The cost of ASDs to the taxpayers

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I am a high functioning Aspie. I am very fortunate to be high functioning, and I have one of the best 'disabilities' a person can have. That being said, I often wonder with the prevalence of ASDs, (now up to 1 in 75 people falling into some part of the spectrum) what kind of burden does this pose to the taxpayer of any given nation?

One of the worst aspects of autism and Asperger's is that there is no cure for the condition, and no real cure in sight. At the rate that new diagnosis are being discovered, we may eventually get to 1 in 20 or 5% of the population that has an ASD. Then what? We can't have 1 in 20 adults who are not able to work. As it is, many of the 1 in 75 adults have difficulty getting and keeping a job.

I honestly think the lack of a cure for autism is the one of the least worse aspects. How are they going to cure the way my brain was designed? Now if society was not so full of idiots maybe people with disorders like autism could get somewhere....sure I have some difficulties because of my suspected AS but why do I need a cure? why not just learn to work with what I have?.......besides what if the cure took away some of my extra sensory abilities? So yeah I don't see a cure as a solution.....I see redesigning society as a solution but like that is going to happen.

Then again all it will take is some authority figure making a horrible mistake in regards to the current protests such as maybe using to much force and killing someone for things to get very chaotic and once the chaos clears maybe a better society would come out of it.

Well, if employers would consider our actual work on the job rather than someone's ability to smooze and yap all day long, maybe we wouldn't be such a high-cost "burden" on people's precious tax dollars.

We can do our jobs just fine. It's the NTs who think they have the right to exclude/bully/discriminate against people who are different that get in the way. If they'd get the heck out of the way, just maybe they could keep more of their almighty tax dollars.

I've been a burden on the taxpayer sometimes in the past, but only because everyday life/work were organised in such an intolerable way that I wasn't able to function in them without recovery periods. For the last ten years I've been continuously self-supporting, but only by luck. If I were to find a way to use my special interests I'd even be an asset to society.

Oh dear. I was just going to let this go, but then noticed you're a moderator. Good grief, this is quite a biased post coming from a moderator. But then, I guess you all are as entitled to your opinions as the rest of us. I'm just a bit disappointed that you wouldn't display a bit more (how should I put this?), balance(?) in your remarks?

I do understand where you are coming from though, and have seen the same things, and been just as pissed off about it. However, I must say that, looking at myself in the mirror, although I do work hard at whatever job I have, I honestly don't do very well at most of them. Frankly, it takes me far longer than others to accomplish the same things, and I often cannot do them as well. Even jobs I have been very good at, and better than others, I have burned out on in three years.

The result is that I have been unemployed a lot, underemployed a great deal, and, admittedly, been a burden on taxpayers because I cannot keep a job long enough to attain benefits. That, I have to admit, isn't the fault of NT's. NT's did not give me this disorder. It's not their fault they don't understand it or know how to handle people like me.

It's not their fault they can't see there is something different about me, other than what they do see and perceive as "purposeful behavior." They don't know any better than I did before I learned about AS. Why blame them? How could they know?

The economy will fall with the %5 of autism diagnoses or not.

I've always struggled to work before the economy crisis but since now it's here and even NT's struggle to keep and find jobs, then it's not really our fault. Maybe people with disabilities on support programs are making the burden worse but int he end the economy will still suffer.

I'd rather people with a disability be a "Burden" than the lazy jerks who abuse social assistance making it hard for the honest decent hard working people who are truly just unlucky at the time to get any income while looking for a job, or people with disabilities to get the help they need.

It's hard to find a job because of the recession regardless of who you are. The fact that baby boomers will be retiring soon is what will kill economy. We don't have enough people to replace them, and a lot of retirement funding we pay into when we have jobs will likely be empty when it's our turn regardless of people being disabled or not.

It won't be disabled people who cause the economy to fall. Our taxes will get higher to boost the economy and try to get it up again, etc. Even without a growing number of diagnoses of autism and asperger's.

Sometimes society needs to modify itself to help the disabled help society and themselves, but they won't, because some bigot refuses to be tolerant somewhere.

That's based on the assumption that the increasing numbers are due an an actual increase, rather than more people being recognized, though. I think charities (like Autistm Speaks) know that they benefit by scaring people into thinking there is an autism epidemic, which makes me wonder about the numbers that they quote.

I think burden is the wrong way to think about this. Its simply providing financial support to the unfortunate, who are just as valuable to society as the wealthier, just in a different way. There is more to the world than financial numbers. I'm a bit of a socialist; I believe its the duty of government to help the unfortunate.

What's the cost of all the NT's constant bullying and harrassment of autistic people? I do not trust anyone, I can't accept a compliment without thinking they are taking the piss, I get anxious when someone approaches me on the street, and I hate myself and my disability due to my bad interactions with NTs. F#ck NTs pay me what you owe me for destroying my ego. NTs have spit on me, beaten me up, and even set me on fire in school all because I was different from them. If I was black and the NTs were white and said or did what had been done to me over the years at school or on the job Jesse Jackson would be shaking my hand after I won my discrimination lawsuit. SO ONCE AGAIN F#CK NT's, PAY ME WHAT I AM OWED FOR MY DISTRESS!! !!

NT's will always be a burden to the autistic people. I have met a single autistic person who has not told me some kind of bullying horror story suffering at the hands of NT's. If autistics were a race the NT's would be considered guilty of crimes against humanity for their constant abuse and harrassment of the autistic people.

Last edited by Todesking on 13 Oct 2011, 5:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I relate to and agree with all that (except the getting set on fire part, that didn't happen to me).

The argument about disabled people dragging down the country is eternal, and a fantasy. It's always used because politicians and others who are actually responsible (i.e. bankers), know the usefulness of a scapegoat without a voice or sympathy. It's not that much of the budget, especially compared to other things. There are simply some people who believe that anything above 0% of the national budget is too much, and so they are always against it (ideologues).

In the UK, politicians have used that sentiment to completely restructure their disability payments system, even though their own estimate of the rate of fraud is 0.5%. Violence against disabled people there is now rising.

I bet there is a good number of autistic people on SSI/SSDI that would not be on it if it was not for NT bullying causing them to become even more autistic or destroying their will.

Since aspies tend to be better at math, we could have saved "the taxpayer" trillions of dollars on wars and bailouts if someone had hired us.

The total amount spent on SSI in the US tends to be $45 billion annually. I'm not sure what percentage of claims are spectrum-related, but if we were to say 5 percent that would be just over $2 billion a year.

I know of at leat 5 people on SSDI for having a "bad back" you see them playing touch football at Bill's tailgate parties or doing heavy work around their property. I also use to work with a guy whose wife walked in front of a car in a store parking lot because she was texting. She barely got bumped on her head but claimed due to the head bump she now has constant ringing in her ears. The ringing disturbs her sleep and everyday life so now she feels suicidal. Everytime they threaten to take away her disability she checks herself into a mental health facility because she "feels suicidal" then they put her back on it. These people are all healthy NT's who are making $700.00 to $1,200.00 a month off of disability while I have a real disabilty and cannot get a job to save my life. Plus they get section 8 utilities help, food stamps, and other perks.

Last edited by Todesking on 13 Oct 2011, 6:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Also, I'm really unsympathetic to the tax payer, as my parents work for the federal government, and even before the budget cuts we were some of the poorest people in the neighborhood, as I live in one of the richest, most expensive cities in the world, and we also have a larger family than most. The stupid tax payers aren't letting as use as much money as we need, and they don't realized how much we (as in what my parents do, not aspies) do to help the US economy. Americans whine about tax too much, and they have been whining about there abnormally small taxes since before they were even a country. Autists aren't nearly as much as a burden as war and greedy corporations.