This article in the Wall Street Journal details how the Social Security Disability Insurance program is on the verge of bankruptcy – just a few more years and it will either require a big tax hike to keep going, or we’ll have to start draining funds from the Social Security retirement fund to pay for it – thus putting that program more swiftly on the path to bankruptcy. This quote from the story neatly encapsulates what the problem is:
…Lissette Franceschi, from Peñuelas, Puerto Rico, lost her job as a hospital nurse during a round of layoffs in 2008. The 54-year-old fell into a depression that she said required psychiatric help. “I had panic attacks, I couldn’t go out alone, I couldn’t drive,” she said. “There was no way I could work.”
Seven months after her layoff, in late 2008, she applied for SSDI and was denied for “insufficient information.” Later, a bone scan detected she had an incipient form of arthritis, and she applied again in early 2009. In November 2010, she told her story to a judge, detailing her layoff, the depression and her arthritis. She was granted $1,084 a month in benefits, retroactive to when she filed in early 2009…
I suffer from chronic pain in both my legs and, frequently, in my shoulders. I, too, suffer from anxiety – and in 2009 when both my father and my mother-in-law died, I suffered from bouts of depression. By the standards applied to Ms. Franceschi, I qualified for disability payments. Why didn’t I avail myself of them? Because it just would not have been right. I can work – might not like to work, might not want to work, but its not anyone’s job to support me if I can in any way, shape or form, support myself. Ms. Franceschi is merely abusing the system – taking money which was designed to help people who simply cannot work and using it as a means to take early retirement.
Now, its not entirely her fault. First off, the insane economic policies of the United States have ensured a dearth of wealth-creation and thus a lack of jobs in the United States. We’re essentially creating a pool of people who are casting about for any means they can find to obtain an income – and if they can find an income which allows them to not work, they will take advantage of it. Secondly, we’ve got a government system which simply must have a large and ever-growing number of dependent people…can’t build up a bureaucratic empire if there’s no one to minister to. So, the people who run the system have a vested interest in getting lots of people in the program…especially if they are relatively young and look to be justifications for long-term government employment (older people, on the other hand, find all sorts of road blocks…helping them eats up budget while not creating someone who will be a justification for a large number of years…and, so, you find all sorts of VA benefit applicants hanging around waiting for benefits…with the system just waiting them out, figuring they’ll die before payment is necessary).
But this cannot be sustained – we cannot have millions of citizens being non-productive and living off the productive. If you can work, at all, you must work..even if you have a bit of pain in the joints and are worried and/or unhappy in your personal life. If you’re claiming a mental problem is preventing you from working then I’d better see you catatonic under psychological medication…if you say you physically can’t work, I’d better see a missing or completely non-functional arm, leg, eye or some such (and even that is not necessarily final…I knew a lady who was a wheel-chair bound, suffering a quite horrific birth defect which made her legs and hands nearly useless and yet she held down a 40 hour a week job; she passed away from the effects of her disease, but only stopped working a couple months before she died). Naturally, if I’m demanding that you must work, I’d better ensure there is some work to do.
In that department, the ultimate cure is to enact policies which encourage wealth creation – once again, encourage us to make, mine and grow more of our own stuff. But, meanwhile, in order to ensure that those on disability are really disabled, all such persons should be examined to see if there is any work they can do, and if they are determined fit, they should be put to work on whatever we can find. To prevent future abuses, all claims for disability should be reviewed by a citizens jury – empaneled just like a regular jury, and they hear the case and decide whether a person is really disabled and worthy of benefits. So, a person comes in (doctors can attend) and they argue their case…we don’t need to hear a challenge to it; a group of 12 people should be able to figure out if someone is gold bricking.
We simply must get a handle on this. The United States cannot be a gigantic welfare agency. We’re bankrupting ourselves and ruining our nation and its time we called a halt.
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