The New Normal
In November 1982, unemployment hit its postwar high of 10.8 percent, far higher than the current rate of 7.7 percent. But the total share of workers who are either unemployed or receiving disability payments from the government totals 12.6 percent today.
The steady rise in disability claims presents something of a puzzle. Medicine has improved substantially. Far fewer of us labor in dangerous industrial jobs like the ones that originally motivated disability insurance. The rate of deaths due to injuries has plummeted. Behavior that can cause disability, such as alcohol use and smoking, has declined substantially. American age-adjusted mortality rates are far lower than in the past.
The aging of the baby-boom generation is often cited as one explanation for the rise in disability insurance rolls. Yet the economists Mark Duggan and Scott Imberman estimate that “this factor can explain just 15.5 percent of the growth in the likelihood that a nonelderly adult male receives DI benefits.”
The two primary alternative hypotheses for the rise are that either work has become less attractive or that disability insurance has become more attractive and available.
Work has become “less attractive?” More like “less available.”
SS/Medicare used to deny almost all initial claims, so th elawyers could get their 25% cut of the back pay, once it was finally awarded.
Now, they approve all claims, because those who go on disability get removed from the official unemployment numbers.
Medicare will go broke very soon, because of this Obama policy. We are talking just a few years, now. Yet, seniors voted heavily for Obama. Well, many will pay with their very lives for those votes. Darwinism in operation.
Obamanonics IS working. Systematically reducing the standard of living while increasing dependency. After all it’s only fair. But when the bad music stops….. Some men just want to watch the world burn. When something can’t go on forever it won’t. Happy new year.
This.
My vote is for DI becoming more attractive. From four to seven years ago, I underwent a low level of hell by being diagnosed as possibly having MS.
My neurologist was bluntly honest with me. He said (paraphrasing ), “It’s 50/50 whether your symptoms are caused by a virus or by MS. But I have enough evidence to legally declare that you have MS. If you work for the state or federal government, I’d recommend you take the MS diagnosis. You’ll be set for life.”
I don’t work for the government, so I didn’t take that diagnosis. And thank God, it seems more and more likely it was just a virus. But man, talk about a chance at a golden ticket. It’s a tempting path to take.