Social Security disability on verge of insolvency

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No. What I'm saying is that we're seeing a flood of people push for disability benefits who, under different economic circumstances, would never have done so before. Not because nobody would hire them BECAUSE OF THEIR DISABILITY, but solely because of the state of the economy.

Every night I'm seeing these ads for companies that want to help people with any number of "medical conditions" apply for and get "thousands of dollars" in monthly disability assistance. You know they'd not be advertising if they weren't making money off this paper mill they are running.

Disability benefits were meant for those select few who absolutely could not work. Now, there are pressures (and attitudes) that if you can come up with a legalistic excuse for why you can't work (sic....more like why you are currently unemployed), you should be entitled to receive benefits for that. These are people who can work but can't find work...that's not really the same thing as someone who nobody would hire...even in a good economy.

If you have AS and are so dysfunctional that you can't hold a job because your symptoms get in the way or they get in the way enough that no employer wants to accommodate for them, that is one thing. If you have AS, can and have worked, but now you're getting older and because of a crappy economy you and everyone else in your age group is struggling to obtain and keep employment, exploiting the fact that you have AS to try and go on disability is morally questionable at the very least. Disability was not intended to support you just because there is a bad economy going on. It's hard on everyone.

I wish I could find a YouTube clip of the TV ad...I find it obnoxious.

CAN'T WORK? HAVE ONE OR MORE OF THESE HEALTH CONDITIONS? CALL US TO APPLY FOR YOUR SHARE OF THOUSANDS IN GOVERNMENT MONEY!

Yes, disability is not intended to be used as a form of unemployment benefits, but I'm not going to harshly judge someone for going that route if the alternative is losing the roof over their head and living on the street. Not everyone has friends or relatives that would be willing to take them in. A lot of people are simply f*****g screwed.

Also, higher competition for jobs in a bad economy means those with disabilities might be more negatively effected than others without any disability, even if they could theoretically find work in a good economy with less competition. I can see how someone with AS might repeatedly get the shaft in a high competition situation simply for having an unusual tone of voice in an interview. It's far less clear cut than you make it out to be, that all of these people are simply using their disability to "scam" the system.

Here is the original CBO report. It explains a lot.

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/116xx/doc116 ... _Brief.pdf

You have a simplistic way of looking at things! Let's just print up $330,000,000,000,000,000USD, and give everyone a billion dollars! VIOLA! EVERYONE will be a billionare and can just lay back and RELAX! After all, if things worked like you seem to think, THAT would make it PARADISE! You know, they DID do that in Germany once! They did that in some other areas too! To a lesser degree, they tried it in the US! What would once have been considered RICH is now considered POVERTY level in the US! Do you realize that $12000(poverty level last I knew) was enough to buy like 3 nice houses in the 1930s? Yeah, there IS a word for your theory. it is called INFLATION!

As for the training, in most restaurants, they expect the people to know. In some restaurants, such as mcdonalds, they ARE supposed to train the food preparers. They have changed the cash registers to try to make that simpler for people that know nothing.

The rich aren't trying to keep you down. If you TRULY believe that, why dont you, buy a mcdonalds and run it just as YOU want! YEAH, I KNOW what you will say! It is OBVIOUS! ONE problem! Saying that PROVES MY POINT! It is that way with EVERYTHING! AND, if everyone had a billion dollars, do you REALLY think Mcdonalds would pay you a livable wage? Do you think you would be able to live on it? Do you think you could buy a franchise for that? NOPE!! !! !! OH SURE, I know what you will say THERE also! But when gold sold for less than $300, I never thought it would go to $1800+. When I was a kid, I never thought a house would cost even $100K! I never thought gas would cost close to $4! BTW $1 would be worth less than about $0.00005 If you took ALL other money back, the total value of it would be about $42424.24 in today's currency. SO, last I knew, the yearly license for mcdonalds, which does NOT include expenses, store, etc.... would cost a bit less than $3,000,000,000 a year! The restaurant, as I recall would cost an average of about 7.5B! And you would probably need like $2B for expenses,etc...

So you can see that making everyone a billionare wouldn't work. ALSO, because it is so expensive, and costs have to be kept low to help sales, they can't afford to pay everyone $50,000/year. And paying for insurance amounts to a RAISE! It costs just like paying more money would. Since they can't pay the money, they would have to increase sales to THEIR place, or raise prices. Raising sales, especially to ONE franchise is difficult, and can be expensive, and raising prices can cut sales.

2ukenkerl said:
"You have a simplistic way of looking at things! Let's just print up $330,000,000,000,000,000USD, and give everyone a billion dollars! VIOLA! EVERYONE will be a billionare and can just lay back and RELAX! After all, if things worked like you seem to think, THAT would make it PARADISE! You know, they DID do that in Germany once!"

Instead of being obsessed about artificial measurement units (like $$Dollars$$ and GOLD worship), units that are sometimes useful, sometimes not, to measure for real units of essential resources, why not count calories and essential nutrients for "subsistence living" as catergorically needy? With shortages in real resources, equitable distribution for maximum survival and health might work. Or another "count" game might make it PARADISE! You know, they DID that in Germany once! Patriotic "Science" determined that individuals can survive on 300 calories a day (they can't, but that ruins the Patriotic Show). Some of the details are in the book "Hitler's Willing Executioners". The book also explains "Aktion T 4", so if the relatives aren't there to help, they'll know how "Work Sets You Free" in the next program, if the non-disabling disabilities don't stop the individuals with the Aktion T 4 program.

2ukenkerl also said: "The rich aren't trying to keep you down."

Don't worry about the poor rich people. They either are in control or have left the continent. They are not trying to keep you down. They just don't want you in their way, and if you really try hard enough, you can make it past the risk of being the "jetsam" and maybe make it to the "flotsam" catergory, or decide to inconvenience the wealthy with justice. Ted Turner's old slogan was "Either lead, follow, or get out of the way" (Thomas Paine was talking about something else, well before the corrupted buzz in the mid-1970's of Miss Teenage America), but as any celeb can verify, followers require having security to maintain a safe distance.

Tadzio

The most silly point told was if every US population get 1 million dollar, it would be better off than getting into debt or bailing out. The problem is that they forgot to check the calculator. 400 millions people doesn't means it equal to $400 million dollars. It would takes $400,000,000,000,000 or over 400 trillions dollar which is more than 16 trillion dollars of US debt or whatever the current debt amount is.

US banks shouldn't have been bailout in the beginning. What they did in the past was reckless, their employees were encouraged to do something illegal on mortgage application, and the people that knew that they can't afford it went ahead and took a mortgage any way. There were different factors over why there was a credit meltdown or toxic asset.

What also hurting the job markets is big corporation hiring more people outside America. I seen video on major channel trying to prove that outsourcing increase jobs but anybody who knows general math would knows that 1 - 4 doesn't equals to 3. Corporations will not be encourage to hire more US workers if they use outsource. Once you make a country, your primary (or majority) workforce then you are no longer tapping into your previous country as the main workforce. It's like a gas station. Everyone knows their gas station to pump there as long as the price is cheap enough. Once you hook on cheaper gasoline, you are more likely to argue more if they raise the price.

People are guilty when come to finances. I can be one of it after making a mistake. What is completely wrong is that businesses and banks get the bailout and get away from the reckless behavior. Executives were being paid too much to care. You don't give 1,000,000 and ask them to do a hard work at the job. It is actually like pouring too much sugar into the mixture. Like this, give me $20,000,000 with no string attach, I work and will quit the next year then sit at home knowing that I have enough money that I needs any way. Or this, how about having the NFL players work at a company? It is obvious that one face of an executive that asking for a raise to 30 million dollars could use some smacking.

Exactly. This is why we need to start helping each other out, rather than expecting the government to do it. All those people who are, as you say, "f***ing screwed" because they don't have family that will help them, might not be so screwed if their neighbors were willing to help out.

We're all autistics here (plus the odd NT) and most of us aren't rich. So don't try donating money. Your time is even more valuable. You think those rich lawyers who donate for the tax writeoff are going to get their hands dirty? Heck no. You've got the time. Use it.

I agree that people should help each other more, but in the real world it just doesn't happen. I'm not going to sit and judge people for trying to get by any way they can living in such an unforgiving world. I see it as kicking someone who is already down in the teeth.

When I see these things it makes me sick...I have a couple of pathetic neighbors, live by the beach in a condo, shop every day, play tennis, etc...and yet are on SSI because they have "problems with their legs"...go figure! Sigh...and then those who truly need it don't get it.

Given what one has to go through to prove disability, they may very well have problems.

Of course I have no specific problems with my legs but if I did that every day walking would be severely painful all the time.

I receive SSDI, and I sometimes struggle with this issue a bit myself. There is no way I could ever possibly again work successfully, but that does not mean I cannot still move around a bit and do some enjoyable things.

Has anyone tried suggesting not giving US money to the dozens of countries we support financially? How about bringing all our overseas troops home? Less defense spending? How about all that money that goes into nameless super secret programs that we aren't supposed to know about?

Since paper money is no longer backed by the gold standard, printing more money sounds like a perfect idea. But the really rich people don't like that because then they couldn't claim superiority anymore. And really, if everyone has millions of dollar who would want to fix toilets for a living?

Oh, it's always fun when people get angry about disabled people using disabled parking spots because said disabled people can walk, or someone in a wheelchair who stands up briefly to get something off of a shelf. It's as if "You're in a wheelchair, you're never ever allowed to stand up" even though a lot of people who need wheelchairs can only stand up for brief periods, or can walk to some extent but doing so causes pain or other issues. I know people whose mobility varies from able to walk with a cane to needs a wheelchair depending on the day.

So I take most "I know someone on disability who does X so they're probably not really disabled" anecdotes with a grain of salt, which is what I was trying to get across with my post (but didn't say enough).

Like, the level of daily activity I have doesn't result in a lot of pain. But if I go beyond that - and I would have to if I worked - I would be in daily, debilitating pain. It may be these people really do have problems, but they're functioning at a level where they can, well, function.

OH, units such as dollars don't matter? Then It is ok to pay you one billion billionths of a cent and you will be happy? GREAT! I'd be HAPPY to do that! MAYBE I can set up some special fund. Even THAT much money doesn't really pay costs. 8-(



GREAT!

Maybe you misread what I said. I said $330,000,000,000,000,000USD There are only about 330,000,000 people in the US. 330 quadrillion dollars IS enough to pay 330 million people each a billion dollars. Of course, there isn't that much money on the planet.



We agree there. Frankly, the Sherman Antitrust act makes such corporations ILLEGAL! They should NOT have been "too big to fail". That act is over 100 years old.



Just today I found a company advertising to basically get someone in the US to hire with a foreign company to provide services who knows where. Even an american working in america would cost america jobs!



Yeah, that always amazed me. If I could make a few million, I would be able to relax the rest of my life. If EVERYONE got a few million, I may need BILLIONS to retire!