Intellectual Disability = Autism?!

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If you want to talk about some developing country

Because they don't want to comprehend it, because they're selfish or have an ulterior motive. A lot of people (especially neurotypicals) express non-credible arguments to support their ulterior motive. For example, someone buys a packet of coffee beans that was produced with child labor in a third-world country. This person enjoys the cheap price. He or she wants to continue purchasing and enjoying coffee at a cheap price thanks to child labor. However he/she does not want to feel guilty about it. Therefore he/she denies that child labor was involved, even after seeing concrete evidence of child labor. Alternatively he/she acknowledges the child labor but downplays it and dishonestly says the children are treated well.

Another example: A parent wants more free time for himself/herself, but his/her free time is reduced by the time taken to care for his/her child with intellectual disability. Therefore, to get rid of the child and give the parent more free time, the parent claims that the child should work in a factory for less than the minimum wage, in order to give the child "dignity". Thus the selfish parent lies to himself/herself and lies to everyone else as well, in order to get what he/she wants for himself/herself.

Next a selfish parent makes excuses such as saying, "But my child is now an adult. It's not child labor."
However, the next day, the parent says something contradictory, such as acknowledging that although the child is now an adult, the adult child has a severe intellectual disability that causes him/her to be forever stuck in the mental development level of a child. Thus the child has an adult body but the mind of a child. Nevertheless the selfish parent wants free time, so the parent gets rid of the child by claiming that factory work is "dignified", even when it's less than the minimum wage.

The smart thing is to say that we do not know whether or not Jill Escher's children genuinely have autism versus intellectual disability, or one of the various other genetic disorders, or simple hypoxia during birth, etc.

I didn't. She did that by herself. I didn't write the article about Jill and her kids. She wrote it herself. It's her own article. She's the author. It clearly says so on the article that she is the author.

I was shocked to see that she even included a photo of her daughter! A photo that clearly shows her daughter's face!! Has she no respect for her own daughter's privacy?

I was also shocked to read that she wants her own children to work in a factory for less than minimum wage!! She wrote in her article:

Jill Escher wrote:

The few jobs that are within the grasp of many adults disabled by autism are under threat of complete elimination. A push to eliminate sub-minimum wage job programs, which offer the only legal avenue to employment for the severely cognitively disabled, means people like my kids will lose their only chance at structured, supported, productive work, and will be pushed even further to the margins of society.


What would you think, MrsPeel, if your own mother wanted you to work in a factory doing stupid mind-numbing repetitive work for less than minimum wage? It would be monstrous, wouldn't it?

Federal Bill Would Put Jobs Out of Reach for Severely Autistic Adults
March 28, 2019
Everybody should have access to work, but a new bill, based on the fantasy that all intellectually disabled adults could achieve competitive employment, would trash cherished job programs for the severely disabled.
Jonny+SCU+volunteer.jpg
Under the Transformation to Competitive Employment Act, the author’s 20 year-old severely autistic son, and countless others like him, will be relegated to the status of permanent volunteers, effectively prohibited from landing paid employment.

By Jill Escher

My son Jonathan is a delightful nonverbal autistic 20 year-old man. Powerfully built, he has a supercharged energy and a deep well of affection for loved ones and his iTunes library. But Jonny is also profoundly intellectually impaired. Accomplishing even simple tasks requires vigorous prompting and continuous oversight, and chances are that along the way he might bite, stand on, or even throw his chair. As muscular and lovable though he may be, his chances of landing a competitive job are exactly zero.

The TCEA was introduced on January 29, 2019 by Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA-3), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, Senator Bob Casey (D-PA), and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA-5).

Nevertheless I can envision that some day Jonny could participate in a disability program engaging in simple but important work (albeit with hawk-like oversight and prompting), perhaps boxing or moving heavy objects, or picking up garbage. But under a federal bill introduced in January, Jonny’s hope for future wage-earning would be thoroughly trashed.

The Transformation to Competitive Employment Act (TCEA) (S. 260 and H.R. 873) would, over a period of six years, completely phase out disability-specific sub-minimum wage programs, even those serving the severely cognitively disabled who would otherwise be unable to access work. The bill would also provide a grant program to help expand capacity for those capable of achieving competitive employment.

Listen, the TCEA is in part addressing an important issue. Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which authorizes employers to pay specially tailored wages to employees with disabilities in certain restricted circumstances, has at times been abused by bad-apple employers to pay disabled employees less than they were worth. Though affecting a small portion of the 14(c) programs, the exploitation was indeed something to be remedied. The TCEA offers some needed fixes to our labor system by ensuring these workers have a way to move out of 14(c) programs and into competitive integrated employment. Amen to this wage justice.

But for the more impaired portion of the disability community, the 14(c) program fills an urgent need. It is simply inconceivable that a commercial employer would willingly hire someone like Jonny, who cannot talk, read, or write, and at best can follow only one-step directions, over a non disabled person whose productivity is ten times greater and who is unlikely to chew the furniture.

Some disability advocates are telling lawmakers that all people no matter how disabled can find integrated, competitive employment. Please. Just stop. I don’t know what these advocates have been smoking to spout such fantasies, but clearly they are not spending much time with guys like mine, nor have they ever tried to employ them.

So it should be clear to any fair-minded person that the TCEA risks throwing the jobs baby out with the social justice bathwater. Beyond its preposterous assumption that all disabilities are created equal, let’s look at some other problems with the bill:

In addition to the TCEA, the Raise the Wage Act, H.R. 582 and S.150, also contains provisions to close 14(c) options. It is also sponsored by Bobby Scott (D-VA). This bill is tied to the movement to raise the federal minimum wage, so it has many more sponsors (currently 204, versus 20 for the TCEA).

The TCEA ignores the staggering increase in severe autism and what should be a clear imperative to create vastly more, not fewer, options for day programing and supported forms of employment. In California, the population of adults with developmental disability type of autism will grow nearly five-fold over the next 20 years. Only a small portion of these adults can achieve competitive employment. The rest? We need to maximize their options, including work that pays special wages based on less-than-competitive productivity.

The TCEA dodges the obvious fact that subminimum wage work is but one benefit accruing to the significantly disabled clients. Work programs serving adults with significant intellectual disabilities like Jonny are typically run by mission-driven, not profit-driven, nonprofit organizations. These adults are typically also beneficiaries of supervision, therapeutic care, training, and social and recreational programs funded and provided by the nonprofits. It can be very costly to serve these disabled individuals: they often require high staff ratios, intensive supervision, crisis intervention and ongoing coaching. A standard job supervisor is unlikely to treat seizures, change diapers, or handle getting punched or scratched, to put it mildly. The extremely valuable, though non-monetary, therapeutic dimensions should be considered before over-simplistically labeling subminimum wages as discriminatory.

14(c) programs serving the significantly intellectually disabled provide a protected form of employment unavailable in the free market. “It’s not an employer-employee relationship,” explains Tracey Brown-May, Director of Advocacy, Board, and Government Relations at Opportunity Village in Las Vegas. “People employed here who are earning 14(c) wages are not at risk of being fired.” In other words, the employee’s needs comes first, and profitability is not the prime endpoint. The nonprofit work is typically tailored to the particular skillset of the worker, a customization unavailable in the free labor market where individuals are expected to conform to pre-established performance standards. Disability advocates often accuse 14(c) wage program of exploiting or abusing their disabled workers, but at least for severely challenged adults, the opposite is almost always true— the programs often protect clients from exploitation and abuse by offering a protected form of employment.

No person with a disability is forced into 14(c) work, and wages are set carefully. The provision authorizes employers to pay specially tailored wages to employees with disabilities only when the employer can demonstrate, through an exacting certification process, that the worker’s productivity is compromised by the disability. The certification requires a careful calculation of fair wages based on productivity and continuous re-evaluation of the employee’s capacities to ensure wages keep pace with skills. And of course the worker would also need to agree to the wage. Programs must be re-certified every two years by the Department of Labor, which has the duty to identify and remedy any abuse or exploitation it finds during its reviews.

Most workers with disabilities, for example physical disabilities, are already in the competitive market. Retaining a 14(c) option does nothing to negate or undermine expansion of competitive employment for those capable of that option. Both work options can and should peacefully coexist to serve a dramatically diverse disability population. As Harris Capps, the father Matthew, who loves his job in a Ohio work center, asked, "Why do higher functioning disabled persons and their lobbying organizations want to deny lower functioning persons, the right to work? If a higher functioning individual is able to get a job providing a mandated minimum wage, surely, they already have the minimum wage law in effect to protect them.”

Listen, the TCEA is in part addressing an important issue. Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which authorizes employers to pay specially tailored wages to employees with disabilities in certain restricted circumstances, has at times been abused by bad-apple employers to pay disabled employees less than they were worth.

Next a selfish parent makes excuses such as saying, "But my child is now an adult. It's not child labor."
However, the next day, the parent says something contradictory, such as acknowledging that although the child is now an adult, the adult child has a severe intellectual disability that causes him/her to be forever stuck in the mental development level of a child. Thus the child has an adult body but the mind of a child. Nevertheless the selfish parent wants free time, so the parent gets rid of the child by claiming that factory work is "dignified", even when it's less than the minimum wage.

Having Aspergers is met with ridicule and mocked for not being disabled enough to be pitied.