Comments for Charles Lane Finds it Paradoxical that the Government Provides Assistance to Workers Whose Disabilities Keep Them From Working at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 16 out of 16 comments http://www.cepr.net Thu, 23 May 2013 17:28:29 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/charles-lane-finds-it-paradoxical-that-the-government-provides-assistance-to-workers-whose-disabilities-keep-them-from-working#comment-17971 I work as an organizer in distressed neighborhoods where the majority of people are living at around 125% of the poverty line. I encounter many people who are on disability. Some folks have been really chewed up by manual labor and live in constant pain. Other SSD and SSI recipients have spent their lives marginally employed and abused by the economy and have turned to disability as an off ramp to the constant degradations of low wage work. They have made a conscious calculation to trade the possibility of work that might deliver $18,000 a year for disability that guarantees less than $15,000 year after year. I can't really argue with their choices. What is astonishing is to hear the MSM blowhards tee off and spew without spending a minute inside the lived reality of these citizens. - Jon Greenbaum Mon, 06 Aug 2012 14:28:06 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/charles-lane-finds-it-paradoxical-that-the-government-provides-assistance-to-workers-whose-disabilities-keep-them-from-working#comment-17891 Employers know they can get away without providing accommodations to workers who have disabilities. The courts have bent over backwards in employment discrimination cases of every stripe to be sure that the defendant wins and the plaintiff loses. Federal judges for the most part hate civil rights law. That said, on the subject of women taking disability, I had to do that after I'd worked 30 years and was in 2 auto accidents that left me with chronic pain. Employers don't want employees who have to come to work on pain medication, I discovered. I had to leave my job. When I went through the process and final adjudication, the expert reported that the work I had been doing based on the Dictionary of Occupational Titles standards said I had been doing a heavy strength job (health care) for nearly all of the 30 years. I am a small woman. It's easy for a man with a desk job to write a column complaining about the world of disability when he hasn't had to struggle to physically do a job or go through the humiliating process to get SSDI. - ljm Wed, 01 Aug 2012 11:25:07 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/charles-lane-finds-it-paradoxical-that-the-government-provides-assistance-to-workers-whose-disabilities-keep-them-from-working#comment-17889 Has anybody pointed this out? A disability is a pre-existing condition, and historically can prevent someone from obtaining private health insurance. People with mobility disabilities, such as paraplegia, and people with psychiatric disorders can have expensive medical needs. Why risk employment if employment means you can't afford needed medical treatment? Look, it comes down to this: People with work-limiting disabilities will end up dirt poor, unless they have considerable personal or family wealth. Like someone else said, above, most of us aren't sailing off to Aruba. - Laika Wed, 01 Aug 2012 10:02:02 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/charles-lane-finds-it-paradoxical-that-the-government-provides-assistance-to-workers-whose-disabilities-keep-them-from-working#comment-17874 As someone who's recently (and, hopefully, temporarily) handicapped, I can attest to how complicated the system is. I had a desk job until this spring (research assistant), and developed osteonecrosis (which reduces mobility) in February. My contract ended and finding another similar position will probably be impossible, so I'm going back to school in the fall and thought I'd work this summer in some low-wage job. But guess what? Low-wage work is usually physical! I used to tend bar, but that's out of the question when you're in crutches. I used to do child care as well, but how can I run after kids if it takes me upwards of 30 seconds just to stand up? I thought fast food or retail, but I can't stand for more than 5 minutes at a time. And I wasn't able to find another job in a lab for such a short term. So I'm pretty much just waiting until school starts and, yes, I'm collecting a small disability check in the mean time. Otherwise I'd starve. The worst part is that Lane will probably say that Baker is being uncivil, when Lane just called me a moocher and a parasite because I had the bad sense to develop a rare bone disease I had never heard of before. But clearly insulting the millions like me isn't as big a sin as saying that a pretty person like Lane is stupid, and probably fairly evil. - Alex Bollinger Tue, 31 Jul 2012 20:52:46 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/charles-lane-finds-it-paradoxical-that-the-government-provides-assistance-to-workers-whose-disabilities-keep-them-from-working#comment-17871 I'm surprised you missed this, Dean. [i]The Growth in the Social Security Disability Insurance Rolls[/i] [url]http://www.nber.org/bah/fall06/w12436.html[/url] [quote]The most important factor is the [b]liberalization of the DI screening process[/b] that occurred due to a 1984 law. This law directed the Social Security Administration to place more weight on ap-plicants' reported pain and discomfort, relax its screening of mental illness, consider applicants with multiple non-severe ailments, and give more credence to medical evidence provided by the applicant's doctor. These changes had the effect of both increasing the number of new DI awards and shifting their composition towards claimants with low-mortality disorders. For example, the share of awards for a primary impairment of mental illness rose from 16 percent in 1983 to 25 percent in 2003, while the share for a primary impairment of musculoskeletal disorders (primarily back pain) rose from 13 per-cent in 1983 to 26 percent in 2003.[/quote] I love to whip this out on Republicans who claim Obama's to blame for the recent rise. In fact, Reagan had the most to do with it, and the increase has been going on since the 80's. - Scott Supak Tue, 31 Jul 2012 09:54:30 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/charles-lane-finds-it-paradoxical-that-the-government-provides-assistance-to-workers-whose-disabilities-keep-them-from-working#comment-17870 The amounts we pump into farm subsidies and into building ineffective military products dwarf the likely freeloading on disability payments (most folks receiving disability payments are not in that position by choice) -so I will seriously consider a columnist who addresses those issues first - or even at all - but if not, just wasting time... - Patrick Pine Tue, 31 Jul 2012 09:17:53 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/charles-lane-finds-it-paradoxical-that-the-government-provides-assistance-to-workers-whose-disabilities-keep-them-from-working#comment-17868 I know people with serious mental disorders who are being forced into a lifetime of poverty and government dependence simply because the price of the medications that they need to function is beyond what they might earn, if they could find anyone to hire them. These people could be contributing members of society, but they are terrified of losing their drug benefits if they earn any money at all. It is a lousy existence, but the alternatives-institutionalization or homelessness, are far worse. They literally cannot go a day without their medications. I believe this is a large hidden problem that is growing worse every day that we continue with our insane health care "system". What kind of future is there for the children of these people, who are also medicated and growing up within this system? Single payer is the obvious answer. - Norm Deplume Tue, 31 Jul 2012 07:43:04 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/charles-lane-finds-it-paradoxical-that-the-government-provides-assistance-to-workers-whose-disabilities-keep-them-from-working#comment-17865 Thousands of people who were working within the last 3 years without a disability recognized under ADA, then were laidoff and collected unemployment without disability are showing up at Social Security offices to sign up for disability payments. There are TV advertisements for expert help in getting this done. Almost all of them are desperate for income, and so in a decent society they are going to get income support. Call it what you will, few are headed to Aruba on their disability checks. So Lane probably has a point about the process, but it an unimportant point versus leaving the big majority of such folks to lead very harsh lives. A more interesting disability question (to me)could probably be raised about unusual data concerning public safety trades. Take police officers. You might think that disability retirements would be pretty much a normal distribution for the group of collective bargaining units. But there are true and extreme outliers in this data. - Eric377 Tue, 31 Jul 2012 06:56:45 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/charles-lane-finds-it-paradoxical-that-the-government-provides-assistance-to-workers-whose-disabilities-keep-them-from-working#comment-17864 Many more veterans have returned from the foreign wars in Afghanistan and Iraq severely disabled, a much larger percentage than in past wars. This comes partly from lower fatality rates -- our military saves the lives of severely wounded people who would have died in past wars. Part of it is the nature of these conflicts -- insurgencies with IEDs and things that mangle more than bullets do. [url] http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/ap-new-vets-disability-claim-rate-soars-1.3747078[/url] - Daulnay Tue, 31 Jul 2012 06:44:57 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/charles-lane-finds-it-paradoxical-that-the-government-provides-assistance-to-workers-whose-disabilities-keep-them-from-working#comment-17860 Our system systematically punishes those with severe disability. A person too sick to work reliably has a poor or no work record and cannot find jobs even when able to try to work. If they do find a job, disability payments are reduced or eliminated; if the person can't hold onto the job they end up with nothing. Charity work, which would at least provide part time social and work contact to try to build work skills, is specifically limited to jobs the charity wouldn't bother to hire someone to do - The reasoning is that volunteer jobs shouldn't replace paid positions. I have a friend I take food to when he is too sick to get out of the house. The risk there is that if he isn't spending down his disability account and it exceeds the vast sum of 2000$, the government will dock all of his payments for the period. Just try to hold a (shared) apartment and buy food and have nothing in the bank all on 1000$ a month. - BCW Tue, 31 Jul 2012 05:13:52 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/charles-lane-finds-it-paradoxical-that-the-government-provides-assistance-to-workers-whose-disabilities-keep-them-from-working#comment-17858 Dean--I think that the quote "the percentage of the working age population eligible for disability increased from 62 percent in 1970 to 75 percent in 2009" is somewhat misleading. When I initially read it, I thought that you were saying that the percentage of the workforce who were entitled to disability benefits were 62% and 75%, respectively. That, of course, didn't make any sense. What the report says, and I think that you should clarify, is that in 1970 62% of the workforce was covered by Social Security Disability Insurance, thus able to make a claim if they became disabled, but that this percentage grew to 75% by 2009. Thus, because the pool of individuals who were covered by the insurance has increased over time, there was a rise in the number of claims both made and allowed. - Stuart Levine Tue, 31 Jul 2012 04:24:05 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/charles-lane-finds-it-paradoxical-that-the-government-provides-assistance-to-workers-whose-disabilities-keep-them-from-working#comment-17853 Shorter Charles Lane: "I don't understand why disabled people can't just keep working. I mean, I can do my job despite being totally ignorant of reality." - Matt Tue, 31 Jul 2012 02:29:53 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/charles-lane-finds-it-paradoxical-that-the-government-provides-assistance-to-workers-whose-disabilities-keep-them-from-working#comment-17850 Thanks for the paradoxical point about improvements in health care increasing the disability rolls. My family and friends from the early days of the AIDS epidemic aren't on disability -- they're dead. I, on the other hand, somehow lived long enough for new meds to control the disease; but I'm not able to work full-time. So in Massachusetts I qualify for partial disability support (helps pay my private health insurance premiums). Keeping me at least partially in the labor force and able to afford private insurance is a boon for me and a bargain for Massachusetts. - Chuck Krumroy Tue, 31 Jul 2012 01:52:51 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/charles-lane-finds-it-paradoxical-that-the-government-provides-assistance-to-workers-whose-disabilities-keep-them-from-working#comment-17849 We tie ourselves in knots developing these strange moral equations to demonstrate why it's ok to punish with impoverishment those we think don't deserve an income. And we do it almost exclusively to rationalize a desire to not pay taxes. If we were to shift our perspective to account for modern monetary operations, we would see that federal taxes don't actually "pay" for anything, but simply "unprint" money. The federal government, as the issuer of a sovereign currency, can spend new dollars into existence, as many as we need to "clear the markets" of unsold goods and services, without taxes or borrowing (why would we borrow something we can make in unlimited amounts?). From this perspective, at times of economic downturn, it makes sense to suggest both that taxes are too high and spending is too low. But even from the perspective of the dominant paradigm, when we deny even a very modest income to our poor, disabled, unemployed, and elderly fellow citizens on the grounds that they are undeserving or unproductive, we harm everyone else who [i]is[/i] deserving and productive. The only thing a person receiving a modest disability transfer payment can do with the money is spend it in the private sector on goods and services produced and sold by productive and therefore, presumably, deserving fellow citizens. Businesses don't care where their customers get their money or the circumstances of their lives, only that they spend their money. If we are concerned about "costs to society" of supporting those who are disabled, we should understand that the costs will be much greater if those persons end up on the street, receiving their health care at emergency rooms, turning to crime, becoming disaffected and utterly unproductive, etc. I should think that newspaper columnists would be very reluctant to face an examination of their own "productive" value to society, and instead stress the importance of public policies firmly grounded in sympathy and compassion for the less fortunate. - Joel David Palmer Tue, 31 Jul 2012 01:30:11 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/charles-lane-finds-it-paradoxical-that-the-government-provides-assistance-to-workers-whose-disabilities-keep-them-from-working#comment-17848 Lane is just clarifying nuances in right to work laws. In this case there is no contradiction between ADA and SSI. If the disabled want ADA to enable and fulfill incentives to work on a non-discriminatory basis, they obviously want to avoid work under SSI at the same time on a self appointed discriminatory basis. Economists call this having your work and avoiding it too, also known as SOS (Shirking on the Sly). - Last Mover Tue, 31 Jul 2012 01:28:41 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/charles-lane-finds-it-paradoxical-that-the-government-provides-assistance-to-workers-whose-disabilities-keep-them-from-working#comment-17847 Noted professor, author and physicist Stephen Hawking has extreme physical disabilities from ALS but has managed to continue to work for decades and even now works even though he just retired from teaching. I know two local surgeons that have retired because of mild loss of fine motor control in one hand that effectively ended their ability to continue being surgeons. Both could continue to work as physicians but choose not to. They both had private disability insurance and would have never retired on the relative pittance they would qualify for from the Social Security disability program. I know someone else that had a second spinal fusion yet still returned to work as a stock person in a big box retail chain because she couldn't afford to live on her potential disability payment, partially because she is the primary caregiver for her 5 year old granddaughter. As a physical therapist, I've seen many clients that have disabilities that would allow them to collect disability but choose not to. But can we really blame a person who has a legitimate disability and can't find work for turning to disability payments to survive? Mostly, we need stimulus for more potential jobs and much better retraining programs for people with disabilities who want to continue working. - Robert Salzberg Tue, 31 Jul 2012 01:17:01 +0100