site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   19275 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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.

The Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Fund is projected to be able to pay 100 percent of total scheduled benefits through at least 2098, the last year of this report's projection period. Last year's report projected that the DI Trust Fund would be able to pay scheduled benefits through at least 2097, the last year of that report's projection period.

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?

  1. 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]

  2. 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.

I happen to rather like that Alone post.

I think the original poster has it right, even by the lights of shuffling people from one program to another. What is SSDI to SSI if not a recategorizing of benefits?

The concept of "SSDI is just SSI, but targeted at a slightly younger and more blue-collar workforce" seems to be borne out by the second chart here (look at the small, pale blue bars). The numbers keep going up the closer you get to retirement age. In a somewhat more proper sense, this could be explained as: this is quite specifically the cohort you expect to get disabled, as they're manual workers who get old enough for all their little injuries to come back and bite them. Either way, not nearly as knee-jerk offensive as Alone's example, except in the sense that no matter how you decide who gets what, you're still creating a large class of people who are drawing on entitlements from the labor of unrelated others. But that's a far deeper topic.

The race-based charts just line up in the traditional poverty order. I dunno if there was ever any possibility of it being otherwise.

Thank you so much for finding the link, favorited! Man, I know Alone is super cynical (maybe from all the rum) but I can't help but love his devastating writing style:

Don't say that taxes needed to be higher because it was never about funding it, it was always about temporarily buying their apathy. Truth be told, it stayed solvent longer than it was supposed to-- one of the benefits of having a reserve currency, aka a private meth lab. But you knew that, didn't you? Temporary measures, just like a psychiatry that is for the "management of acute symptoms"-- or are you going to tell me you expect/want it to look like this in 30 years? Then why is it like this now?

And so this is the terrible, awful truth of it all: we created the system only for us, and will last for as long, but only as long, as we are alive, and that was as far as anyone ever thought it out. That means that any kids under 10, rich and poor, will be left to make do with rubble-- on purpose. That's what they will inherit from the Dumbest Generation Of Narcissists In The History of The World, who say with not the least bit of irony, "may as well spend it because you can't take it with you!" No kidding. You've created a gigantic Ponzi scheme which is not just morally sketchy but downright mean to your kids, but what do you care: you'll be dead.

He’s not cynical, not exactly, or possibly just in a more original sense of the word. Obviously he’s got a biting tongue, and is quite funny and engaging, but his style goes further than that. He smoothly switches registers from that sharp humor to dispassionate but engaged explanation to quiet compassion to thundering moral imperatives. And at the heart of it, the beating heart that gives the writing meaning and purchase, is a sincere and rich if off-beat and cantankerous sense of what it means to be human, and a good one at that. He believes, and believes so strongly that those who read him often can’t help but to believe as well. It is, in my opinion, the core characteristic of the best artists (whatever the medium). Weak artists communicate their raw skill, or the popular views of the day, or self-interested navel-gazing, or shallow platitudes (sometimes positive, often negative). Great artists have a perception of the world, an almost indescribable richness of essence, which they strive to share. They see the clean and the corrupt, the fractures in the simple and uncomplicated views, and try to communicate what they see. And especially they love the goodness of it, which impels them to expression, however imperfect. I find that this imperfection is actually the hallmark of great art, a certain roughness around the edges, a strange and stilted section here or there, the part of a novel or movie that drags on a little long, a corner of a painting that is not perfectly lovely, an awkward sidebar in a thesis: this is the uncomfortable, indescribable real poking through. It is not necessarily in full contribution to “the point” or what have you, but it is necessary nonetheless. And Alone, for my money, is one of these serious artists, probably the only real and powerful thinker I’ve read in the 21st century. There are some pretty acceptable second-rate writers, who are quite good for the time, and perhaps Alone will wind up being too focused on contemporary issues to be particularly worth remembering in a historical sense. But my sense is that he stands with the best.

I don’t see nihilism in what he’s talking about. What he’s talking about is how the systems in the modern West actually work, and exactly how they’re pretty much the same as the structures that have always existed and probably always will. SSDI like almost all welfare has never been aimed at tge comfort or betterment of tge people that receive it. It’s a pass through so they can afford to buy consumer goods. Which is why they have to use them to buy things or pay rent to a private individual. Government cheese and public housing and public clinics staffed by government hired doctors don’t get the money to the producers as fast. And most welfare systems cut people off the minute they have any assets. If you have money in the bank, you’re going to lose benefits rather quickly. It’s meant as pacification of the poor and a pass-through handout to business interests.

I see the same in his talking about the 2008 shutdown. He’s talking about the news and how it’s designed to tell you what you already believe, to create drama instead of solutions, and to basically prevent you from thinking about the issues. And the entire point is that it keeps you from understanding what is going on. Which is control. It wants you to feel involved and feel like you’re important enough to be in the seat of power. It’s sophisticated ego-stroking, and TBH it’s very seductive as ego-stroking to pretend that it’s of earth-shaking importance that you, personally are informed by the best sources, are engaged at all times, and that it’s urgent that you, yes, you are intimately and personally involved. TBH, I think in general the reverse is true, and that most of the problems in America would be solved if fewer people cared about politics, especially since the vast majority (on both sides BTW) are using politics as a substitute for religion and in some cases personality.

Yes absolutely! It's not pure cynical nihilism, he pairs a lot of intelligence with someone who clearly cares about society and wants the best for us. I love the way you put this, he definitely has a strong belief in what he's writing about.

Have you read Sadly, Porn? Haven't been able to start given what I've heard myself ahaha.

It’s his best work.

I have read Sadly, Porn. The book is composed of meandering parables. They revolve around a central argument reiterated repeatedly in riddle form but never stated explicitly. Footnotes make up 50% of the book's total word count. Each footnote is an essay, mostly book reviews and movie reviews. I would maybe recommend reading the footnote essays for starters and circling back to reading main text of the book afterwards.

What is the main argument?

It's less about an argument in the logos sense than it is about the experience of reading it. It's a unique exercise in rhetoric.

The general thrust is similar to his blog but with a focus on relationships. It centers around themes of self-deception, narcissism, performative virtue, revealed preference, cowardice, selfishness, and ultimately, dereliction of duty and the failure to be a good person. A book of cynicism in diametric opposition to nihilism.

The race-based charts just line up in the traditional poverty order. I dunno if there was ever any possibility of it being otherwise.

Yeah, Hale County Alabama having a working-age disability rate of 25% (It looks like that's dropped to 20% since that article was written.) sounds scandalous until you consider that it's mostly a dying rural area, the sort of place that doesn't even have a Walmart to be a greeter at. Especially in the crappy job market of the early 2010s, a fifty-something country bumpkin with no education and occupational experience limited to blue collar work that they're aged or injured out of is pretty close to unemployable anywhere within a reasonable commute of the area. Tuscaloosa is 30-60 minutes north depending on which side of the county you're in, and that's pretty much it. Good luck competing with a bunch of underemployed college graduates!

Nitpick and I know it wasn't your intent, but I have a hard eye for Walmart hate.

Your average Walmart does a little more that $1milion / week in sales. The average customer is a suburban woman making between $40-$80k per year. The average supercenter employs 300 people.

The trope of "lulz Walmart is for fucked up redneck towns" is categorically false. Walmart is an amazing, massive company. They were FAANG before FAANG was a thing, having picked up RDBMs for inventory management in the 1980s. They promote from within to an extreme degree. Walmart Labs, for data science and engineering, is as prestigious and as lucrative as a FAANG job currently. Their buyers are some of the best negotiators, marketers, and logisticians in the world. The conslutants (no, I spelled the right, go back and read it) from McKinsey etc. would give their left nut to get an in house job at Walmart - most don't.

And walmart sells what people want and need for ridiculous prices. In a modern consumer economy, it is the triumph of scale and American purchasing power. Walmart is why, how, and where we go to not only feel like but actually live better than 99.99% of all historic royalty in human history.

Amazon imports junks from all across the world. Google and Facebook make you the product by using surveillance capitalism to capture and re-sell your data. Walmart sells you a ridiculous TV for less than $500.

The trope of "lulz Walmart is for fucked up redneck towns" is categorically false.

I suppose the better way to put it is that Walmart is the only hypermarket chain that is efficient enough to survive in mediocre redneck towns (A "fucked up redneck town" is one that doesn't have a Walmart.), so they wind up associated with them.

Walmart Labs, for data science and engineering, is as prestigious and as lucrative as a FAANG job currently.

Lucrative perhaps, but I dispute the claim about prestige. I've never even heard of Walmart Labs, whereas everyone in the industry knows of the FAANG companies and the high status that comes from working for one.

I've never even heard of Walmart Labs

whereas everyone in the industry knows...

Ask your friends at Goldman Sachs about Allen and Company.

Sorry, I genuinely can't understand what your point is. I'm guessing because I don't work in finance so I'm missing a reference. Can you please clarify?

I was trying to draw a parallel between "those in the know" in the tech industry and the same in the finance industry.

People who work in data science and engineering know walmart labs. Great reputation. People who work in finance know Allen and company. Great reputation.

People who do not work in those industries have never heard of either Walmart Labs or Allen and Company.

OP of the thread here! Normally just lurk but I'll reply since it's my SSC thread.

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."

I agree, it's a really dramatic drop. But I also think it's useful to know that the mid aughts was also a dramatic rise. https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/di_asr/2006/sect01.html

In December 2006, about 7.8 million people received Social Security disability benefits as disabled workers, disabled widow(er)s, or disabled adult children. The majority (87 percent) were disabled workers, 10 percent were disabled adult children, and 3 percent were disabled widow(er)s.

https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/di_asr/2006/sect01.html

In the same way we halved from then to now, we also had basically doubled during the time period.

If we view the surge during the recession as essentially being a temporal anomaly, then our current numbers are just a return to form with the reduction (and lack of growth relative to population) since the mid 2000s explainable through the increase in ALJ denials.

It going to some other disability program is an interesting hypothesis, but seven million people is a lot to transfer! Heck it'd be more than seven million if we assume that the expected growth had also occured too. And there's no other known disability program this large. So it seems either they genuinely shrank through some mechanism (such as just a return to form as they aged into normal retirement) or they've been heavily fudging the numbers in a consistent manner through two different administrations and Trump 1, Biden and Trump 2 (including groups like DOGE now) haven't noticed a thing.

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.

Sounds interesting, but would like to point out that SSI and DI are different programs with different funding. SSI is administered by the Social Security Administration, but the funding comes from the treasury's General Fund rather than the OASDI trusts. SSI is intended as a supplemental (hence Supplemental Security Income) payment to disabled people who don't have enough credits to collect on DI.

Edit: To add, SSI numbers have also decreased too, which means that can't be where the 7 million went. And total social security recipients did go up (despite the 7 mil drop in DI) showing a lot more retirees and quite a bit less disabled. So I stand by the "many disabled people just got older" hypothesis.

Awesome! Yeah you did a great job, I was impressed with the work even if I came off a bit condescending here hah.

Sounds interesting, but would like to point out that SSI and DI are different programs with different funding. SSI is administered by the Social Security Administration, but the funding comes from the treasury's General Fund rather than the OASDI trusts. SSI is intended as a supplemental (hence Supplemental Security Income) payment to disabled people who don't have enough credits to collect on DI.

Gotcha, yeah I could have been more explicit about this. I'm still surprised less people of working age got on disability, but seems the stats bear your argument out.

Dang I'm tired of everything coming down to population cohort sizes but seems like that's a major driver of... tons of stuff in the U.S. Wild.

Something else to consider: the rise of Work From Home, and particularly the trickle down of WFH to lower and lower level administrative roles. I'm seeing more and more secretarial kind of roles in WFH. To say nothing of help-line call center roles. Basically we're seeing more low or no skill WFH.

This works two ways.

Panglossian, people are good way: a lot of people who would have taken disability are able to find jobs that aren't painful or undignified for them. Just removing commuting is, for someone who can't really walk and/or drive, a huge advantage. Then figure you can set up your own home so much more easily to accommodate than a business can, and at no additional cost to anyone. Even small things like: imagine someone with a spinal injury who can't sit or stand for longer than one hour without laying down for five minutes. Such a person can't work any normal job, it's impossible. WFH, literally who cares or would even notice? So a lot of people who otherwise would have been forced to take disability, or would have tried to get disability rather than work in a way that was undignified. And they're happier as a result!

Cynical negative view: Social Security disability appeals function by the putative disabled person saying they can't work any job, the government trying to find a job they can work, and the disabled person appealing saying they can't work that job. When I worked on those appeals, our local office loved to tell everyone to become Parking Garage Attendants because it required no strength or skills and you could sit down all day. I don't even know how many parking garage attendants there are in our area! But now, they can use WFH positions, that might or might not even exist, and that gets around a lot of prior disability efforts. Can't walk to work or drive? No problem, stay home! It's a lot harder to be too disabled to work a home call center job than it was to be too disabled to work the same job in an office.

Random thoughts: This is a return to normal. The 20th century saw an excessive standardization of all work as office or factory work, i.e., external workplace work where employed and salaried workers work under direct supervision. Employers now realize that this needn't be universally enforced. You can in fact just hire people to do their job, let them handle the details, and judge them based on their effective output. It may take some bossware to make it function for jobs that rely more on putting-in-hours than on getting-things-done, but that's a fairly minor hurdle.

What was once the craftsman's workshop adjacent to his living quarters, the farmer living on his farm, the daytaler sleeping right next to tomorrow's task, is now the employee working from home. It's a revival of an older and universal theme that was briefly obscured by some of the excessive outgrowths of the industrial revolution.

Not to get all Marxist Econ-History-101 on it, but in large part the concept of disability is itself built around the capitalist conceit that the human worker is reducible to a standardized piece of machinery. And like all piece of factory equipment, a non-standard piece of machinery is best discarded, because one can't change factory procedures from standard.

I worked for the state disability bureau in 2011, and I can confirm that your theory is basically correct. There was a huge application backlog stemming from the recession, and a huge chunk of it was people in their 50s who were laid off from blue-collar jobs and claimed bad backs, shoulders, etc. from slinging sheetrock for 40 years or whatever. The reason the bulk of the beneficiaries are in their 50s is because the law makes it very difficult to qualify if you are under 50; you have to either have a condition that meets a defined listing (and the listings are for the kinds of things that if you have no one's going to question your ability to work), or to be completely incapable of doing sedentary work. If you're over 50, it's assumed you can't adjust to other work, so you can only be sent back to a job you've done in the past 20 years. In some cases, it may be determined that you can do lighter work similar to what you did before (e.g., an auto mechanic (medium duty grade) can work as a tech at a quick lube place (light duty grade)) but that's pretty rare. If you're over 50 and already have an office job you're also out of luck, since you're effectively given the same standard as an under 50.

So a lot of people who were laid off, especially from the construction industry, especially those who were close to retirement anyway, just filed for whatever injuries they had accumulated over the years and said that was the reason they stopped working. To be fair, though, a lot of these people ended up going back to work while their claims were pending, so I don't want to paint with too broad a brush. The difference between then and now is that people above 50 but below 62 were part of the largest generational cohort in US history, so there were simply more of them. In 2008 only the oldest boomers had reached 62m and the youngest were still in their 40s. By 2020, everyone born before 1958 was 62 or older, and the youngest were already in their mid 50s. This gives 6 years worth of people to make claims, with the number going down every year.

A lot of the Boomers who retired during COVID did so because they already had enough savings to retire. The ones who didn't weren't likely to be laid off either, since COVID unemployment hit the service industry mostly and didn't really affect much else. Car mechanics and pipefitters weren't getting laid off, and if they were they were the ones at the bottom of the totem pole, not the ones who had been in the union for decades. The 2020 recession was also sharp and brief, unlike the 2008 recession where the recovery seemed to drag on for years until the job market felt normal again. It wasn't until 2013 that extended unemployment relief was ended.

So yeah, now that most of these people are on regular Social Security, and there hasn't been a comparable recession to cause a flood of new applicants, and the generational cohort of people in their 50s is smaller than it was before, there's no reason to have expected claims to keep rising. The 2010s projections were hitting right as the flood of applications was already peaking and about to decline.

If you had to guess at a ratio, how much of state disability is:

  1. People who genuinely need it, but are also trying to maximize what they get
  2. People who genuinely need it, and will take what's offered without much pushback
  3. People who the "disability industrial complex" - who use family/friends experience, attorneys, and "community organizations" to bilk benefits that they do not need nor honestly qualify for.

Please and Thank You.

The categories aren't really correct. 1 and 2 don't make sense because disability is a binary, and the benefit amount is determined at the financial qualification stage. This is the preliminary stage where SSA makes sure that claimants are legally qualified and has to be completed before they'll send it to adjudication. Once we start considering medical eligibility it's a binary; you don't get more money because you're "more disabled" or whatever. The sole exception would be that there's an optimization that can be made for people who continue to work but make below the financial eligibility threshold, but that really has nothing to do with the determination office. 3 isn't really a category because I had no way of knowing whether someone was using an attorney, what kind of advice they were getting, or whether they genuinely thought they were disabled. I'd break down the claimants into the following categories:

  1. The Classic Case: The first category consists of the typical 50+ blue-collar worker (usually) who has some kind of musculoskeletal disorder (back problems being the most common) that prevents them from doing heavy labor. When I was there, these probably constituted half of our approvals. These people were genuinely hurt, but may or may not have been disabled, depending on the severity of their condition. For example (real case, though my memory isn't precise), Larry was a 55 year old black guy who worked as a welder for most of the 20 previous years, no other employment. His back problems had been developing for some time, causing him to miss work. About a year prior he had back surgery and was off work for a while recovering, and felt good doing work around the house. He tried to go back to work once he was medically cleared, but he only lasted a few weeks. He wasn't having the constant pain he was having before, but 8 hours of bending over, kneeling, and crawling around exacerbated the pain, which went away with rest. The medical records were about what one would expect from someone experiencing the symptoms he described. Easy approval.

  2. The Generally Unhealthy: People with myriad legitimate health problems that don't rise to the level of a disability. These people are usually over the age of 40, can be male or female, and have significant employment history, though mostly at the kind of jobs that don't pay particularly well. They have HBP. They have diabetes. They have fibromyalgia. They have back pain. They have a heart condition. They're obese (usually, though not always). These tend to be the most annoying cases to deal with because the application asks them to specify the conditions for which they're claiming disability for, but if (more like when) we find they have 500 other problems we have to ask if it affects their ability to work, and of course it does, so now we have to keep requesting records from doctors that take forever to receive and don't contain any usable information. The worst part is that they are all on antidepressants they got from a PCP and they've never seen a psychiatrist. So when they tell us their anxiety and depression affects their ability to work we have to schedule as psych workup, which takes forever to schedule because these people always live in rural areas with one guy who's willing to accept the low rates we pay for them to fill out significantly more paperwork than usual. Once they actually see somebody who confirms that they aren't so anxious they can't go to the grocery store without freaking out, they get denied.

  3. The Complex Cases: People who obviously can't work but only due to complicated situations that are hard to qualify under the existing criteria. People with lingering stroke recovery symptoms, people with rare auto-immune disorders, rare diabetic conditions, people who are fine most of the time but have conditions that flare up every couple months and put them in the hospital for 2 weeks, during which time they lose their jobs. It's 50/50 whether these are approved or denied upon initial determination. If they get someone who looks at the big picture, they'll be approved; if they get someone who is a stickler for the rules, they'll be denied. All supervisors would tell you to deny these people. If they appeal, they'll almost certainly be approved.

  4. The Psycho Kids: These are people under the age of 30 who have never had a job that pays above minimum wage and no education beyond high school who are claiming disability due to vague depression/anxiety. Again, they're taking medication but it's unlikely they've ever seen an actual mental health professional, and if they did it was something like they talked to a therapist once or twice. They certainly aren't receiving any regular psychiatric treatment, and no suicide attempts or hospitalizations. These are almost always rural whites. They are invariably denials.

  5. The Accidental Cases: These are similar to the first type of case except the claimant is younger and is claiming disability not based on a degenerative condition but on the inability to due his job following a traumatic injury. they are usually misinformed about the law, however, and think that they're disabled because they can't go back to their normal job, and are usually under this impression because they worked with an older guy who got it. Unfortunately for them, as long as they're capable of doing a sedentary job, they aren't disabled. One guy, who broke his back in a motorcycle accident, told me his doctor told him he wouldn't be able to be a mechanic anymore and should do something with computers. He then jokingly told me that he didn't know anything about computers. Though he didn't realize it, this was practically an admission from his doctor that he was still able to work. These cases are almost always denials.

  6. The True Psychos: These are the real psych cases, almost always SSI, usually involving younger or homeless claimants. Mental retardation, schizophrenia, anxiety/depression serious enough to end in multiple hospitalizations, severe bipolar disorder. Children usually also have serious behavioral problems at home or at school. Usually approvals, with a few weird denials mixed in due to the occasional odd circumstance.

  7. The Death Bed Cases: These are people with terminal diseases who aren't going to survive for much longer. There's an entire division that deals with nothing but these to get the approvals in faster, though in some cases there's an expedited process where they can start receiving benefits before full approval. Always approved.

  8. The One-Shot Cases: People who have one weird condition that obviously doesn't qualify them, but they apply anyway on the off chance they're approved. One woman in her early 30s applied because of heavy vaginal bleeding. This also includes people who have already retired, get some condition, and apply for SSDI to top up their pensions before they qualify for regular benefits. One guy who had a desk job with the state Auditor General's office tried applying because he started having mini-strokes after he retired, though he was hard-pressed to explain how they would have theoretically prevented him from working had he not been retired. These are denials.

I hesitate to categorize them based on genuine cases versus those that are simply trying to game the system because, with the possible exception of the psycho kids and the one-shot cases, I don't really think that anyone is consciously trying to game the system. The rest of these people are either genuinely disabled or genuinely think they're disabled. The classic cases are actually disabled but will go back to work if they can. The generally unhealthy aren't disabled but are convinced they are, the complex cases may or may not be disabled but they can be forgiven for thinking they might be, the accidental cases think they are based on a misunderstanding of the law, the true psychos are disabled but might not know it themselves, same with the death bed cases. Even the one shot cases have a lot of people think that they're disabled based on the simplistic formula of medical condition + makes my job difficult = permanent disability.

And even if some people are consciously trying to game the system, their cases are so obviously bullshit that no one trained to adjudicate them would ever consider approving them. These articles can cite various doctors and lawyers all they want, but even with coaching, nobody who is willing to "retire" because $945/month is forthcoming is intelligent enough to keep up an elaborate ruse for decades. In my career since, I've had to prepare witnesses for depositions, and while I'm not going to say that witnesses never lie in depositions, I can say that it's not because of anything theur attorneys told them to say. Properly preparing a witness for deposition takes days, unless they're a corporate representative who has testified several times before. Even for a corporate witness, it's not easy to prepare them to answer questions in a way that isn't inadvertently damaging. And these are people with college degrees and careers at the highest levels of business. Some hillbilly who barely graduated high school isn't going to be able to effectively fake disability no matter how many doctors and lawyers talk to him, because he's not going to know how to answer the questions. I'd be more worried about a legitimate claimant being denied because they gave the answers they thought the adjudicator wanted to hear than someone who gets denied because they answered honestly. Unless they have a really sophisticated understanding of how the process works, they're not going to be able to do it, and the factors are complicated enough that they're not going to get such an understanding. Even the people here, or who write psych blogs, or articles from NPR, or who are physicians treating claimants, seem to have such an understanding.

Edit - Pinging @ThomasdelVasto

Thanks! Learned a lot. Dispelled some notions. AAQC rec'd.

Unfortunately, this actually makes me more pessimistic than if you had said "50% of claims are bullshit." This is because what you're describing really does look like a political solution to medical problems. It does seem insane that certain jobs, if done repetitively over 20+ years, will, with high probability, lead the laborer to breaking their own body to the point of disability. I don't think those jobs should be "highly regulated" so that people can work them and remain healthy; I think they shouldn't exist for humans at all. I don't want more coal miners (i.e. humans who travel under a mountain) - I want coal mining robots.

As one of "The True Psychos," I'd personally like to thank you for laying this out so clearly and in such detail. AAQC'd.

Would just like to thank you for writing all this up about a world some of us rarely see.

The reason the bulk of the beneficiaries are in their 50s is because the law makes it very difficult to qualify if you are under 50; you have to either have a condition that meets a defined listing (and the listings are for the kinds of things that if you have no one's going to question your ability to work), or to be completely incapable of doing sedentary work.

Ahh ok interesting, did not know this! Also, can't take credit for this theory I stole it from the SSC subreddit.

So yeah, now that most of these people are on regular Social Security

Yeah, makes sense. I'm a bit bitter that I probably wont get SS benefits, but oh well. I suppose it is what it is at this point.

I'm very curious to hear more stories about your time at the disability bureau though. Any fascinating cases or surprises you had there?

Yeah, makes sense. I'm a bit bitter that I probably wont get SS benefits, but oh well.

This is a common worry but going off current projections, you will get social security. Just not all of social security, about 80-70% scaling down over the years. https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/2024/trTOC.html

Annual OASDI cost has exceeded non-interest income every year beginning with 2010. Cost is projected to continue to exceed non-interest income throughout the 75-year valuation period. Cost is projected to exceed total income in 2024, as it has each year beginning in 2021, and combined OASI and DI Trust Fund reserves decline until they become depleted in 2035. After trust fund reserve depletion, continuing income is sufficient to support expenditures at a level of 83 percent of program cost for the rest of 2035, declining to 73 percent for 2098. Figure II.D2 depicts OASDI operations as a combined whole. However, under current law, the differences between scheduled and payable benefits for OASI would begin in 2033, when the OASI Trust Fund is projected to become depleted. Scheduled benefits equal payable benefits for DI throughout the entire 75-year projection period, because the DI Trust Fund is not projected to become depleted during the period.

Basically the issue right now is that payroll taxes doesn't cover outgoing benefits enough for the OASI funds, so we're currently eating into the saved up money put into the Treasury. Eventually we'll run out of those savings (estimated around 2033) and then only be able to pay out benefits equal to the amount of payroll tax collected. But that's still roughly 80% of total benefits.

The decline in disability payments may also be related to the rise in wages for very low skilled labor.

Now, no one on the construction site was previously on disability. But plenty of cashiers and DoorDashers might have been. And those wages have just absolutely exploded- making Walmart managers seem worth it in comparison to sitting on your butt.

It's also worth noting that the gig economy was very much in its infancy at the time of this article's publication in 2013. Commuting 30-60 minutes to Tuscaloosa (The only city within an hour of Hale County, which itself is so rural that it doesn't have a Walmart or pizza delivery.) to drive for Uber or Doordash is a superior alternative to SSDI, but Uber didn't operate in Tuscaloosa until 2016 and Doordash didn't get into gear until a few years after that.

Relating to your point about wages, the labor market being much tighter than it was in 2013 means that managers hiring for the sort of light retail job suited for a lamed blue collar worker have much less room to be picky.

Now, no one on the construction site was previously on disability. But plenty of cashiers and DoorDashers might have been. And those wages have just absolutely exploded- making Walmart managers seem worth it in comparison to sitting on your butt.

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.

Compared to pre pandemic? Yes.

Now they might be worse off due to higher rent, it’s possible. But the price for renting a bedroom from Craigslist randos(which is what most of them actually do) has stayed the same, so I doubt it.

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.

I wouldn't put too much stock in that article. The treating physician has very little say in whether a claimant qualifies for disability. Disability isn't a medical condition, it's a legal status based on ability to work, and ability to work can't always be determined by a medical diagnosis (and when it can, that's what the listings are for). The determination of disability is made by and adjudicator in consultation with a doctor employed by the state. This doctor does not actually examine the patient but reviews medical records to find evidence of limitation. He offers an opinion of what the claimant is capable of based on the records, but the legal determination is ultimately up to the adjudicator.

I would also note that it's incredibly uncommon for any treating physician to offer an opinion about a claimant's ability to work, or even to actively participate in the process. Protocol calls for the adjudicator to attempt to call the physician who treats the condition they're claiming disability for, and the only times a doctor was ever willing to speak to me were in cases where the patient was in such bad shape that their disability was almost a given regardless, with the exception of one where a woman had an unusual condition but no money for regular treatment and an ER doctor actually got on the line to explain it to me. Other than that, they aren't even willing to fill out the forms we send them, and take a month to even send the medical records. Occasionally they'll mention in the chart that the patient told them they were applying for disability, but that's usually as far as it goes.

What we looked for wasn't whether the doctor commented on disability specifically, but on their ability to work. Even this was rare, though. There were occasional instances of orders not to lift above so many pounds or walk too far or whatever, but the determination was made based more on clinical signs than on opinions. Even when a physician made a clear statement that the claimant couldn't continue to do their job, our doctors would note the opinion, say they gave it "appropriate" weight, and make their own assessment based on objective markers. If the objective markers weren't there, our doctor wasn't going to recommend disability based on the treating physician's say so.

As far as education goes, that's not something our doctor would touch, or even look at. If you're under 50 and capable of doing sedentary work, you aren't getting disability regardless of your education level. "Education" is kind of a misnomer anyway; whether or not you can do a job doesn't depend on your education level but whether you've done the job in the past 20 years, and the level of Specific Vocational Preparation required as defined by the Dictionary of Occupational Titles. At this point it gets complicated, and beyond age 50 we start looking at transferable skills and the ability to adjust to other work. So you can have a law degree from Harvard but if you're over 50 and did manual labor your whole career it doesn't matter. If you're a high school graduate and only have done office jobs your entire career it doesn't matter. If you're under age 50 and are capable of doing unskilled sedentary work, you aren't getting disability except in unusual circumstances.

Yes from the physician perspective we want the least amount of responsibility here possible and try and be as vague as we can, send to other people when possible, and limit our level of commentary.

Unless specifically specialized in this you don't really get paid for it but accept a bunch of liability.

Classic example is potentially violent emotional support animals.

Keep us the fuck out of it.

Dr. Timberlake is correct. If your condition disables you to perform the sorts of work that anyone in your vicinity would be willing to pay you money to do, you're factually disabled.

It's also partly the federal government time limiting most benefit programs supplied by federal grants and making SSDI the best option for permanent support. That sets a single national standard for benefits and keeps users from flocking to the most generous state just for the benefits (not great for the generous state's population in the long run.

That sets a single national standard for benefits

How do they take cost-of-living differences into account?

I think people gloss over the part where I'm worried about mass AI layoffs because it's just a single sentence but I think it's a great place to start for this conversation. Disability is interesting in that it's not a binary question of yes or no but rather depends on your relative ability compared to the people around you and the society you're in.

Imagine a person who is so unbelievably dumb that they can only do work carrying buckets of water from the river because they were taught it as a kid when their brain was slightly more pliable and anything else, including any variation of bucket carrying just does not work out properly. This person obviously does not exist, but if they did then they would just not function anymore in today's society with plumbing and pipes. We don't really have any jobs that are "go get buckets of water from the river for us to drink, shower with and do laundry" anymore. Plumbing turned them from abled (to do the one job) to disabled.

Obviously again this person does not exist in real life and people are more adaptable, even the dumb ones. But in the context of dumb old people with aging bodies and injuries? They might have been able to do the job they've been doing for the past few decades, but transferring them over to something else will be difficult. And in the context of a bad economy with high unemployment? They might not be able to find anything. They're not entirely equal to the water idiot, but they're not that far off either.

In that same way, it's not just the idiot middle aged men anymore that we should be thinking about. A generalist AI in the 2030s might make all of us puny humans disabled by comparison. Technology historically has freed up labor to go to do other jobs, some that didn't even exist until the labor was around to do it. But this future AI might beat us at everything. You may go from your job subsistence farming to the car factory in the past. Now you may go from your current job taken by AI to a new job that also gets taken by AI.

Maybe we'll maintain some comparative advantage and still be worth having most people work despite the absolute supremacy, but this might be an issue coming up. What happens when no one can work anymore because the robots are simply better in every single way? Some would put up that as a utopic paradise, like that silly meme of fully automated luxury communism, others worry about an automated dystopia.

But either way, a major change may be coming. And perhaps all humanity will be disabled. And even if the generalist AI doesn't come for a while, remember the great recession was only 10% unemployment.

Didn’t complete college and can’t do manual labor. Unless the good doctor is rubber-stamping disability for healthy young farm boys?

What work are they able to do?

There's an entire list of unskilled sedentary jobs as they appear in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles that "exist in significant numbers in the national economy". As long as someone is able to do one of these jobs, they aren't disabled (assuming they're under 50 and thus can be expected to adjust to new work). Most of these are obscure specialized jobs that involve some kind of industrial assembly that con be done entirely sitting down. An example:

Label Pinker

Tends machine equipped with pinking attachment that cuts strips of labeling material into individual labels: Positions roll of material on holder and inserts end in feeding mechanism. Turns dial to set counter for specified number of labels to be cut. Starts machine and observes cut labels to detect cutting defects. Removes defective labels and notifies machine fixer to adjust machine. Packs specified number of labels in box. May tend machine that cuts labels without pinking and be designated Label Cutter (narrow fabrics). GOE: 06.04.05 STRENGTH: S GED: R2 M1 L1 SVP: 2 DLU: 77

The relevant symbols below are that the strength is listed as sedentary, defined as:

Exerting up to 10 pounds of force occasionally (Occasionally: activity or condition exists up to 1/3 of the time) and/or a negligible amount of force frequently (Frequently: activity or condition exists from 1/3 to 2/3 of the time) to lift, carry, push, pull, or otherwise move objects, including the human body. Sedentary work involves sitting most of the time, but may involve walking or standing for brief periods of time. Jobs are sedentary if walking and standing are required only occasionally and all other sedentary criteria are met.

And the Specific Vocational Preparation is 2, meaning that for the specific job, the typical worker would be able to achieve an average level of proficiency in less than 1 month. There are a ton of jobs like this you've never heard of, though whether or not they are actually realistic options for the claimant is irrelevant. From what I recall, the law specifically states that it doesn't matter whether such a job is actually available or whether they'd actually be able to get the job if it were available. A lot of people think this is ridiculous, but it underscores the point that disability is for people who physically can't work at any job they are qualified to do, not for people who physically can't work available jobs that they have a chance of actually getting. Saying "but there aren't any jobs as a label pinker" is basically saying that the reason you don't have a job is because you can't find one, not because you can't do one.

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.

What about babysitting? Or cleaning people's houses?

The exact jobs I've seen arguments about on here that are too low-skill and 'anyone can do them' to charge high wages so the cost of childcare is scandalous compared to the labour done.

You can't have it both ways: either that kind of labour is a job and is paid accordingly (not sky high but enough), or it's paid peanuts because "my sixteen year old niece will mind my two kids after school" and thus isn't going to support an adult (let alone one with a family).

And yeah, even for babysitting/childminding, you do need to be able to lift and bend and carry, and it's a job where you can put out your back over time.

Suggesting that disabled coal miners go into childcare might be on par with that Ben Shapiro bit about selling houses.

Well now we need to encourage more men into the industry as it's pretty much female-dominated, do you have something against equality or what? 😁

I’m ready for the Pacifier sequel where Vin Diesel takes on his toughest parenting challenge yet: the opioid epidemic.

What could possibly go wrong?

Ahh yes. Cleaning - such a gentle load on a person's back.

I'm also of the opinion that most of these issues are psychosomatic, so I will admit I'm a bit biased here.

How did you form that opinion, and how confident are you in it?

It's a bit personal, but I am quite confident in it. Read this article on Sarno if you're curious to start going down the chronic pain rabbit hole.

Which of his falsifiable claims hasn't been disproven?

Most of the claims of the mechanisms are likely not spot on I'll admit, but the 'psychological' effect is absolutely real. Make of that what you will.

My wife also had a chronic health issue for a few years before she stumbled on Sarno and it went away in 2 months by doing (basically) nothing.

Mentioned this to other friends as well and those that "tried it" had similar success stories (tiny sample but still).

So I think this is vastly underestimated. I tried starting a conversation years ago on a comment post on Scott's blog but nothing came of it iirc.

Yeah the typical rationalist mind is allergic to this sort of thing. It's a shame.

Totally willing to believe most people claiming ‘chronic pain’ are faking it for either 1) a medical marijuana scrip or 2) a disability diagnosis. That doesn’t mean they’re in good health/can take jobs with any arbitrary physical demands.

At the end of the day, blue collar laborers in their fifties are not going to be able to do much if they lose their jobs. Fake disabilities reflect the underlying reality that these people cant adjust to a new set of physical demands.

I think the point is not that they fake it but that they meme themselves into being retarded. The pain is real, the cause is not. Or something like this is the saying.

@hydroacetylene

(I legitimately don’t remember who’s a parent or not, don’t get offended) uhh, have you ever watched a toddler? There’s some picking kids up(that may not want to be) involved, and running after them and the like. And cleaning houses is similar- lots of bending over, moving things out of the way. Neither one is conducive to poor-health based physical unfitness, although they don’t need a power lifter.

How dare you??? I have 11 youngins you whippersnapper!!!

Nah, don't have kids yet. I am largely unsympathetic to people with chronic health issues as I've said elsewhere. I'll tag you.

I am largely unsympathetic to people with chronic health issues as I've said elsewhere.

Look, I do a sedentary office job as administrative support. The heaviest things I carry are a bunch of files. I use my hands and arms for typing.

And I had a upper spinal disc problem (yes it showed up on x-ray so no I wasn't imagining or pretending) that meant I had terrible pain that started in my neck, gradually went down my arm, and ended up at the knuckles every single day and night for a prolonged period of time. It genuinely felt like my arm was on fire and I couldn't sleep because of the pain. My doctor didn't put me on painkillers (no idea why, unless it was 'don't want to facilitate addiction') so I was dosing myself up with over-the-counter analgesics (I sincerely believe I may have borked my liver the amounts I was taking for relief, plus I managed through other means to source tablets containing codeine which did permit me to sleep by reducing the pain to a dull roar) and I genuinely feared I wouldn't be able to work, because the pain made it impossible to use my hands.

Fortunately, the trapped nerve or whatever eventually untrapped itself or died or something so the pain stopped.

And that was just for a damn "sit at a desk and type emails etc." job. Imagine if I was doing anything even a bit more labour-intensive requiring dexterity or strength.

So just wait until you get old enough, or over-exert yourself enough, to run into a chronic health issue then come back with the same opinion.

Sure. If they can do those things, then they’re less disabled. How do you get from there to “handouts for people who didn’t have the intelligence or wherewithal”?

Imagine a more extreme case where a guy loses his legs and, thus, his lifelong job at the widget-stomping factory. If he gets disability, it’s not because he couldn’t make it in college.

Now say a doctor asks him, “hey, do you have any skills that could get you a different job? One that doesn’t require jumping up and down?” Here a college degree would be a mitigating factor for his existing, factual disability. The handout was never for failing college. It was for not having legs.

Cashier. Delivery driver. Maybe a waiter, probably the guy in the aisle at Home Depot.

These are not ‘good jobs’ but they do pay better than disability.

I figured those were ruled out by the “back problem.”

I agree that, if they are doable, someone might well prefer them to scraping by on disability.

What I don’t get is where “IQ and wherewithal” come into it. Either the guy is able to do jobs or he’s disabled. A college degree adds some set of jobs, so it can take him out of the disabled category, but not put him in.

Cashiers and DoorDash drivers don’t do much heavy lifting, at least. Waiters it varies. The guy in the aisle at Home Depot doesn’t need to lift stuff but needs to be on his feet all day.

Plus if you genuinely have a bad back, standing on your feet all day can put strain on it which causes pain.

If anyone has ever put their back out by lifting something too heavy or the wrong way, you soon find out how every little action somehow involves the muscles of the lower back so that even trying to get out of bed is a production.

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.

Work is good for us. Most people on disability, from what I've seen, end up mostly rotting away via endless entertainment.

What have you seen, and how confident are you that it is representative of the broader phenomena it purportedly represents?

I'm not that confident! I also believe from my own personal experiences with chronic pain though, that taking disability is not a good way out for the majority.

Let me argue for the other side: Disability assistance is providing money to those with the inability to financially support themselves. Stephen Hawking did not require disability assistance, despite being significantly disabled, because his intellect provided him the ability to provide for himself. It makes perfect sense to account for intellectual ability if making the holistic judgment on whether someone's net ability makes them employable. Just consider them to be suffering from a mild intellectual disability on top of their physical one.

But, I largely agree that it reaches a degree of ridiculousness. Where does it end? If someone can't hold down a job due being totally lazy and refusing to arrive on time, I guess they're temporally disabled and we owe them our money.

But wait, let me change the above scenario: the person in question has severe fetal alcohol syndrome. Do they deserve disability now? How about a severe head injury yielding the same result? How about they have absolutely no diagnosable issue but just have 1/10,000,000 shit genes for intellect and conscientiousness?

A tangent.

I keep gravitating back towards my own null hypothesis - public welfare is a bad idea through and through, and no matter how many epicycles its proponents attach in attempts to sanewash it, it will never be a better system than not having public welfare. I know this means that I effectively espouse the need to pay out the ass for private insurance, and that there will be a very large parts of the population near the bottom end of the socioeconomic spectrum that will look very disagreeable even to my middle class sensibilities. A low-wage class, a serf class, a dehumanized mass of barely viable specimens, or outright unviable ones kept alive by their barely viable associates, or unviable ones in the process of honest-to-god starving on the streets. But what will the world look like with another few centuries of public welfare and, I assume, no eugenics? The same low-viable population, only grown unchecked by economic pressure thanks to welfare always bailing them out at significant cost to the productive elements of society.

I keep being told that this is baseless, that the unproductive poor will be elevated by education, or that they will naturally stop breeding, or that each subsequent generation is a blank slate and those non-viable traits will not persist over long timeframes. Or, of course, that AI will fix everything for everyone anyways. Or that there's no point in worrying because the planet is doomed and we may at least die in solidarity and upholding basic standards of living and human dignity for everyone on the way.

But I don't see it. I just don't. What I see is ever-growing burdens placed on those who create value, to the benefit of an ever-growing proportion of those who do not. I'd call it injustice if that made sense to anyone nowadays, when "justice" means that those who don't work are sustained by those who do, forever, no strings attached. Until society as a whole produces nothing but parasites and their sustenance - and then either collapses or finally puts a stop to these dynamics, much later and more grievously than had it been done earlier.

"Do you want to see people dying in the streets?", one might ask me. No I don't. Of course not. But it strikes me as quite possibly the lesser evil, in the long run.

I actually warmed up to welfare over the years, though I strongly disagree with it's unconditional dispensation. In my ideal model any healthy male would need to enroll into boot-camp or equivalent conditions to get a pay-check. The conditions could be relaxed depending on one's health, but essentially, you'd have to break some sweat before you get anything. UBI and other unconditional schemes, or even the "pure formality" conditional ones, are the ultimate evil.

But I don't see it. I just don't. What I see is ever-growing burdens placed on those who create value, to the benefit of an ever-growing proportion of those who do not. I'd call it injustice if that made sense to anyone nowadays, when "justice" means that those who don't work are sustained by those who do, forever, no strings attached. Until society as a whole produces nothing but parasites and their sustenance - and then either collapses or finally puts a stop to these dynamics, much later and more grievously than had it been done earlier.

Yes. Of course, Ayn Rand expressed the same thing in Atlas Shrugged, and all it got her is infamy and some really terrible movies.

The idea that there should be some sort of social insurance for construction workers who lose their legs doesn't seem too unreasonable, even if I might oppose it. When that extends to disability payments for the congenitally lazy or "who made poor life choices to some degree"... well, shit. I don't want to work either, and I didn't get the benefit of those poor life choices the other people made, so why the hell should I be paying for them? Thing is, there seems to be a slippery slope from the reasonable to the unreasonable, and no one with any power is interested in building a fence across it.

I think I agree Theres a bit of a moral hazard in too much welfare, especially uncoupled from the need to push people to do what they can, and to avoid bad behavior. If someone is generally capable of working, I don’t think they should starve. That’s insane. But if the person is clearly making bad, antisocial decisions, cutting off the gibs would force them to behave. Or for that matter force them to make their kids behave, attend school and do their homework. They should contribute as they are able, and they should be making sure their kids get a decent education. And staying out of crime, drugs, and so on. If you’re doing those kinds of things, im perfectly willing to pay to keep them from starving. If they’re sitting home on gibs, doing drugs, not making sure their kids are getting educated and not getting into trouble, they don’t get the gibs. It should be a hand up to hopefully being self sufficient, not a hand out to keep them comfortable doing nothing.

I keep gravitating back towards my own null hypothesis - public welfare is a bad idea through and through, and no matter how many epicycles its proponents attach in attempts to sanewash it, it will never be a better system than not having public welfare.

I'm not sure why this would be the null hypothesis. Coercively funded public welfare has been around since time immemorial, the consequences of abolishing it have been politically unacceptable even in poorer and harsher times, and members of the manual labour class who can no longer work hard enough to hold down a job due to old age have almost always been seen as the most deserving cases.

Poor relief through the Church in medieval Europe was not voluntary charity - it was institutionalised welfare funded by State-endorsed coercion. In England the system largely operated through the monasteries and there was a combination of real secular coercion (tithes were a compulsory levy which could ultimately be collected by force, and impropriation of rectories by monasteries basically meant that tithes beyond what was needed for the support of the parish priest were diverted to monastic "charity") and spiritual coercion (in a society where people actually believe in a religion which incorporates justification by works, "you will go to hell if you do not leave a reasonable percentage of your net worth to the local monastery" is coercive). In the middle of the 16th century the dissolution of the monasteries and the Reformation mean that this system stops working, and the resulting increase in visible destitution is as politically destabilising as the present-day street-shitting crisis in San Francisco. Eventually England gets a comprehensive system of tax-funded secular poor relief in 1601. The Malthusian turn in the 19th century doesn't change the principle - the workhouses were harsh but they weren't cheap. And "don't put the infirm elderly in the workhouse" was the first demand of left-populists and one of the top five demands of right-populists for most of the next century.

What did change, probably for the worse, was the shift from a poor relief system where who gets what was ultimately at the discretion of local elites who could rely on their own knowledge to distinguish between deserving and undeserving poor to a bureaucratised system. And that change was made by the workhouse-mongers who thought that the local elites were too soft - something that is still an issue in the UK in the present day, where governments of all stripes keep trying to centralise eligibility assessment for disability benefits because patients' own NHS GPs (in the late 20th century, the archetypal local elite) are too soft, particularly in high-unemployment post-industrial areas like the Welsh valleys.

I'm not sure why this would be the null hypothesis.

Not the. Just mine.

Fair points on your part. I won't argue against your historical analysis. That said, I still don't think situational barely-subsistence welfare at the discretion of local elites in pre-modern societies corresponds very exactly to universal high-standard-of-living welfare administered by nationally uniform buerocracies in terms of long-term demographic dysgenics.

Disability is not exactly a high standard of living.

Compared to pre-modern people who received any sort of public welfare?

While fair, the actual homeless receive a higher standard of living than the average person in 1800 by some measures(they probably eat a better diet, for example); ‘premodern charity cases’ are a dumb comparison.

Disability cases have a standard of living that’s pretty low by North American standards. There’s probably some room to cut it, but asking them to live like homeless tramps from the Middle Ages isn’t something our society is prepared to do- of anyone.

SSDI abusers are generally past prime reproductive age, so the impact on long-term demographic dysgenics is nearly zero.

The decision to treat never-married single mothers as deserving poor was, in the UK at least, both conceptually and temporally separate from the decision to bureaucratise poor relief. I agree with you that it hasn't produced good outcomes.

Under the Old Poor Law, the deserving poor were generally understood to be:

  • People with a record of contributing to society who were now too old and frail to earn a living by manual labour.
  • Cripples and lunatics (although in practice the resources simply weren't there to support them)
  • Widows and orphans.

Wounded or disabled veterans were increasingly considered deserving poor over the course of the 18th century, although they were not legally treated as such by the Poor Law system so if they didn't qualify for the Royal Hospitals at Chelsea (for the Army) or Greenwich (for the Navy) then they often ended up on the streets or in the workhouse.

SSDI abusers are generally past prime reproductive age, so the impact on long-term demographic dysgenics is nearly zero.

True. Which is why I prefaced this entire tangent as such; an excuse to ride my hobby horse of the more general public welfare topic.

Stephen Hawking did not require disability assistance, despite being significantly disabled, because his intellect provided him the ability to provide for himself. It makes perfect sense to account for intellectual ability if making the holistic judgment on whether someone's net ability makes them employable.

On the other hand, he might have spent more time on his professorial duties (not to mention whatever he considered "leisure"), had his condition not been such a financial burden to his household.

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.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats