We've added the year to the title above.
People run into back issues (very common and will probably happen to everyone) and doctors send them home with print outs showing them them how to repair their back. They throw the paper away and go back when "they need surgery." That makes it worse.
https://www.painreprocessingtherapy.com/ https://www.amazon.com/Way-Out-Revolutionary-Scientifically-...
Do they lose their "disabled" status if they go back to work? If so, that seems like a textbook poverty trap. Why risk losing lifetime free money for a minimum wage job that might not last?
The 27 years I've known them have been punctuated by my saying "what if you do this to solve your current issue" and the reply is "I'll lose my benefits"
I'm unfit to say if they need it; as in I am unsure if their life would be worse or better without.
Don't read too much into the setup, above; my memory is fuzzy unless I am directly talking to them about it, and even so they correct me like, "its not ssi it's ssdi," or whatever it is. This is to +1 with an anecdote.
She wasn't even allowed to save money for an emergency fund or a large purchase because there was a limit to how much liquid cash she could have at any time, and it was something like $2000. If she demonstrated an ability to save more than that, the bureaucrats would take that as irrefutable evidence that she was well enough off to not need help, and boot her from the program.
Every single thing about the way that program is administered actively prevents its users from bettering their situation.
They could go to school and make enough money to take care of themselves, obviously, but the threat of losing the safety net is enough that they still never went to school, and have only worked for retail a few times over the years for maybe 6-12 hours a week, obviously at minimum wage.
^ just in case it seems that way.
I heard the same thing. Even if her condition were to be "cured", if it ever came back she'd be screwed. The system would take that as proof that her condition was fixable and was therefore not a disability.
But I'm from somewhere that has loads of people on benefits, but no one says "disability" it's medical retirement and they get around all the restrictions by doing gig work under other people's name, and then taking their split in cash 80/20.
I could sit here and list out all the medical and legally accepted reasons that the Veterans Administration, and as a result all other regulatory bodies, give me this status (epilepsy, constantly dislocating shoulders, hip arthritis, tinnitus, PTSD etc...)
However I have friends, colleagues and neighbors who are measurably less physically and mentally capable but are not considered disabled.
When I look at the job market, MOST people are not capable of doing their individual life without significant training, help, direction or supervision. People call this bad-state "adulting" and find it onerous.
Said another way, the vast majority of people do not have the cognitive ability, education (self taught or formal), or experience to set goals, take actions and self improve without significant direction from someone else. I personally consider that disabled.
So if these people are considering themselves disabled, then they are probably right - they are incapable of being independent or living within a community that takes care of them. So the only remaining community left is the abstracted transactional monetary system implemented by governments to allocate resources toward them provided they check the right boxes.
Ideally 100% of humanity would be on disability - because we can build systems measurably more capable than human labor - someone just needs to rebrand it as "UBI."
What you are describing is also the opposite from what liberal democracy was envisioned as. It was supposed to be a state, which created complete and mature citizens, which make well formed decision and can be trusted with governing the country.
To be honest I do not think that you are wrong in your description, the state is certainly transforming into an institution where the citizen are envisioned as disabled wrecks, which are in desperate need of government support. I just hate that this is the case, it is fundamentally incompatible with the ideals of a liberal democracy.
The goal of liberal democracies is that the citizens are capable and mature and thus can be trusted with governing.
Is it wrong that the state wants to create capable and mature citizens who can be trusted with participation in government?
Times have changed. That model wouldn't work today for many reasons. But we haven't replaced the proxy with something that does fit modern times. Nowadays we see literal students who are still trying to become capable and mature citizens participating in government. And per the internet (take that for what you will), up to 40% of those students will move to a different jurisdiction after graduation, so not only are they not yet mature, there is little risk to them if their participation burns things to the ground.
Maybe that's okay. The world is our oyster to live in as we see fit. But it is noted earlier that it isn't how things were expected to be when our ideas about government were originally formed.
> liberal democracy was envisioned as [..] a state, which created complete and mature citizens,
obviously it’s horrendously wrong but like someone else said kudos for speaking your “truth” or whatever
* Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
* Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
* Blind or low vision
* Cancer (past or present)
* Cardiovascular or heart disease
* Celiac disease
* Cerebral palsy
* Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
* Diabetes
* Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
* Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
* Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
* Intellectual or developmental disability
* Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
* Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
* Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
* Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
* Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
* Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
* Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
* Short stature (dwarfism)
* Traumatic brain injury
The form asks if you currently have or have ever had one of these in the past. Well, I don't know if anyone I've met hasn't. I said "no." I have no idea what the right approach here is.
https://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/disclose-disab...
In a world where 99% of resumes are never going to get seen by the hiring manager, checking the disability box might be the only way to have your application get past the initial recruiter/HR or recruiting-software screen.
Fascinating. I'd love to know more.
Assuming your statement is true: If most people lack executive function, then people presenting ADHD symptoms are the norm, not the exception.
Accepting that hard truth would change society, right?
--
Not to get too into the weeds about UBI...
> Ideally 100% of humanity would be on disability
Do you mean 100% eligibility, regardless?
> someone just needs to rebrand it as "UBI."
Or maybe you mean the original "negative income tax" proposal? (What the kids today call "UBI".) So that everyone's guaranteed a bare minimum income.
In either case: I agree.
We'd be able to greatly simplify our patchwork safety network. No need for special consideration for pregnancy, family leave, eldercare, recovering from surgeries, etc.
And yes from my experience with people diagnosed with ADHD - IMO it’s an “adjustment disorder” for people who can’t fit into a rote directed life
On the opposite end people with high anxiety but can play the role of doing what they are told go far, but are mimics, and have nary a new thought or alternative view available to them.
If you want to consider just social assistance then the US government spends about $950B annually, and that works out to $2800 per year per citizen. To make it a livable amount you'd have to at minimum 5x that expenditure (and a lot more than that in urban areas).
By the way, I think you're overlooking the strongest criticism of my UBI proposal: that it would reduce the incentive to work, potentially lowering labor participation and, in turn, government tax revenue, which could make the system unsustainable. It's hard to predict whether that would be a real problem or not.
It is such basic economics I just can't believe we even have these debates.
It is something I would have thought of when I lived with my parents as a clueless teenager.
There are many countries around the world where that would be normal, or even a sign of affluence.
The other benefit of raising taxes is that it will control inflation.
And $13K/year isn't enough to live on, yet many disabled people do just that. 4 people each getting $13K can probably live together on that. Living alone is a luxury.
And with UBI, there are no limitations on you supplementing your income on the side. One of the biggest criticisms of UBI is that everybody will stop working. If UBI is $13K/year pretty much only those who are unable to work will not supplement their income with work.
To me, it is a non-starter unless you also had a massive housing build out to drive the cost of housing/rent down. We can't do that now though so that is also a non-starter.
Then even if you did massively build out housing, most the UBI will still be captured by rent/housing as some areas will become extremely low status and people will use the UBI to move to higher status areas.
All UBI really does if everyone gets it is change what $0 means. Not to mention, if you replace what people are getting currently from the government with UBI they are getting totally fucked. People on disability would get completely fucked since they are getting a basic income now but even though the UBI would be more in total, that will just purchase much less if everyone is getting the same amount.
Or, if the UBI is insufficient, you could work or move someplace less expensive.
Most anything else would feel unfair (as a result of being so) and tend to drive a cycle of inflation in the expensive urban areas rather than working against it.
I'm not the type of person who blindly supports UBI. I think that it would be disasterous to implement it without rethinking how the economy should work and how UBI is going to address social woes. That said, I do think that it will be necessary in the long run. Money, may it be earned or granted, is a tool for people to make decisions. Traditional social programs pretty much does the opposite. It removes autonomy. It removes accountability. It doesn't much matter whether it is social housing (something physical) or conditional grants of money (which is a major focus of this article).
UBI by itself will not solve the problems. It will only drive exorbitant inflation. Implementing UBI requires socializing many institutions and nationalizing big companies. People who control the biggest portions of the economy will not give their power up without a war.
Which economists? That doesn't sound libertarian at all. Libertarians who support UBI typically do so because they see it as a pragmatic alternative to inefficient welfare systems. They certainly wouldn't support abandoning market based economics.
Socialism fails 100% of the time given sufficient time, UBI is tied to socialism.
If your food production yield is dependent on maintaining your supply chain which fails under socialism, you basically run into a hysteresis trap under socialism where this fails, and everyone starves to death.
Its like the ending of Daybreakers, where blood becomes increasingly scarce, and the dynamics of it all force some unwilling sacrifices which start a chain reaction.
Just an FYI, Money-printing/non-reserve debt issuance is a catalyst for war/ revolution.
Would it ever be possible to not have poverty without making everyone's money worthless?
The assets story is a different beast. They tend to be finite and the worse the economic disparities curve is the higher their price becomes.
How many condos are there andjacent to upper east side of Central Park? Let’s say 100. That number is fixed, and 1 million people on this planet want one. If they all had the same salary the rental price of the condos would be close their (same) monthly salary. Now because the economic disparity is huge there is a super low number of people that have super high income, but they are still more than 100. So these lets say 1,000 /1,000,000. These thousand folks can drive the rental of these condos to almost infinity.
I don't want to pay to feed freeloaders. If you want to, that's what charities are for.
And afterwards introduce genetic screening so that only Ubermensch are born.
Big corporations have interest to have us weak and confused, from being perpetually single to other ways to make us dependendent on "services"
There is a target to reduce Medicaid recipients by 4.8 million by 2033, by requiring them to attend school or volunteer 80 hours per month. That's a lot.
https://www.nola.com/news/politics/impact-on-louisiana-of-me...
In the next four years, nearly every state that has huge Medicaid obligations will be forced to restrict and reduce access simply due to budget constraints.
For example, California has 6.6 million enrolled in Medicaid and requires a staggering $85 billion federal assistance annual infusion for Medicaid. "People with disabilities composed 8% of Medi-Cal enrollees and accounted for 31% of spending".
California has 49% of the population on employer-provided health insurance. Only 5% purchase private insurance (Affordable Care Act). However, 22% of Californians are covered by Medicaid. That number is unsustainable, and Governor Newsom is already enacting measures to reduce enrollment and eligibility.
https://calmatters.org/health/2025/05/medicaid-work-requirem...
https://www.chcf.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/MediCalFacts...
https://calmatters.org/health/2025/05/medi-cal-assets-newsom...
This article shows what Universal Basic Income looks like on the ground.
There is no end to the amount of work that needs doing. Most of it "unskilled" labor.
Childcare, eldercare, planting trees, habitat restoration, ESL tutors, etc.
Even for something with an economically-demanded niche like planting trees, several guys with a shovel are beaten by two guys with a skid steer - putting us right back to the capital wins dynamic where the person who can afford to invest in the skid steer now bids down the now-surplus manual laborers who can't.
Eldercare could definitely use 2-3x the labor, but the whole goal of nursing homes is to turn the screws the other way. Then once you have staffing running extremely thin and unsupervised, the gatekeeping credentials become highly important.
Fewer.
Back about 15 years ago I was running a small business in the auto industry. A guy who did deliveries for us (entire job: driving cars to people) who was in his early 20s found himself in a very minor fender-bender -- he rear-ended someone else. He claimed his twisted his ankle from the jolt (based on where he was resting his foot). Fine, no big deal.
He went to see a doctor shortly afterwards and immediately filed for a Worker's Comp claim. He then kept seeing that doctor and within a few weeks was given...permanent disability. Literally got a doctor to say he'd never be able to work again. Full sign-off. He of course was seen walking around just fine a few months later.
Absolute insanity.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/social-securit...
There's a longstanding fear, and one that seems well founded, where those that meet the requirements won't actually file for it because doing so will have an adverse effect on any potential future employment.
Disability discrimination during hiring is almost impossible to prove with AI these days.
I've heard horror stories from some people at the shelter where I volunteer. One guy apparently had a county representative check the wrong boxes on benefit documents by mistake during welfare processing, saying a person was disabled because of a health condition (sleep apnea iirc) when they weren't disabled or receiving disability, and those people couldn't even find retail work afterwards.
AI has opened the floodgates to all sorts of discrimination as a result of the weights and decision-making being a black box with no accountability.
And also getting on disability in the first place is such a huge pile of bureaucratic nonsense and bullshit to start with that you have to learn how to "game" the system just to get approval. It isn't setup to try and help people who need it, it is setup to disincentivize everybody as much as possible, even if you have serious brain damage, are nearly blind, and only have 3 fingers.
renewiltord•8mo ago
vkou•8mo ago
I know people who have done both, and profligacy is not something either would accuse the organization of.
lokar•8mo ago
jwiz•8mo ago
olalonde•8mo ago
lokar•8mo ago
Is it to compensate you for the lost income you couldn’t have earned if not for the disability? That would be in line with the goal of normal disability.
the__alchemist•8mo ago
edit: They usually have full-time jobs too.
vjvjvjvjghv•8mo ago
nullstyle•8mo ago
lazyasciiart•8mo ago
nullstyle•8mo ago
Or do they go for an interview, get their tinnitus, ibs, or chronic back pain diagnosis then try again for more next time?
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Look, I'm not saying we shouldn't help/trust veterans; My father is a severely disabled Vietnam war vet and gave up his body for the air force over a long career. He deserved to have his stairlift paid for by the taxpayer, but he shouldn't have to fight with corrupt service providers who can't do a proper job installing the thing. He shouldn't have to deal with a contractor that won't repair the botched installation for a year because it would cut into their profit margin.
Similarly, he shouldn't have his services degraded because other vets have found out how to take more than their fair share. I'm open to think there is minimal graft, but my experiences say there is some more going on than I can be supportive of.
Maybe you could provide some data to show how I'm mistaken.
wormius•8mo ago
Sorry this is the same bullshit people do when they see a person able to stand for a few hours and say "WHY ARE THEY ON DISABILITY" and ignoring the rest of the time they aren't seeing, or the people recovering. This is just hearsay, and since you're the one making these claims, then it behooves YOU to provide the proof.
But it's a nice little racket, make a claim and then demand those who deny it provide the proof. That's now how science or respectable arguments work.
This whole thread is full of such bullshit. And it's so people can feel superior to those who they think are scamming the system (in an ever increasing need to "crack down" on those who "abuse" the system (slowly killing it over time, or until you can get a DOGE in and ransack it like a viking ship plundering coastal communities).
Anyways, citation needed, since you're the one making the claims.
nullstyle•8mo ago
I'm not trying to feel superior, i'm trying to broaden my perspective by offering my own and engaging with people who comment on it.
roarcher•8mo ago
I do not claim that everyone on VA disability or SSDI is a fraudster. I know veterans who are missing significant portions of their body. I dated a women on SSDI who absolutely needed and deserved it for a neurological disorder. But she knew a family where every single member went on it as soon as they turned 18. Scamming SSDI was essentially their family business.
I am not advocating for DOGE to take an axe to these systems. But just because you or I might find DOGE distasteful does not mean that significant fraud and abuse does not take place. I can only assume that you have not spent much time around these systems or people who use them. Anyone who does immediately hears about their misuse, often from the perpetrators themselves, who are proud of their own cleverness for doing so.
missedthecue•8mo ago
It's a big issue. Over 30% of vets today have disability compared to 15% in 2008. 3% of federal revenue goes to paying veteran disability alone and it's climbing. No politician can talk about it because campaigning on taking money from disabled veterans is the best way to nuke yourself in the polls.
jhp123•8mo ago
missedthecue•8mo ago
But there were never enough deployments to justify these levels of disability claims. And not every person deployed goes into combat. And not every person that goes into combat becomes disabled. A rise was predictable. 30% simply implies a lot of a dishonesty.
9x39•8mo ago
I make two generalizations from veterans I know: one type accumulates injuries throughout service (neck, knees, hips, shoulders, back, toxic exposure) but being the walk-it-off types, never documented much because they were often deployed and didn't bother with paperwork. Bitterly complains about the VA and their limited or temporary disability ratings despite grinding pain and difficulty in later life.
Second type is similar to the first type, but played the 'game' optimally, documented, documented, and documented. While you can absolutely get some of the same injuries, I was surprised to find things like mild sleep apnea and male pattern baldness helped get someone a permanent 100% disability rating. No doubt life isn't easy, but to think this individual is 100% disabled is a bit of a stretch when they also work full-time for .gov doing project work.
My point is that like a video game, people are very good at finding the optimal or 'meta' path to maximizing outcomes in a set of rules, and outcomes from a system can be different than what casual observers might think is the intended purpose of the system.
trogdor•8mo ago
I find that very hard to believe. Do you have evidence that this is true?
roarcher•8mo ago
I never applied for disability of any kind, but it would seem that the VA examiners question nothing and hand out ratings like candy. According to the migraine guy, it's one of those situations where they have to find things to spend their budget on or they lose it next year. I'm of the opinion that if they can afford to spend their budget supporting freeloaders and liars then perhaps it would be better used by some other office, but I digress.
Nasrudith•8mo ago