This part is VERY relevant.
So is this though:
Cossey and her husband—who gets disability payments for his cerebral palsy—don’t want to move away from family.
Let’s assume for a minute, for the sake of argument, that the system is’t being abused right now but it’s not designed for the world we live in today or achieving what society expects the program to achieve. In the future, if we have people temporarily on disability but with the potential to work, how is not moving, assuming you can actually move and that’s a big if in some situations, an option?
If I lost my job today. I wouldn’t want to move but of course I would if I have to. I’d move to where my next job is.
Thing is… most people can’t move. If you don’t have a job, odds are you can’t afford to move someplace to work for minimum wage (or close to it). It’s not like McDonalds is going to pay for you to move someplace and odds are the place you’d have to move to would have a higher cost of living that a job there wouldn’t pay the rent anyway.
People in this situation aren’t sitting on a big savings account. They’re probably buried in debt. First month plus deposit is a pipe dream for them. And that isn’t even including the cost of moving itself.
Plus, it’s pretty much a given that housing costs will go up in an area where there are jobs, so they’ll also be taking a loss on their house while also losing their family support network (and commuting long distances is pretty much a no-go for anyone with back issues - which is still the #1 disability item).
That’s why I said it’s a big if. Wanting to be close to your family is not unique to the poor or disabled, but sometimes you move because you have to move to where the jobs are. My point is not wanting to move is not a good reason to remain on disability. Not being able to move is different, but that’s a value judgment, I realize.
if the husband has palsy, then the family might be helping him out in non-easily replaceable ways. leaving a support network of friends and family is an additional cost that hurts the poor more.
I get that it can be tough, but as first generation immigrant whose family showed up with little more than the clothes on our backs, I can tell you that it’s doable.
I’m all for implementing some sort of one-time assistance for job relocation, etc. But having people on long-term disability when they could work if they moved to a new area is not a good thing for society or, frankly, for the individual. It’s the wrong tool to address the problem for that type of individual.
[quote=“Stepsongrapes, post:147, topic:126543, full:true”]
I get that it can be tough, but as first generation immigrant whose family showed up with little more than the clothes on our backs, I can tell you that it’s doable.[/quote]
Agreed. Same situation. Parents moved to America with six and seven year old children living off $400 a month graduate student assistantship and growing up in the University of Georgia’s family housing system. Mother unable to work legally the first few years due to a lack of a work visa. Yet, within five years they’d saved up enough to buy a home. Both my parents just retired earlier this year and are quite well off.
Yeah, the first few years here sucked and wasn’t much fun for them, I imagine. But they made it work and I am eternally grateful for the sacrifices they made to provide for us all during those early tough times.
Which is why the current situation this country finds itself in just breaks my fucking heart. This great nation that accepted us and provided so many opportunities and an eventual better way of life for my family seems to be crumbling. And all because a bunch of fucking idiots elected another fucking idiot to lead the way to our doom.
No doubt, it hurts. The best we can hope is that it shocks people into waking up from their democratic torpor.
Sure, but what year did they do it in?
The reality is that things aren’t the way they used to be in that regard. Which is part of why Trump got elected, even though he wont change any of it. I mean minimum wage used to be enough to live on, not well or comfortably, but you could pay the rent and the bills. Most places now you could work full time (which again rarely exists for min wage earners) and barely cover your rent. But of course no one working min wage ever gets full time, so you’d have to have 2 jobs, etc, etc.
I’m not saying it’s impossible, by any means. I mean I did it for a while, living paycheck to paycheck and the like, but that was nearly 20 years ago and I was getting paid fairly well at the time at around $12/hour. I could have been fulltime if I wasn’t going to school. Then again, the places I worked at, no longer exist. The only place that does from that time was my hometown grocery store.
Maybe disabiity is how we achieve UBI?
The problem is, this will destroy society.
If people don’t work in some, they often decline as human beings. It’s depressing. It damages their notion of self worth. It gives them too much free time. Keynes believed that providing and economic environment for employment was one of the single most important roles of government, because he had seen the mental devastation that the depression had wrought upon people.
You see the same effect in places like france, where immigrant populations are provided a living wage by the government, but are largely segregated from the job market. It’s been devastating to those communities. What’s worse, it’s provided an eager set of men who can be easily radicalized by ideological fundamentalists.
It’s not a good way to go. It leads to bad things.
This is exactly what I thought of when I saw this. Would it be cheaper to just have universal unemployment insurance?
One of the issues with disability vs welfare, is that disability has a major disincentive to move back to the workforce, is the healthcare you receive while on disability is gone, unless you get a job that covers you. And most blue collar jobs end up being part time w/o benefits. I am partly disabled, but I want to work, but working as a cashier 30 hours a week, where I can sit down, would net me 500 bucks more a month than disability payments. But, the healthcare costs from going off of disability would completely negate that. So… I guess I will stick to poverty where I can get treatment and healthcare.
Well okay, then. Shut it down, folks.
Hey, I explained WHY…with actual examples of it happening.
I think laying the issues with France’s immigrant population at the feet of a government stipend is reaching a bit.
But for the sake of argument, lets say it is true: Not having work leaves the majority of humans depressed and lacking in self-worth. If there just aren’t enough jobs to go around, the alternative is… what? Having them jobless and starving and homeless? Because that builds character?
And by the way, @Timex, I do apologize for my one-line comment. It came out sounding way more snide/snarky than I intended. It was much more good-natured in my head. :)
Oh, for God’s sake. Yes, it’s obviously a moral imperative to spend the majority of your waking hours flipping burgers or running a register or cleaning hotel rooms or picking strawberries or whatever other demeaning, bullshit work is “suitable” for untrained or otherwise out of work people. Society will collapse!
Think about how close your argument is to “plantation owners were doing them a favor!” and get back to me.
Opportunity and employment are not the same thing, and there is no inherent dignity to working menial garbage jobs.
What we have now is destroying society even more rapidly? I’d try the new approach over the old.
Besides, what we have now is driving radicalism in America- look who got elected president.
The one legitimate argument I have heard against this is from the Bernie-worshipping granny I talk to at the political meetings I’ve been at, and she has concerns about it leading to bread and circuses.
I’d generally prefer my bread and circuses to be run by the government instead of by private industry.
He’s not wrong though – having a purpose of some form seems to be key to personal and society-wide happiness.
Providing enough food and care for your populace is well and good, but doing that without providing an outlet for creativity or ambition has not worked out well for a lot of the petro-dollar states. Alcoholism, depression, drug addiction, radicalization. A well-fed, college-educated young person without any prospects is certainly a step up from a starving, uneducated young person without prospects… but maybe not as big a step as we like to think.
Do you think maybe there are other correlates regarding long-term unemployment that might explain the effects you see?