ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
Blogger, Christian convert, general strange one. https://shapesinthefog.substack.com/
User ID: 3709
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
What work are they able to do?
What about babysitting? Or cleaning people's houses?
I'm also of the opinion that most of these issues are psychosomatic, so I will admit I'm a bit biased here. Not that psychosomatic disorders don't need care and compassion, but I'm skeptical that they actually cannot ever work again.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
These are not ‘good jobs’ but they do pay better than disability.
More importantly, they provide actual economic value and give the employee the dignity and a forcing function to get out of bed, have a routine, socialize, et cetera. Work is good for us. Most people on disability, from what I've seen, end up mostly rotting away via endless entertainment.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Yeah I agree, it's extremely hard to draw the line. In generally I think this is why charity from churches and generally voluntary sources is the way to go.
If you force people to pay charity via taxes, it will never be clear enough that the criteria are satisfying what the giver actually wants. It just becomes a total mess. Not that voluntary donations can't be gamed and have their own problems, but it's a whole nother level of bad when it becomes forced.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Just to get the convo started... wow. I'm reading this NPR article on disability and this is a direct quote:
"We talk about the pain and what it’s like," he says. "I always ask them, 'What grade did you finish?'"
What grade did you finish, of course, is not really a medical question. But Dr. Timberlake believes he needs this information in disability cases because people who have only a high school education aren't going to be able to get a sit-down job.
Dr. Timberlake is making a judgment call that if you have a particular back problem and a college degree, you're not disabled. Without the degree, you are.
Ok great, so disability is basically just handouts for people who didn't have the intelligence or wherewhithal to complete college. Got it.
On the one hand I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea to help low IQ folks or those who made poor life choices to some degree - but lets at least make it clear. Hiding it behind this medical idea that they are unable to work is wrong.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Copying over a post from the ssc subreddit because I found it interesting. (Hope this is allowed.)
In the mid 2010s there was a crisis around social security disability. Things were so dire that estimates placed the DI reserves to run out by 2016.
And yet as we know, this didn't happen. Part of it was thanks to the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, which temporarily reallocated payroll tax revenues from the OAS fund to the DI trust fund but that was temporary and ran out in 2022. And as far as I can tell (and as far as my double checks with the chatbots can find), it wasn't extended.
And now with the upcoming social security crisis the DI reserves are the only part to not be facing any expected issues.
Another piece of the disability crisis, 14 million people were on disability in 2013 and the number was expected to keep rising and rising. And yet it didn't happen, the trend reversed and as of 2024, only around 7 million are on disability It was halved! Substantial drop! We're back to levels from two decades ago.
Why? How did things change so radically so fast?
-
Covid. I don't know how much of an impact Covid had, but it was disproportionately impacting the disabled both directly and indirectly (by using up hospital resources) and that likely lead to some deaths but it doesn't seem to be that much, we were already trending downwards before the pandemic. [Edit: See edit below, it's quite possible that Covid had a greater impact than I thought]
-
The social security admin changed up their policies a bit and got more pressure on appeal judges to make denials. This had an impact, but the changes to denial rates don't seem to be that drastic to explain a 50% drop. And since then that small trend downwards has actually reversed too, the overall final award rate of 2024 applications seems to be higher than the mid 2010s average.
I don't think those are the main reasons why it changed.
What do I propose was the main reason? The economy got stronger and the disabled got older.
You can see for yourself how disability applications correspond pretty heavily with the unemployment rate.
Unemployment has a selection bias, it mostly impacts the older, sicker and less educated. Those are people who in a good economy with low unemployment might be able to get jobs, but in a weaker economy they are too old and disabled to find something compared to their healthier younger peers.
You can see a huge surge in disability applications around the time of the great recession. These people were largely in their late 50s and early 60s, too young for early retirement but too old in the recession environment to compete well.
An NPR article from the time reveals this in an example of [in 2009] 56 year old Scott Birdsall and what an employee at a retraining center told him after a local mill closed down and the aging workers were left finding other jobs
"Scotty, I'm gonna be honest with you," the guy told him. "There's nobody gonna hire you … We're just hiding you guys." The staff member's advice to Scott was blunt: "Just suck all the benefits you can out of the system until everything is gone, and then you're on your own."
A 56 year old in 2009 is what age in 2024? 71. They are past retirement age, and would have transitioned off of disability and onto normal retirement pay.
This is what I think solved a significant portion of the disability crisis. Overall disability in the late aughts and early 2010s was being used as a makeshift early retirement program for uneducated middle aged and senior workers who didn't yet quality for their benefits, but were functionally unemployable already in the post recession economy.
And while I came up with this idea for myself, during research I stumbled onto an analysis that suggests the same thing. Their analysis ended at 2019, where there was still roughly 9.8 million on the rolls, and found that about half the explanation is the business cycle/aging and half is ALJ retraining. The trend from 2019-2024 is likely explained in a similar way, and given the increased final award rates we've tended back towards, this is likely explained even more heavily by the aging explanation.
There are some factors that help support this explanation more. SSDI in general tends to go to older, poorer, more rural and sicker (at least given death rates are 2-6x higher than peers) individuals.
"The typical SSDI beneficiary is in their 50s; more than three-quarters are over age 50, and more than 4 in 10 are 60 or older"
While this does not explain why the 2010s surge itself happened since those factors are relatively stable, it does explain why the surge was so temporary.
This also leads to an interesting question, what happens in the next period of high unemployment? How do we plan to address mass AI based layoffs if they occur?
Many people may be able to find a new job, but many won't and we will likely be facing a new disability crisis if it is forced to served as a early retirement program again.
Edit:
Thinking about it, one weirdness here is Covid unemployment which didn't seem to increase disability rates and in fact the trend downwards continued despite that. But we did see a huge surge in early retirement with about 2.6 million excess retirees. So maybe something changed in how early retirement works since? Or maybe Covid era unemployment mostly impacted younger healthier people or the jobs market for furloughed workers wasn't as bad. Or heck, maybe it's just coincidence that the downward trend was already happening and Covid really did have a major impact on the total number of beneficiaries.
My guess would be in the recovery, Covid unemployment surged higher but recovered really fast so we probably just didn't see as many Scott Birdsall situations.
Back to my thoughts, I'm extremely skeptical that the disability numbers could halve over such a relatively short period without some sort of accounting trickery. I could definitely see Covid having an impact, especially since the vast majority are older people. But the drop in numbers is just too great for me to take them at face value.
We've seen it before with disability, social security, etc, but often times the medicalized benefits system will just shuffle large amounts of people from one category to another once political pressure comes to bear on a label like "disability."
This also reminds me of the old post by Alone on how SSI is basically medicalizing political problems - can't seem to find it but if anyone knows what I'm talking about and has the link that would be great.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Count is a charming guy. He's very well groomed... from what I've heard.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
My priest always says the Evil One lives at the extremes. I agree that totalization is not the way.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Yeah, I like this place because it's long form and there's enough content that I can read it rather quickly and finish. Infinite scrolling loops are horrible.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Mine was a combination of psychedelics and meditation slowly opening my mind over years to other possibilities, then having an odd string of coincidences leading to me taking Christianity a bit more seriously. Over time I began to learn more and more including listening to Jordan Peterson's lectures, John Vervaeke, and reading a good amount of the sort of "post-modern" Christian apologists. Eventually I decided to go to a church and slowly work on my faith.
In terms of the culturally alien thing... yeah. That's kind of the point if you want to fill the God-shaped hole. Anything that fills that is going to be alien to you, because your worldview is basically secular materialism. Even if you don't realize it, you have a 'religion' right now with extremely strong precepts. A big part of the journey to a "real religion" is recognizing that secular materialism is a philosophical system with axioms that must be investigated as well.
If you want a super dry book to read on all this, I'd recommend All Things are Full of Gods by David Bentley Hart.
EDIT: Sorry misread the God shaped hole thing. Also it helps to think of sin as "error" or "missing the mark" which is the Greek translation.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
I love finding random small bookstores or something like that. Atlas Obscura also has cool stuff https://www.atlasobscura.com/
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
First, police stations are state property. They are of a lesser legal status than federal property when it comes to crimes against them, is my understanding.
Furthermore you've got specific laws against obstruction of Congressional proceedings, and threatening officials. Not sure if the J6 people were charged with those in particular.
Either way the major argument I'm making is more symbolic - I think the legal points are relevant but not going to fight to defend them if it's not the case.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
So you're just going to say it's obvious and not actually explain why? Come on.
Is it mere geographic proximity? Are you saying one is more likely to work? What?
The symbolic and indeed legal status of say, Pittsburgh downtown versus the Capitol of the United States are indeed quite different, and I do think it's obviously true. There are specific laws about threatening Congress, crimes on federal land, etc. Even if there weren't, the implicit statement the rioters are making is vastly different. One is random wanton destruction, one is destruction aimed specifically at the ruling body of a nation.
I could understand if congressmen were assaulted. Hell, going to people's homes might actually be an escalation. But it's just rioting on some official building we're talking about.
Congressmen were in the building that was raided. That counts as attempted assault at least, in my book. If the rioters had gotten to the elected officials, I don't doubt there would've been some violence.
All I see is people with no power breaking things to make themselves look more intimidating than they actually are. I think your degrees are more aligned to the targets of the intimidation or the symbolism thereof than its actual severity or destabilizing effect.
Not sure what you're saying here. I agree that rioters with no power are breaking things - I see it more as a sort of mob pressure release rather than an actual plan to become intimidating, but don't think that is a big deal.
What do you mean my degrees are more aligned to the targets? Are you saying the BLM riots were more severe and destabilizing than J6?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Violence committed on federal property is a bigger issue. Violence or threats of violence against Congress is a bigger issue than property destruction, legally.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Political violence directly or indirectly, charitably, aimed at the congressional capital where legislators are actively working is quite different than rioting in a random city. Even if the rioters are attacking city hall or police stations, the degree is significantly greater.
Acting as if they are equivalent is ridiculous and playing games with “political violence.” It’s like saying slapping a politician you don’t like the exact same as murdering them, because it’s “political violence” either way.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
No, it's special pleading to pretend like breaking into Congress directly after a Presidential election is the exact same as rioting in a city. They are quite different things, even legally.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
I have to agree. While I'm broadly more aligned with the right, all of the equivocation of BLM riots with Jan 6th is annoying and mealy mouthed in my opinion. Breaking into Congressional buildings is an extremely different situation than protesting and even rioting.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Ok yeah everyone is talking about China, that could be fair! But China was also industrializing as well right? In the last century they were half peasant farmers.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
;D
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Nope!
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
IQ too gross? Do you know where you're at, sonny?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
If that's so much better, why haven't we seen a massive increase in GDP or quality of life?
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
Ahh my apologies, apparently his name is David Friedberg. I got you to confused somehow.
ThomasdelVasto
Κύριε, ποίησόν με ὄργανον τῆς ἀγάπης σου
1mo ago
What is the point of this negativity? Do you just want to watch the world burn?
I truly do not understand why people take such cynical mindsets.
Wait wages have exploded for Doordashers and cashiers etc? Huh I always heard doom and gloom that it's harder than ever for that class of jobs. Especially the gig stuff.
More options
Context Copy link