Apr 3, 2013

The Irony

     From the Atlantic Wire:
Conservative columnists are newly outraged by Social Security data showing a rise in disability applications. But this isn't Obama's fault. In fact, it's kind of theirs....
Notice when the big application spike happened — 2009 or 2010. Now, subtract 65 from that number. 2010 minus 65 years equals 1945. The year the Second World War ended. And the year that the baby boom began in earnest.  
Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute and the Harvard School of Public Health notes in his recent book "A Nation of Takers: America's Entitlement Epidemic" that 29% of the 8.6 million Americans who received Social Security disability benefits at the end of 2011 cited injuries involving the "musculoskeletal system and the connective tissue."
That's called arthritis. The greatest irony here is that those older arthritics fall into another group besides "most likely to file for disability". That group is "the Republican party". ...

In fact, this is the [Republican] party's main challenge right now: It's weighted heavily toward older, whiter voters. And while those older voters may enjoy taking umbrage with the freeloaders exploiting the "productive" people, the critique hits much closer to home than they seem to realize. Lots of stones being thrown in increasingly creaky glass houses.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

stupidest posting ever. don't even know where to begin.

Anonymous said...

Dear idiot author, the people turning 65 in 2009/2010 were not applying for disability benefits (that would be their children in their 40s), but retirement benefits.

Anonymous said...

Agreed. This posting is base and racist.

Anonymous said...

agree with above. The first two paragraphs of the article indicate that the rest of the article should be ignored.

Anonymous said...

You posted: "That's called arthritis. The greatest irony here is that those older arthritics fall into another group besides "most likely to file for disability". That group is "the Republican party". ...
As said above, the old Republicans filing for Social Security are doing so based upon retirement and not disability. The Republicans are the ones that have paid into the system for 40 years. They are not the freeloaders. Their benefits truly are entitlements as they have earned them and paid for them. Oh, by the way, Republicans have just as much arthritis and degeenration as anybody else, but due to their work ethic, they work with the pain, unlike to 40 year old SSI claimant's we see daily..

Anonymous said...

Charles, do you know the meaning of "irony"? It is not belief in or a willingness to spread a lie to make a political point.

It is more troubling if the writers and publishers of this type of dreck succeed in blaming the productive of any age or race for the behaviors of those willing to take advantage of the safety nets provided by society.

Anonymous said...

There's a little grain of truth here (I've commented about the actually retired 55-62 crowd applying for disability benefits multiple times before).

However, I'm much more worried about the under-50 crowd applying for SSI in droves because they never managed to work at SGA more than a year or two their entire adult lives (at least, not on the books). The retiree disability benefit seekers are only going for a higher benefit amount. The SSI folks have never been economically productive and their SSI payments are much more than the difference between RIB benefits at 62 and disability payments.

Anonymous said...

The point is that there are a TON of people aged 55 to 62 who just don't want to work anymore, and rather than find a job that they could do, such as a walmart greeter or some other sedentary job, they'd rather file for disability. Becauase of how the horrific GRIDS essentially pay anyone over 55 who files for disability, it is a large part (certainly not the only part) of the problem with how disability is determined.

Anonymous said...

We need to straighten a few things out. SSI TXVI is not causing the problem with funding for the SSDI TII trust fund. Two Seperate revenue streams, unmixed, always have been. TXVI paid for by U.S.Treasury General Funds. TII is payroll tax funded by employer and employee.

You can triple the amount of people on SSI and not make the SSDI trust fund run out sooner.

Pick one to pick on dont mix the two. They do share common rules for disability, the inability to perform constant work over SGA $1040/month (31 hours a week at $8/hour is over SGA)due to a medically proven condition that has lasted 12 month or is expected to end in death.

Anonymous said...

Au Contraire mon ami, teh Government is continually borrowing from the SSDE Trust fund to pay into the General Funds. Since they are not paying it back and since it is being used to support SSI XVI the more spent on SSI XVI the sooner we run out of Title II Trust Funds. You can't rob from Peter to pay Paul and claimant Peter is still doing great.. Do you really think money just appears in the General Fund magically? Let's try supporting SSI XVI with IOU's and see how far that goes...

Anonymous said...

I agree with 6:05

Yes, XVI and II are funded from different sources. But as was pointed out, shortfalls from General Funds for XVI payments have repeatedly been plugged with Trust Fund funds, not by raising taxes, cutting other Agencies' budgets, etc.--the distinction is largely illusory since everyone (i.e. Congress) treats it all as one big thing anyway.