. . . but I will. From just over a year ago.
A year ago, just short of 9 million individuals were receiving Social Security disability compensation. Five months ago, that number was up to around 11 million.
The number just keeps on climbing. At the end of August, per the Social Security Administration the number of individuals receiving Social Security disability payments was just over 14 million.
The program also appears rife with fraud. It looks like about half of all newly approved claims actually are bogus under Federal law – just like a year ago. (Federal law regarding Social Security Disability compensation requires that the individual be unable to perform work of any type to be eligible for payment.) It appears the same could easily be true of about half of all such Social Security disability claims, period.
It’s now costing Uncle Sam more to pay Social Security Disability benefits than it does to run the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the Labor Department – combined. The annual outlay for Social Security Disability payments is now approximately $135 billion.
Apparently CBS has now finally figured out the above. So it’s not just the conservative part of the blogosphere that’s noticing the issue any more.
Yes, some people are so physically or mentally “messed up” that they legitimately rate Social Security disability payments. But IMO, a huge fraction of the recipients appear to be using the program as nothing more than an undeserved, alternate form of permanent unemployment compensation. Further, in many cases it seems they’re being aided and abetted in what appears to be blatant fraud by compliant Social Security officials – and by lawyers who in some cases end up getting paid literally millions by the Social Security Administration.
The Social Security Disability “Insurance” Fund is in absolutely horrible financial shape. As you might expect, it’s in far worse shape than the rest of Social Security.
For the Social Security disability program, the proverbial “well” runs dry in 3 years, give or take; some sources estimate the fund will be exhausted in as little as 18 months. So I’m guessing we can look forward to another push to raise Social Security taxes yet again some time in the next 3 years.
It would be interesting to compare voter registration rates of those on SSDI anD that of the general population. Or compare citizenship…
Yo dog … I gots to have my monies.
Social Security Disabilty is a freaking joke… Had a coworker who had worked in one of those “Courts” that determine elligibility. The horror stories he told about the absolute mismanagment, piss poor judges… some just giving a go to all, others denying all first time claims, another who would sleep through hearings. Employees being able to bring a judge a case for aproval absent a hearing because they knew the person… Abuse of office run rampant, and that is in just one office.
hate to say it but you also have thousands of Veterans included in that number of people collecting Disabilty who could get a job. Get to be an inpatient and there will be someone there telling you how to get onto Social Security and 100% for unemployability with the VA. Oh, it is easier now as a Veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan to get onto Social Security Disabilty. Kind of a fast pass system in place to process veterans claims.
So yes, some of our own are abusing the system… and once you are in it, it is hard to get off of it.
I was elligible for both 100% Unemployability and Social Security years ago according to my DAV Rep and a VA Hearing Officer. Still working, I can work. Just not what I used to be able to do.
Someone on 60 minutes segment said it best: Half the people are outraged, and the other half wants to know where to sign up.
Once millions of people are hooked on the sugar & the well runs dry…let the next POTUS deal w/ implications. Right now SSDI recipients not counted towards U-3 unemployment rate (dropping steadily) & administration can spout rhetoric about “economic recovery”.
“Social Security Is Important To African Americans”
You racist bastard! How dare you suggest that social security in any form is important to one group of Americans to the exclusion of others. Yeah, you probably can guess what’s coming. The quote is the title of a Social Security Administration fact sheet, published this year, in February to be precise. Far be it from me to suggest that the current regime wants to increase dependency of certain folks on government. Yes, far be it from me. “African Americans benefit from disability insurance. In 2011, 12.6 percent of the population was African American; however, 19 percent of disabled workers receiving benefits were African American.” That’s from the fact sheet, too. Make of it what you like but, for my money, it’s an invitation.
Man, I wish I could opt out of having SS deducted from my paycheck, particularly since I’ll NEVER see it. I could roll that to supplement my IRA.
@6, I am with you. We have paid into a system all of our working lives and just when it is almost our turn to get our modest return on it, there will be nothing left due to scumbaggery. I watched the 60 minutes broadcast Sunday night. It was disheartening to see disability being used as the new form of unemployment. And even though it is now on the radar, you can bet that any move to remove those that do not rate or those that are abusing the system will be met with outrage on the left. You have to work hard to buy those damn votes!!!!
@ 5 Air Cav. Refer to #2 above!
Just sayin’.
Dead horse. Stick. Stop the beatings!
This is not new. Using SSDI to replace unemployment compensation started back in 2009, when people who were literally running out of money and could no longer get unemployment were put on SSDI as a replacement.
Not new, but it is definitely stupid. If you want a welfare state to live on, this is how you do it.
It begs the question: where is the money going to come from to pay this when those who are now working no longer work?
Personally, I think the income cap on the SS tax should be removed, and all income should be taxed, but the way people with large incomes get out of that is by declaring their income as unearned or ordinary income, e.g., dividends, interest, etc., and this list includes the SMIRC currently in the White House.
How very clever he must think he is. The problem with this kind of thing is that capitalism succeeds in supporting a stable, thriving economy, whereas socialism/communism only succeeds in milking it dry.
Gorbachev learned that lesson the hard way. That is why there is no longer a Cold War or a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. He said, in plain Russian, ‘the USSR is bankrupt and we can no longer support this way of living’.
So if this asinine idiot thinks that bankrupting this country is the way to go, it’s one of the bigger mistakes he’s made, but only one of many.
Not entirely a true statement when you say, “Federal law regarding Social Security Disability compensation requires that the individual be unable to perform work of any type to be eligible for payment.” Military “Wounded Warriors” are allowed to do a certain amount of work while on active duty, given very specific restrictions.
More here:
http://www.ssa.gov/woundedwarriors/
However, yeh, the shit is all screwed up.
Social Security is just another tax I pay. I don’t expect to see a penny of it.
Jrock: the program for disabled Service Members you cite is an expedited application program, not a exception to Social Security disability requirements. Basic eligibility for disability payments under Social Security is defined by Federal law.
In order to be eligible to receive benefits, those individuals must still meet the legal definition of disability (for Social Security purposes) in 42 USC § 423(d). That definition is as follows (emphasis added):
“(d) “Disability” defined
(1) The term “disability” means—
(A) inability to engage in any substantial gainful activity by reason of any medically determinable physical or mental impairment which can be expected to result in death or which has lasted or can be expected to last for a continuous period of not less than 12 months; or
(B) in the case of an individual who has attained the age of 55 and is blind (within the meaning of “blindness” as defined in section 416 (i)(1) of this title), inability by reason of such blindness to engage in substantial gainful activity requiring skills or abilities comparable to those of any gainful activity in which he has previously engaged with some regularity and over a substantial period of time.”
Not arguing the SSD, I’m just trying to figure out the number 135 billion. At 14 million people, how does that come out to 135 billion annually?
Never mind. I see now.
Ex-PH2: so, are you also in favor of lifting the cap on maximum possible Social Security benefits?
Social Security is already pretty much set up on that sliding-scale, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” basis that our “Progressive brethren” love so dearly. Your benefit is only loosely connected to the amount of Social Security taxes you’ve paid.
A person with a work history of full-time minimum wage employment receives a Social Security Benefit equal to approximately 57% of their pre-tax working income. In contrast, the maximum possible benefit from Social Security has a cap – at a rate of about $30,400/year (assuming “normal” retirement age). A person with a work history of full-time maximum wage base income will thus receive less than 27% of their pre-tax income from Social Security – and probably substantially less.
Yeah, the higher-income individual will get somewhere around 3.3 times as much from Security as the minimum wage guy/gal. But they’ll have paid in over 7 times as much.
Bottom line: Social Security is already set up to favor the lower-wage-earning worker at the expense of those making more.
Sorry again folks, the SSA tax if only up to a little less then $125,000. After that if you earn more, you keep more. But the payback depends on last 3 years earnings. But you folks want to not pay…so you can dump into your IRA’s, or 401’s.
Check your earnings versus service fees. Check your tax situation after that. You pay taxes on all funds that are received, after retirement, that includes the 401, IRA’s etc,,,and a little thing of 10% handling fees, supposedly for taxes…My SSA isn’t taxed, but my civilian retirements even from the fed’s are all taxed.
Bottom line: Social Security is already set up to favor the lower-wage-earning worker at the expense of those making more.
As it should be…..it’s one area I’m okay with those less fortunate than I’ve been getting a little extra at the end. Elderly poor dying from starvation or warehoused in old folks homes waiting for death is not an America I’m in favor of seeing but I fear that due to mismanagement it might just turn out that way anyhow…
I know two people who receive SSDI and they should receive it. I know another person who is applying and, in my opinion, should be accepted. I don’t want to go into details on electronic media, all of the issues are medical and serious. The program exists for a reason and it should be kept.
Abuse is offensive and it is theft from those of us who don’t need it. If half of the SSDI money goes to abusers, it seems to me that we could spend a crapload of bucks to find and prosecute the abusers. It probably costs more to put abusers in jail and keep them in jail that it does to pay SSDI. Ain’t that a bitch!
And those abusers vote. If we allow enough abusers into the system, they form a significant voting block. What happens to our country when the laws of the country take money from the minority and give it to the majority?
If I am convicted of abusing government benefits should I lose my right to vote? When I became productive, did I somehow give up my right to the benefits I derive from that?
@11 – I’m with you. I’m reminded “…render unto Caesar what is his…”, but Roosevelt can rot in his grave – for all I care – for forcing American citizens on that program.
Hondo, no, I am not in favor of lifting the maximum benefit cap. As one senator told reporter 15 years ago (don’t remember his name, sorry), when you have unearned/ordinary income other than taxable wages (earned income) that is at a level sufficiently high enough to keep you in your ‘lifestyle’ (and most millionaires do have that), you don’t require the additional income, IF Social Security supplemental retirement income is nothing but a tax.
Your social security is based on your 5 highest earned income years. That comes from the lady at the SocSec office when I went and applied for it. I asked because I wanted to be clear on it. It is NOT based on what you earned over a lifetime, it is based on HOW MUCH you earned at your highest income-earning levels.
The difference between earned income and unearned/ordinary income is not just the tax rate. Unearned or ordinary income is dividends, intereste, lottery winnings, etc., and is not eligible for Medicare or Social Security tax, UNLESS it is declared to be earned income, and that would actually take an act of Congress to change.
So when reporters say something like ‘Mitt Romney earned $XXX from investments last year’, he did NOT earn it, it was unearned/ordinary income, and his taxes do NOT include Social Security or Medicare.
Book royalties, on the other hand, ARE earned income, so if you guys buy my books, I get royalites and those are subject to income tax (state and federal) as well as Social Security and Medicare taxes.
That’s the difference and that’s the reason so many, many ultrawealthy people do not pay into Social Security or Medicare. If that were changed, then both Social Security and Medicare would be solvent and this wouldn’t even be an issue.
Knew a guy who in the latter stages of ALS was denied SSDI. Wife knows of a friend’s sister now who “gets depressed when she works” and is 100% disabled and getting ALL the money and doing very well, thank you.
I partially agree with both Hondo and PH2 – I think you should pay on SS on all your income, but if you paid that much, there should be no cap on the income you receive from them, either. You get some mega-rich clown paying in $10 million annually into SS, I’m not going to kick if he gets a million a year – he’s floating the whole damn system.
I know a guy who gets SSDI because he got caught smoking pot at work and no one will hire now.
@20; I did buy your book and am waiting for the next one. I do agree that you killed off Dallas’ character too early and too painlessly.
@23 – Twist, I agree with you wholeheartedly. It was far too easy and clean. SHould have been messy, which was why we had that discussion Dallas’s evil twin clone sister. Vanillians like Dallas should ALWAYS get what Mr. White got from Bond, James Bond, at the end of ‘Casino Royale’ — a shot to the shins and ‘we have to talk’.
I’m working on it. I’m working on all of it.
Ex-PH2: A person earning $113,700 to $125,000 a year is hardly someone most would consider wealthy. The lower end of that range is the Social Security wage base for this year. Earning more than that has no impact on your Social Security benefits – because regardless of how much you earn above that amount, you won’t see a penny more in benefits when you retire.
Social Security has no claim on income from other than wages by design. The reason is that someone whose only income over their lifetime is from investments and/or interest has no eligibility for Social Security – period. Social Security is insolvent due to demographics. When it was started, about 10 people (or more) were paying into the system for each beneficiary. It’s now less than 3 paying in for each person drawing out. The system is flawed by design. It’s a Ponzi scheme that’s only legal because Congress passed a law saying it’s legal for the government to run that particular Ponzi scheme – as well as compel people to play.
Now as for that statement that Social Security only uses 5 years of earnings to determine benefits? Um, that would be a “NO”. If someone at SSA told you that, they themselves didn’t understand the process Social Security uses to calculate benefits.
For anyone retiring recently, try 40 or more years of earnings, indexed for inflation, of which the 35 highest years are used to determine the benefit. A sample calculation can be found here:
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/retirebenefit1.html
Hit the “next” button near the bottom left to continue onto the 2nd page.
The process is also explained here, along with a worksheet.
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/pubs/EN-05-10070.pdf
The process is complex as hell, and very hard to follow; I’m not going to attempt to explain the details here. In my more cynical moments I sometimes wonder if that’s by design so that the average American doesn’t realize how damn bad of a deal he/she is getting.
But the bottom line takeaways are (1) SSA considers your whole working career (i.e., 40 or more years) to calculate benefits, using only the highest 35 years of indexed earnings, and (2) it uses a sliding scale that benefits lower wage earners disproportionately in comparison to higher wage earners.
@25. I like the then-explain-it-to-me-in-your-own-words test of comprehension. And if, after wading through the gibberish at the links you provided, the average Joe or Jane can provide an accurate explanation in their own words, then I’ll…I’ll…I’ll support Joe Biden in 2016!
While you’re going over the COST of Social Security, you should understand that it is one of the BIGGEST debtors of the US government. The Social Security Trust Fund has the right to demand payment of the interest and matured Treasury notes it holds after loaning money to the government’s general fund.
This article explains a LOT of it, and why it should NOT ever run out of money.
http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?feed=OBR&date=20131008&id=16978081
2/17 Air Cav: conceptually, the process isn’t that hard to follow. I’m going to do something I previously said I wouldn’t and detail the steps in the process. They are:
a. List all your annual earned income by year over your working lifetime (e.g., from 1952 to present) on which you paid Social Security taxes.
b. Index each year’s earned income for inflation (the Social Security document at the 2nd link in comment 25 above provides the current indexing numbers).
c. After indexing, pick the top 35 years.
d. Add the indexed income for the top 35 years together.
e. Divide the total for your top 35 indexed years of earned income by 420 (the number of months in 35 years). This is the Average Indexed Monthly Income (AIME).
f. Multiply the first $791 of the AIME by 90%.
g. Multiply the next $3977 of the AIME by 32%.
h. Multiply any part of the AIME exceeding $4768 by 15%.
i. Add the subtotals in f., g., and h. together. If this is less than $2533, this is what you’d get monthly at full retirement age (age 66 for people retiring this year). If the total is more than $2533, you’d get $2533 (the maximum benefit).
Doing the math, for Social Security benefits purposes you’re only getting a benefit based on roughly the first $101,092 of indexed annual earnings. Any salary you earned over that amount annually (after indexing) during your working lifetime is of no benefit to you regarding future Social Security benefits.
Explain just how you can spend IOU’s when the holder of the IOU’s has no $$ and neither does the party to whom the $$ represented by the IOU’s was given????
Well, yes, there is actually plenty of $$ in the US Treasury, and quite a bit coming into it each month, but more than all of it is obligated to one thing or another.
And therein lies the problem.
Ex-PH2: Social Security itself says that the Social Security Old Age and Survivor’s “Insurance” trust fund will be depleted (e.g., will have drawn out all of it’s “assets” in terms of Treasury obligations, both principal and interest) in between 21 and 22 years – i.e., sometime in 2035. See Chart E and the table following same in
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/
Once that happens, benefits will be limited by the principle of “current outlays = current income”. That’s expected to result in an immediate 23% or so “haircut” in benefits being paid to recipients at that time.
OWB: you can do that as long as people keep loaning you more and more $$$. But when that stops, you’re in a world of hurt.
If we don’t do something pronto, IMO Uncle Sam is fast approaching that particular “world of hurt” point.
@31 Maybe that’s what is in mind concerning the debt ceiling. They can’t stop the runaway train, so they’re going to let it crash, and then try and pick up the pieces.
Hondo,
Incorrect. You are allowed to collect ssd as a wounded soldier under specific conditions. I know, because I have terminal cancer but am still active duty and draw ssd. The provision is that I am under modified work conditions, where I spend more time convalescent than I spend actually working. Sounds crazy, but they understand that I need to draw what I paid in before I die and allow me to work and contribute to keep my sanity. But yeh, only for wounded/ill soldiers… The general pop abuses the shit out of it
Hondo … Stop it! It is bad enough that I am fourloughed. Your calkulations are depresting me!
BARTENDER … May I have another?
If half of the SSDI money goes to abusers, it seems to me that we could spend a crapload of bucks to find and prosecute the abusers.
The problem is – the dubious cases are so ambiguous. I used to work on Social Security cases. The typical complaint was degenerative disc disease (i.e. a bad back) with a complaint that the pain was so bad and so constant that the sufferer couldn’t work…
Everyone gets a bad back eventually; but how to demonstrate that the pain isn’t as bad as that person says? Fibromyalgia (basically, bad pain without visible symptoms) is another one you sometimes see. How do you prove the person’s lying about the pain? Add on psychological disabilities and…there’s an awful lot of “swing room.”
Moreover, by comparing this and that, I see that mental disorders have risen from about a quarter to about a third of all the claims; with musculoskeletal disorders (typically back pain) being more than a quarter, and another tenth being nervous system disorders (don’t know how many of those are fibromyalgia)…it’s easy to see, as Hondo does, that there’s something suspicious going on; but very hard, in the individual case, to prove who the fakers are to a criminal standard — i.e., that the person is lying, and not just deceiving himself but lying, beyond reasonable doubt.
“How do you prove the person’s lying about the pain?” Drop a c-note near the guy. If he picks it up and smiles or dashes off quickly, axe him.
“You see? I was too stupid to see through that trick – so I’ve got a cognitive disorder and I’m too dumb to work…”
Hondo, I typed in 5 years. It is a typo, because I DID mean 35 years of highest income. Fat fingers. My bad.
In regard to the Social Security Trust Fund, the SSTF is the US Govt’s biggest debtor and is the USGOV is obligated to pay the interest on T-bills to that fund first, ahead of all others. Otherwise, I understand what you’re saying and I agree that it is a collossal mess, but should WE the PEOPLE, who pay into that and other tax funds, have to suffer for someone else’s fiscal incompetence?
This borrowing thing that has gone on for FAR too long. All of us know it. It is not the same thing as taking out a mortgage to buy a house or an auto loan, or even a short-term payday loan shark loan. You know that comes to an end and you can put that money aside for the future.
There is a way to pull this country out of the pisshole it’s been put in by people who think that the money people pay in as taxes is a bottomless cup of coffee. It requires, however, that we go back to square one and start over.
Hondo, you’re big on history. If you know what happened in the 19th century, you’ll realize that Andrew Jackson paid off the entire national debet in 1832. He refused to renew the charter for the Second Bank of the US in 1835, and Treasury deposits went to regional banks. He left a surplus behind when he left the Presidency. By 1836, the regional banks were found with low reserves which reduced their loan volume. By 1837, when Martin Van Buren took office, there was a financial panic, which was blamed on Van Buren, but he refused to use government intervention which increased the crisis. Maybe Jackson’s decision was smart, maybe not; he hated banks and thought they were the refuge of thieves.
There were several financial panics after that, and a new central bank, the Federal Reserve Bank, was started in 1913.
What’s the point of this? We need someone in office who knows how to manage money AND fractious, self-involved politicians. I don’t see a lot of difference between what is going on now and what happened after Old Hickory left office, other than there are more and more people in WDC in government who don’t have the the slightest sense of responsiblity to anything other than their own jobs, no matter what they say to the contrary. Taxpayers are nothing but endless resources of spending money for them.
The lack of connection between what is avialable and what they think they can drain out of taxpayers is appalling.
Maybe it’s time to lay down the law to THEM.
PintoNag: boy, I hope that’s not the thinking of some in Congress. IMO that’s like trying to put out a fire with diesel fuel. In theory, you can do that. In practice, I don’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity if/when some fool tries.
A USG default would result in loss of general confidence in the fiscal and (to a lesser degree) political stability of the US worldwide. We default, and what’s to stop the Chinese (and everyone else) from “calling” – and demanding their cash back? The terms “house of cards” and “collapse” come to mind.
If that happened, we’d be beyond screwed – we’d be “screwed, blued, and tattooed”, and then some. My guess is that it would make the Great Depression look like a damn picnic.
Alberich: you’re correct regarding the difficulty of proving most SSDI fraud. However, that’s irrelevant.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe SSA disability determinations are an administrative matter vice a legal one. Thus, criminal standards of proof are not apropos for a SSDI determination.
What’s needed is ALJs and others at SSA who will (1) remember they’re there to serve the US taxpayer vice make their neighbors “feel good”, (2) remember they also have a duty to protect said taxpayers by being good stewards of public funds, (3) demand hard evidence vice a handwave regarding medical conditions, and (4) interpret the law regarding SSDI as written (e.g., can perform no useful work). Whether someone will hire them is irrelevant; whether the job pays worth a damn is irrelevant; whether it’s what they used to do or are trained to do is almost always irrelevant. Hell, whether a suitable job even exists locally is irrelevant. The plain language of Federal law (quoted above) says that to qualify for SSDI you must be unable to do any gainful work, and that the condition is expected to last 12 months or more. Period/end of report.
Compliant SSA officials and ALJs have been handing out cash to make people happy vice doing their job. It’s time they started doing what their job requires vice playing Santa with the taxpayer’s money.
Holy Crap … Hondo is damn Mathametition, EX-PH2 is a friggin’ Economologist and I am out of here! Two munch for me!
Jrock: sorry to hear about your condition, fella. I’ll ask the Man Upstairs to look out for you and yours. I’ve lost family and friends to Big C, and wouldn’t wish it on too many people on Earth.
I don’t think that necessarily affects the discussion, however. In your case, it sounds like the SSA has determined you qualify (terminal cancer certainly sounds like it should fit within the definition in Federal law regarding disability for SSDI purposes). My guess is that they’ve determined that your limited duty profile does not constitute (for SSDI purposes) “gainful employment” even though you’re still on active duty – or that you otherwise qualify for an exception under one of the SSDI bridge programs (they’re discussed at the link you gave above).
I’m glad that in your case the folks making the call seem to have used common sense vice playing Santa with tax $$$.
Come back as you can and desire. We’re sometimes a rough, contentious, and unruly crowd – but we’re pretty good about listening when other vets need to vent.
Bottom line, my income is right about where I’d “max out” on SS but not much (if any) over that.
And based on PROJECTED payouts at 62, 67 (my “full” retirement age) and 70, I’m like, “WTF?”
Putting that money under my mattress would have been a better result. Seriously. IF, and it’s a BIG IF I get what they project at 62, assuming I can retire then, it would just about cover the property taxes and utilities/upkeep on the house. That’s IT.
And then the government wants to punish me for saving for my retirement on my own? Screw that.
Why would some people leave the system? We have a client who is a former soldier who got a medical discharge and disability rating based on PTSD and head injury. He makes more with social security and VA bennies now than he did while in the military- about $50,000 a year. This guy can take month long trips to Japan. I can guarantee you; he is never going to attempt to return to work. I am sure he may have been messed up a few year ago, but I highly doubt he is that hindered today.
NHSparky: I’ve got a few years on ya, so I MIGHT be lucky and see something from Social Security – IF I opt to start collecting at 62. I’m not as sanguine about what happens if I wait to “full retirement age”. And I firmly expect to see Social Security means tested in my lifetime. I don’t see any other way to keep the system financially solvent. We’ve kicked the damn can down the road just about as far as we can – today, we can see damn clearly the wall at the end of the blind alley.
— break —
Ex-PH2: the problem is that by 2035, Social Security will have drawn 100% of its paper assets out of the OASI trust fund. They then have no more “debts of the United States” on which to draw. And the SCOTUS has held that Social Security benefit payments themselves are not an enforceable contractual debt – which means they go to the end of the line for payment after valid USG debts. That means that at that point the “outlays <= income" comes into play for Social Security - and everyone takes an immediate 23+% cut in benefits. Not a good thing. I completely agree that the situation today with Social Security is way north of that famous fictitious Vietnamese village, Phuc Dup. We had our chance to fix this in the 1980s by moving to something along the lines of Chile's system (enforced mandatory retirement savings owned by the individual, phased in over a couple of decades, with folks with substantial equity in the "old system" grandfathered or given the option). I remember those discussions. The American public wanted no part of that. Instead, they wanted to keep living beyond their means (e.g., regarding retirement, they wanted a never-ending "free lunch" courtesy of Uncle Sam) - and they made that clear to Congress. So instead of fixing the problem, we kept the current mess called Social Security and tinkered enough around the margins to kick the can down the road a couple of decades. Unfortunately, it's now about 3 decades later - and the bill for living beyond our means is fast coming due. I'll sum up all the economics anyone needs to know in ten words: "A free lunch does not exist - someone pays for it."
Well, when they cut mine by 23%, I will still be able to afford one meal out each month – just might have to cut out the fries with that.
OWB: shouldn’t be eating those fries anyway. Didn’t you get the memo from the FLOTUS? (smile)
Hondo,
Thanks brother. I have been a very obsessive stalker of this forum for the past two years… Usually check in three times a day. I don’t comment as much as I would like… I should more. I did, however, help with picks two stolen valor tours ago. I fucking love this blog.
#40, mostly right. Unless there has been a recent change:
If you’re sufficiently un-disabled to do your “past relevant work” (i.e., work you did before), then it doesn’t matter whether that work is still available locally…you don’t get the benefits. But if you can’t, and the ALJ has to determine whether you can do some other kind of work instead, then it is relevant whether such jobs are available in substantial numbers in the state. The regulations, as is typical in areas like this, are voluminous, and add a lot to what you see in the statute.
(When I worked on these, the ALJ’s often found that the guys who claimed back pain could work as small parts assemblers, though I think I saw “greeter” in there once or twice.)
I can’t say how ALJ’s around the country think – in my own limited experience I was pretty impressed with the way they were trying to play the thing straight down the middle. Keep in mind one other group that has a role in this: the physicians. Under the regs a claimant’s treating physician gets a lot of deference. And it’s a fact that there are doctors who are what the plaintiffs’ lawyers call “patient advocates”…that is, they have a bias towards saying that their patients are badly off (and therefore due big compensation payments)…that matters both because of the importance of medical evidence, much of which is generated by the doctor, and because the opinion of a treating physician (someone who sees the patient regularly) is given a lot of deference under the regs.
The thing is, though, in western medicine, a doctor is supposed to be dedicated to his patients, and has no special duty to the public fisc…a good ethic but it doesn’t mesh well with too many government benefits based on what a doctor’s willing to say.
(I once read that Soviet medicine was different…that doctors were lower on the social scale and were agents of the state, with a primary mission to find out whether a worker was malingering…I don’t know how true it was but I hope our own medical class never reaches that point.)
btw, I wrote what I did before because I was answering a comment about diverting funds from benefits to prosecute fraudsters – I think there was also commentary along those lines the last time you talked about this; and my point to those commenters was, that’s going to be a hard one to pull off because there are so many “grey areas” where it’s mighty hard to tell a fraud from a real case. The numbers and trends are suspicious; but finding an individual fraud is much rougher.
There’s something else, Hondo, and comes from the noon news earlier today.
A lot of people who got hit hard by the ‘crash’/downturn in 2009 learned their lesson about living beyond their means the hard way, and have kept those frugal habits.
However, there is a huge demograph that felt the contraction, reacted to it by cutting back, and then as soon as they got past the initial shock of the squeeze, they went right back to overspending, saving nearly nothing, and failing to set aside much of anything for retirement.
They have next to nothing as a backup again, and have gone back to the paycheck-to-paycheck mindset.
I think it’s the enrollment in Social Security that counts more than the start date of receiving benefits. I enrolled in it 18 months ahead of when I knew I would need it.
@47–yeah, I got the memo from her. Was that before or after she stuffed a 1700-calorie meal down her gullet at some Steak and Shake-type joint?