14 million Americans are on disability — even though the vast majority of those recipients didn’t qualify for disability the first time they applied.
It turns out that hundreds of appeals lawyers have assisted millions of Americans onto disability rolls in the past 20 years. It looks like many of these folks are more or less just structurally unemployed. But they didn’t have enough education to get an office job, so suddenly a sore back or another ailment becomes an excuse to start collecting disability and just leave the job market entirely. This keeps these workers off state welfare rolls and out of the politically sensitive unemployment reports. So many forces are at play that conspire to shepherd people to this end.
Now a full 4.4% of the US population is on disability, even as actual health outcomes for citizens improve. The number of Americans on disability has even eclipsed the number collecting unemployed or the number on welfare. Below are statistics on some of the other factors preventing people from performing valuable work.
44M (13.8%) – Retired
14M (4.4%) – Disability
13M (4.1%) – Welfare
11M (3.5%) – Unemployed
3.3M (1.0%) – “Hopelessly Unemployed”
1.5M (0.5%) – Incarcerated
1.4M (0.5%) – Active Military Service
0.8M (0.3%) – “Discouraged Workers”
15 Responses to “Unfit for Work: The startling rise of disability in America”
January 3
Jai WithaniThis seems like a decent way to get to de facto guaranteed minimum income.
January 3
Luke CockerhamLet’s face it. All the ways we have to get people resources without working suck whether it’s disability, prison, SNAP, unemployment, or social security. Let’s bring on the citizen’s dividend and if necessary negative income tax and get ready for the automated economy where consumption is the valuable resource. Don’t forget to implement an LVT when you roll out the citizen’s dividend if you want to see an improvement in standards of living though. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-03/for-fighting-poverty-cash-is-surprisingly-effective
January 3
Louie HelmYeah, I’m sympathetic towards some of the guaranteed income schemes I’ve seen proposed. Most jobs that exist now adays seem largely fake anyway. I often wonder if people would be more genuinely productive and valuable for one another if we were all technically “unemployed”.
What’s LVT?
January 3
Don ThomasLuke you are equating Social Security along with Prison ETC. BS. I have worked and PAID INTO SS for 40+ years, I will work until 70 yrs old, but hope to receive SS, it is not a gift, but a tax I have paid into.
January 3
Christopher RaschLVT = Land Value Tax.
January 3
Eric RogstadDon, it sounds like you think Luke is saying that receivers of SS didn’t earn it. Reread what he wrote. That’s not his point at all.
Luke, why is the LVT needed for an improvement in standards of living?
January 3
Steven GrimmSS is broken out as a separate line item on your pay stub as a (highly successful) marketing ploy to convince you that it’s something other than a regressive income tax with a maximum rate of 15%. But Congress can spend the “trust fund” money on other things, and has done so in the past. They can also, at any time, decide to change the payout schedule, e.g., by raising the retirement age or tinkering with cost-of-living formulas — also things that have happened and will probably happen again.
More importantly, the way it works isn’t like a savings account, where money you put in is set aside for you. (For example, unlike a savings account, your children don’t inherit the money if you die before retirement age.) What actually happens is that your SS tax payments fund the SS income of current recipients. Just like any other income redistribution scheme such as welfare or disability.
I’ve paid SS tax for over 25 years but to me it’s just another tax combined with a very large spending category in the federal budget. I’d love to see it replaced by a more cost-efficient basic income scheme.
January 3
Steven GrimmLess administrative overhead, mostly because a universal basic income has much less (or possibly no) variation from person to person, so there are fewer rules to enforce. And of course the overhead reduction becomes far greater if it ends up replacing more than one of the current payment schemes, which would be the goal.
January 3
James D MillerThis problem has no solution given that it’s impossible to verify some kinds of legal disabilities.
January 3
Luke CockerhamThe LVT levies a rent on the value of nature (location, location, location). If the community does not charge this rent to fund the citizen’s dividend it is charged by landholders and very little will flow back into the community. Land in this case is in the geoist form of the word so includes all naturally occurring resources such as minerals, RF spectrum, etc. there’s a very active group on fb here if you want to learn more. https://www.facebook.com/groups/landvaluetax/
January 3
Luke CockerhamThank-you Eric and Steven for clarifying the social security issue. SS is and unsustainable ponzi. It is one of the longest running and successful of these schemes but for those that doubt me and insist they’ve been paying into their own fund all these years, think about this: when SS began recipients over 65 immediately began receiving payments despite never having contributed at all. Who paid? Obviously those currently working and contributing to “their” pension funds. When it all blows up who will have paid in but will not receive anything out? The final generation of contributors. The lack of sustainability planning is why I don’t like schemes like the recent Swiss proposal to give everyone a set amount of income monthly. If there is a shortfall of revenue is it added to the national debt? That is intragenerational transfer/theft depending on your perspective. I want to see a citizen’s dividend that is based on the revenues coming in each month, no debts, no sustainability issues. Obviously people could choose to trade their variable dividends for a flat fixed amount from a private party for some expected cost. I would also require those receiving the dividend to physically go pick it up somewhere at least monthly, perhaps at an ATM. This way those who don’t really need the funds badly enough to bother could have their money returned to the general fund. However it might turn out that enough exceptions would develop with shut ins and people in remote areas that this would be unworkable. If you haven’t already I recommend reading about the Alaska permanent fund and the Mincome experiment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome
January 6
RedneckCryonicistSorry, you’ve fallen for ignorant propaganda. Ask yourself why no one calls the Pentagon a “Ponzi scheme” and warns of its apocalyptic bankruptcy, and you’ll see why “bankruptcy” can’t happen to Social Security, either. .
January 3
Luke Cockerhamhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
January 4
Michael KeenanYou might like The Last Psychiatrist’s very cynical view of disability-as-unemployment-benefit: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2010/11/the_terrible_awful_truth_about_1.html
January 4
Luke CockerhamExactly! “you, America, would go bananas if poor people got money for nothing, you can barely stand it when they get it for a disability”