Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: MillCreek on August 08, 2016, 10:14:23 AM
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http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2016/0730/Rural-America-confronts-a-new-class-divide
Interesting how hundreds of the rural residents in this community are supported by Federal disability benefits.
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Disability and other transfer payments will be used (and abused) wherever offered.
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What an idiotic article.
"But in a recent survey of 99 struggling farm towns, adds Peters, “we find that communities that have higher levels of social capital – the level to which people trust one another, and whether they’re tolerant of different opinions and allow newcomers to be involved in decisionmaking and power structures – those tend to have better economic and demographic outcomes.”
I guess they never heard of that recent study that showed levels of trust declining in direct proportion to the communities getting more "diverse".
And this one-
" In many parts of the country, rural towns that have welcomed immigrants, especially, have seen their downtowns, if not thrive, at least manage a slower population decline than more insular communities."
Adding more people results in ,guess what-more people! the point is not to add people, it is to add prosperity.
I mean, if all they wanted was more people with no improvement or a decline in prosperity, they could import thousands or millions from every third world anti American country in the world.......Oh...
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Ayep. Disability and SSA are a big business. 10.6 million Americans collecting SSDI. Thanks to Social Security Disability Benefits Reform Act of 1984, the SSA now gives much more weight to applicants' reported pain and discomfort, relax screening of mental illness, consider multiple non-severe ailments to be disabling, and give more credence to medical evidence provided by the applicant's doctor. In fairness, the average person on SSDI is making $1,177/month. It's not a huge amount.
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Ayep. Disability and SSA are a big business. 10.6 million Americans collecting SSDI. Thanks to Social Security Disability Benefits Reform Act of 1984, the SSA now gives much more weight to applicants' reported pain and discomfort, relax screening of mental illness, consider multiple non-severe ailments to be disabling, and give more credence to medical evidence provided by the applicant's doctor. In fairness, the average person on SSDI is making $1,177/month. It's not a huge amount.
It is never a great deal of money. I would be curious what $$$ per person comes to after you add in all the administrative overhead costs to run the disability program. Probably at least 4 times that amount.
I haven't heard anyone really looking hard at overhead costs for the govt handout agencies in quite some time.
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Best thing about SSDI ever written.
http://trilema.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/tlp.html
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Best thing about SSDI ever written.
http://trilema.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/tlp.html
That -literally- (not figuratively) made me want to carpet bomb cities.
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That -literally- (not figuratively) made me want to carpet bomb cities.
Start with the sanctuary city near me. PM me for grid coordinates ...
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Yep. Those that legitimately need SSDI have a hell of a time getting it. Those that shouldn't get do so easily.
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Yep. Those that legitimately need SSDI have a hell of a time getting it. Those that shouldn't get do so easily.
Sadly, that's my experience as well. Had a woman in court the other week on a probate issue. Cancer bad in several places. Obvious that she couldn't work. She was on her fourth application for SSDI. Next case was a guy with no apparent problems who got SSDI on his second application. His disability? Bad back which prevents him from sitting for extended periods. His case before me? Involved pretrial issues of his civil lawsuit against the golf club he's a member of. His motion indicated that he's been playing golf at the club twice a week for three years, which also happens to be the period he's been getting SSDI benefits. :facepalm:
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That -literally- (not figuratively) made me want to carpet bomb cities.
Ayep. Except I'd be quick to point out that it is not strictly a city thing. Being on the draw for being "too crazy to work" is popular in certain rural areas as well. It only works if the cost of living is next to nothing, you want to live somewhere no sane person wants to live, or you're packed into a place like sardines in a can. SSDI is taxed in theory, but in reality the person is generally low enough that they get a 'refund' every April anyways.
The article is correct. It can be welfare for folks that the government wants to keep a lid on. It's literally cheaper than incarcerating them. Judicial, police, and corrections cost around $200 billion per year. Due to lovely things like mandatory sentencing, a felony essentially prohibiting you from ever getting real work, etc it gets expensive in a hurry. Government wanted to hike welfare. But not too much. SSDI is cheaper than regular welfare. And people don't get as angry at the government giving money to disabled people as they do poor people. The government hoped sliding another ten or twenty billion dollars worth of folks onto SSDI would keep down incarceration and crime rates. Not just in cities, but also in rust belt or deep rural areas where industry has been killed off by taxes, regulation and trade agreements.
(Also, Archer reference?)
Sadly, that's my experience as well. Had a woman in court the other week on a probate issue. Cancer bad in several places. Obvious that she couldn't work. She was on her fourth application for SSDI. Next case was a guy with no apparent problems who got SSDI on his second application. His disability? Bad back which prevents him from sitting for extended periods. His case before me? Involved pretrial issues of his civil lawsuit against the golf club he's a member of. His motion indicated that he's been playing golf at the club twice a week for three years, which also happens to be the period he's been getting SSDI benefits. :facepalm:
*shakes head*
Second guy likely paid someone to process his SSDI paperwork. Lady likely filed herself and likely was honest. Honestly filled out her paperwork, went through real doctors instead of paperwork mills, etc. Some states hire those paperwork folks to process SSDI papers, btw. It's federal, so it reduces the state cost. Not sure if your state has that sort of program, but worth looking into: http://www.cagw.org/media/wastewatcher/disability-new-welfare
Oh, lovely bit of news for you guys. SSDI was going to run through its 'trust fund' about... oh, this year. Give or take. And SSDI folks will be taking a sharp cut in benefits, or Congress will have to kick the can down the road again. Smart money is on a merger between Disability and the general Social Security fund.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/
2015 numbers. 2014 'reserve' was $60b. Net was -28b. Which left 30b for 2016. Which is about what is expected to be depleted this year. So expect that crisis in the news at the end of the year or beginning of next year. And expect the suggested solution to be to roll the DI trust fund into the regular social security trust fund. Which will deplete it by 30b a year. Which will be more interesting than folks assume. Everyone here likely understands that the SS trust fund is an accounting dodge. Social security takes more in than it spends, the money is transferred to general revenue and spent. Once it crosses equilibrium, it goes from sending money to general revenue to taking money from general revenue.
In 2015, Social Security took in $802b. And spent $751. That's fifty billion dollars that went to general revenue without (allegedly, not in reality) being a direct tax. Adding a $30 billion to the "spend" side of the balance moves Social Security MUCH closer to the tipping point of paying out rather than taking in. Honestly, it's not a huge deal, for another... oh, five ish years? Then Social Security starts going deeper in the red. If the economy gets substantially better... Maybe ten years before things get interesting on that front. Not crippling, but unpleasant. Not 2030 like folks think.
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I was talking to one of my cousin's kids at a wedding this weekend. She actually had a legitimate short-term disability claim. When she went to apply, she couldn't get it because her social security number had already applied and been getting disability.
The state told her she had to contact the SSA to get a specific form that says her SSN was misused and that she in fact was the "owner" of her number. When she went to the SSA, she said they wouldn't give her the form. The reason? They stopped giving them out (apparently recently as this just happened a few months ago) because they were getting too many request for them. So their decision, rather than going after the people falsely using SSNs to get benefits, was to stop providing documentation so that the person who was actually associated to the number could prove it, because there were too many instances of this happening. Nevermind the identity theft issues. And may I add, WTF?!?
So she returned to the state disability office and told them this. Their response was, "Oh, I guess that's new. Okay, no problem, we'll assign you a different ID number." My cousin's kid was like "WTF?" and asked them why they would reassign her a number rather than reassign, or better yet freeze, the SSN thief's account. Their response was that they don't get involved in those legal issues, their job is just to provide the benefits. The rep said they give these alternate numbers out all the time when someone's SSN is compromised. Again, WTF? And again, what the hell about the identity theft? I don't know if this is common practice in other states.
The system is absolutely broken.
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The system is absolutely broken.
Shocking as all that is to the rest of us, as Balog's link points out, the system isn't broken, but is working as intended. Mind boggling I know.
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Shocking as all that is to the rest of us, as Balog's link points out, the system isn't broken, but is working as intended. Mind boggling I know.
I reckon that's sadly true. Maybe it would have been better to say that "right and wrong" were broken.
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But the SSA takes fraud seriously... says so right on their blog! http://blog.ssa.gov/social-security-takes-fraud-seriously/ (http://blog.ssa.gov/social-security-takes-fraud-seriously/)
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Not to get racial, but around here at least, most of the SS and state disability (and DMV) offices are packed with Hispanic employees. I sometimes put my tinfoil on and wonder how often it's actually federal/state policy and how often it's employees bending or ignoring rules because things like SSN fraud and drivers license fraud are predominately linked to illegal aliens. At least in CA.
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Shocking as all that is to the rest of us, as Balog's link points out, the system isn't broken, but is working as intended. Mind boggling I know.
Which is why the solution is generally not to fix it, but to get rid of it. (The disability benefit part at least)
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Which is why the solution is generally not to fix it, but to get rid of it. (The disability benefit part at least)
But eliminating government gimme programs is extremist, and hateful, and stuff. You must want us all to live in caves, and be cannibals. And you're a racist.
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Not to get racial, but around here at least, most of the SS and state disability (and DMV) offices are packed with Hispanic employees. I sometimes put my tinfoil on and wonder how often it's actually federal/state policy and how often it's employees bending or ignoring rules because things like SSN fraud and drivers license fraud are predominately linked to illegal aliens. At least in CA.
Might be a location thing. Here, it's predominantly Appalachian people collecting benefits.
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Might be a location thing. Here, it's predominantly Appalachian people collecting benefits.
But who is staffing the Social Security office?
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But who is staffing the Social Security office?
Which leads me to clarify my original comment. It was more about Mexican workers giving "special help" to Mexicans, black workers giving "special help" to blacks, Appalachians giving "special help" to Appalachians.
I have noticed locally that many welfare and disability "back to work" programs disproportionately seem to place the demographic most on welfare, etc. into govt jobs. Every area in the country likely has a specific demographic that is more prone to be on welfare, etc. than other groups in the area. If those people are put into positions related to welfare and other benefits, I think that they bias to their own groups when doing their jobs. In my area, this also includes the south of the border illegal alien dilemma. JMO.
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Which leads me to clarify my original comment. It was more about Mexican workers giving "special help" to Mexicans, black workers giving "special help" to blacks, Appalachians giving "special help" to Appalachians.
I have noticed locally that many welfare and disability "back to work" programs disproportionately seem to place the demographic most on welfare, etc. into govt jobs. Every area in the country likely has a specific demographic that is more prone to be on welfare, etc. than other groups in the area. If those people are put into positions related to welfare and other benefits, I think that they bias to their own groups when doing their jobs. In my area, this also includes the south of the border illegal alien dilemma. JMO.
Which comes back around to overhead. Not only are we sending checks to a bunch of people who don't need help, we are paying a whole bunch of staff people to game the system on behalf of people they know.
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Which comes back around to overhead. Not only are we sending checks to a bunch of people who don't need help, we are paying a whole bunch of staff people to game the system on behalf of people they know.
This and the blatant political favoritism shown by other members of the bureaucracy makes me want to destroy the civil service and return to a spoils system.
If they're going to be political anyway, I might as well get my tribe some jobs while my tribe holds executive power.