Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Our military budget is a subsidy for certain workers and companies at detriment to taxpayers. It's also an easy lever from which politicians may wring campaign funds and pork. That industry is the true basket of deplorables.
Food stamps, Medicaid, housing subsidies, fine. Basic subsistence (food, health care, shelter). On top of that, I'd add a negative income tax, or "living wage." Instead of paying all the administration costs of the endless programs providing benefits above basic subsistence, I'd give $$$ directly to the people who need it. Yes, that would involve converting a whole lot of govt workers into recipients of the benefits distribution of which they currently oversee. That's fine with me. It's just trading one form of transfer payment (the cost of a bureaucrat) for another cheaper one (the cost of subsidizing an ex-bureaucrat).
SSDI's been abused since 2008. It's become a go-to source of income for a lot of people who can't otherwise survive, at cost to those honest people who really deserve the disability payments. It's unconscionable that people with iffy back injuries should be sucking up benefits while a guy with congestive heart failure or MS has to wait forever, or suffer initial denial. There's a special ring in hell for the able-bodied people using SSDI as "enhanced, extended welfare." And a hotter one for their lawyers.
We know they weren't trying to prevent fraud because the Admin in 2009 relaxed its claims scrutiny, because it lowered unemployment numbers and avoided what was then a real concern about impending social unrest. But we're past that now, and SSDI is being more aggressive about guarding against fraud. The problem is, there's still a huge backlog because these legions of hopeless workers are still throwing claims and appeals at the program. Perhaps more spending is needed to weed them out. Or perhaps just better use of the current staff at SSDI.
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They did not relax scrutiny. I went through the process in 2010-2013 and I had to appeal twice. I was able to get through the process because I had private LTD. If I had not had any income for that 2.5 years, and I had been forced to find some kind of work to keep food on the table and a roof over my head, my claim would have been denied because clearly, if I was working, I couldn't be disabled. At the very least, under current standards, a person has to have less than $1030/mo income from employment to qualify. If they make one dollar more in any one month, their claim will be denied.
It's all rather Kafkaesque. It may also be why I sound embittered, rabidly anti-government, and a bit crazy at times. Welfare is similarly stacked against the claimant. If you don't have kids, you have to have been unemployed, with no source of income for at least a year.
Look carefully at our so-called safety net and low-level street crime starts to make sense. A body's gotta eat.
