According to a recent study 54% of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 read below the equivalent of a sixth grade education.
Why does this matter for Social Security? That 54% account for the vast majority of disability claims, particularly those disability claims which are most likely to generate appeals. The thing is that if you develop serious health problems, you have something to fall back on if you become disabled if you've got good mental abilities. If you're a fire fighter, for instance, and your knees give out but you're not too old, you may be able to switch to being a 911 operator, for instance, because you have a little background in the field and you probably have enough intellectual ability to learn a new job. However, if you're a roofer, you may not be able to make the transition to being a roofing estimator, for instance, because you may not have the innate intellectual ability. (I'm sure there are plenty of smart roofers but it's hard, dangerous work with poor pay so who do you think ends up in these jobs, for the most part? Did you think people take roofing jobs simply because they like working outside?) Add in increased age, which reduces adaptability, and switching to work with fewer physical demands but requiring more intellectual ability becomes extremely difficult. Don't think that age makes a difference in adaptability? You're almost certainly young. Wait until you're older. You'll understand.
There are those on the right who honestly believe that way too many people are approved for Social Security disability, that those people may have some health problems but that they could easily switch to less demanding jobs if it wasn't so easy to get Social Security disability benefits. Well, it's not at all easy to get Social Security disability benefits nor is it easy for most of the workforce to switch to less physically demanding jobs.
One of the leaders of a bipartisan Senate working group focused on extending Social Security accused President Biden of "not engaging" with them as they scramble for a way to keep the vital program solvent past its expected expiry in nine years.
Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Angus King, I-Maine, said this month that "conversations are ongoing" to reform the Social Security program ...
Cassidy indicated to Fox News Digital on Thursday that Biden’s apparent unwillingness to meet is what’s holding the group from publicly moving forward. ...
"President Biden has never made himself available to hear about the Cassidy-King proposal to save Social Security from impending 24% benefit cuts," Cassidy said. "Biden calls himself a deal maker; we can’t make a deal without him. By not engaging, the president is choosing that current retirees’ Social Security benefits are cut by 24%."
A Senate aide told Fox News Digital, "there have been multiple requests from both sides of the aisle to meet with President Biden, and those have not been met." They stressed that the group was bipartisan, and its membership is in "the double-digits." ...
Yeah, right. The President is supposed to go out on a limb to promote a wildly unpopular plan to cut Social Security benefits and raise taxes even though it's hopeless because no Republican will vote for it anyway. This smacks of bad faith. It's just an attempt by Republicans to immunize themselves from the entirely accurate accusation that they want to cut Social Security benefits.
Social Security's continued use of wildly outdated vocational information in determining disability continues to draw media attention. How much longer will the agency go on with the pretense that it's trying to develop a new source of vocational information? What's it been now, 12 years or more, that they've been working on this and they still can't get the answers they want?
From the New York Times:
President Emmanuel Macron vowed to stay the course on Tuesday after his government barely survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament that ensured the passage of his unpopular pension overhaul but did little to quell the swirling political uncertainty about the future of his second term. ...
Despite months of massive street protests and strikes, Mr. Macron has not said much publicly about his pension overhaul, which increases the legal retirement age to 64, from 62, and he had mostly left members of his cabinet to defend it. ...
With 278 votes in favor, the main no-confidence motion on Monday fell only nine votes short of succeeding — a much smaller margin than initially expected, and a sign that Mr. Macron’s political troubles are far from over.
Even some lawmakers within Mr. Macron’s own party, Renaissance, have expressed reservations the pension changes, and a few have gone so far as to suggest he should try to calm the country by setting aside the pension overhaul instead of forging ahead with it. ...
House Republicans have proposed that appropriations for Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, which begins on October 1, 2023, be cut back to the FY 2022 levels. Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee asked heads of major agencies what that would mean for their agencies. Social Security responded that going back to FY 2022 numbers would mean they would have to:
