, they are not counted among the unemployed....
The two big disability programs, including health care for disabled workers, cost some $260 billion a year.
"That's a kind of ugly secret of the American labor market," David Autor, an economist at MIT, told me. "Part of the reason our unemployment rates have been low, until recently, is that a lot of people who would have trouble finding jobs are on a different program."As part of the disabilty-industry complex, Jaffe-Walt details how states are hiring firms like the Public Consulting Group to contact welfare recipients to see if they can gin up enough evidence for some kind of disabilty. If they can, then the recipients can be shifted from state welfare rolls onto the federal disability system. She reports:Planet Money
The company gets paid by the state every time it moves someone off of welfare and onto disability. In recent contract negotiations with Missouri, PCG asked for $2,300 per person. For Missouri, that's a deal -- every time someone goes on disability, it means Missouri no longer has to send them cash payments every month. For the nation as a whole, it means one more person added to the disability rolls.The result of these depressing trends is:
...going on disability means you will not work, you will not get a raise, you will not get whatever meaning people get from work. Going on disability means, assuming you rely only on those disability payments, you will be poor for the rest of your life. That's the deal. And it's a deal 14 million Americans have signed up for.The whole program is well worth heeding.
http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
Thanks for the link. I heard part 2 of the All Things Considered piece this afternoon. This is indicative of the absolute jobs crisis in the US. Any suggestions on how to address the issue as there seems to be nothing being done at the federal level?
Pretty obvious what's going.
Sociopathic Repugs must hate it. They cut unemployment benefits for the 47% moochers, and end up increasing govt spending on mostly LIFETIME disability, while it's much easier for people to go off unemployment into jobs, if the Repugs would stop blocking govt spending to "solve" the non-existent deficit problem.
I wouldn't call extending unemployment benefits to 99 weeks nothing, but essentially the government can't make businesses hire because it can't make the economy grow. It's clear there's little political will for any WPA type solution, or even for infrastructure spending; direct hiring incentives would tend to increase the deficit, so that's basically out too.
Bubbles can take a while to unwind; it might be a few more years until we see robust economic recovery, supposing no new financial panic intervenes.
NPR program this morning interviewed ex-middle class Portland OR people from an upcoming HBO show "American Winter", showing how people, "hard working" college educated, who thought they were set for life ended up requiring public assistance, foreclosed on, etc, etc.
"it might be a few more years until we see robust economic recovery"
aka "America's Lost Decade", for exactly the same reasons of Japan's Lost Decade, absence of government counter-cyclical spending. Krugman was/is right again.
austerity from the totally unnecessary, insane, counter-productive bull in the upcoming months will see 100Ks of lost jobs, reduced income (less income taxes).
False. There was plenty of stimulus.aka "America's Lost Decade", for exactly the same reasons of Japan's Lost Decade, absence of government counter-cyclical spending. Krugman was/is right again.
Japan took Krugman's advice. It didn't help.
btw, has the standard of living in Japan deteriorated during their so-called lost decade(s)?
You Lie (suckered by Repug LIES)
There wasn't plenty, except for the financial sector.
stimulus should have been $2T to $3T, not a few $100B.
was talking about Japan
anyway, stimulus doesn't make it any easier to unwind $Ts of bad debt.
the rabid tories at the Guardian weigh in:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...an-lost-decadeHow, then, should we regard a country that has 5% unemployment, the lowest income inequality, healthcare for all its people and is one of the world's leading exporters? This country also scores high on life expectancy, low on infant mortality, is at the top in numeracy and literacy, and is low on crime, incarceration, homicides, mental illness and drug abuse. It also has a low rate of carbon emissions, doing its part to reduce global warming. In all these categories, this particular country beats both the US and China by a country mile.
Doesn't that sound like a country from which Americans and others might learn a thing or two about how to get out of the hole in which we're stuck?
Not if that place is Japan. During and before the current economic crisis, few countries have been vilified as an economic basket case so much as Japan: it's been hard to find any reference to the country without some mention of its allegedly sclerotic economy, its zombie banks, its deflation and slow economic growth. This malaise has even been called "Japan syndrome", sounding like a disease to warn policymakers, as in "you don't want to end up like Japan."
No one has been more influential in defining this narrative than Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. Throughout the 1990s, and still today, Krugman has skewered Japan's economy and leaders. In the late 1990s, Krugman wrote a series of gloom-and-doom articles, complete with equations and les like "Japan's Trap" and "Setting Sun", bluntly stating:
"The state of Japan is a scandal, an outrage, a reproach … operating far below its productive capacity, simply because its consumers and investors do not spend enough."But let's look at some of the Japanese metrics during that time. Throughout the 1990s, the Japanese unemployment rate was – ready for this? – about 3%, half the US unemployment rate at the time. During that allegedly "lost decade", Japan also had universal healthcare, less inequality, the highest life expectancy, low infant mortality and low rates of crime and incarceration. Americans should be so lucky as to experience a Japanese-style lost decade.
US T-bonds aren't "bad debt". They are extremely cheap now, and totally trust worthy (unlike Cyprus bank accounts).
The best way to reduce the debt is to increase tax revenues, not by more cutting of spending, which will increase the debt.
aggregate spending on consumption of goods and services isn't everything, man.
was talking about real estate and real estate derivatives.
Not germane to the thinkprogess echo chamber.
Also, the premise that disability = poverty is a bit overstated. Depending upon the employer's disability plan or whether or not it's used in place of SSD, the amounts can be decent. I have 60% in my plan, but I can also buy up to 70% I think.
I know folks who do pretty well on 60%.
Last edited by TeyshaBlue; 03-26-2013 at 10:10 AM.
Oh really? That is absolutely what drives the US economy.
has for the last 30 years, based on unsound financial practices. perhaps that's not sustainable in the long run.
also, quality of life should count for something. cf. Japan's so-called lost decades.
GDP ain't the whole enchilada, just a picture of the whole enchilada. it ain't even a measure of whether the enchilada tastes good.
it's only 70% of the economy.
so? you think quality of life is adequately expressed by the rate of GDP growth in the ed/un able UCA/1%er dominated US economy?
lol...logic's a .
stimulating aggregate consumption is the Keynesian medicine for deflation, not for the current situation. Th'Pusher asked, what do we do about unemployment now?
I have a hard time seeing what the government can do to fix the economy or make businesses hire more. Little help?
good point.
does the graph in the article measure gross numbers on disability, or just SSD?
(honest question, do not know.)
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
