{"id":32105,"date":"2012-09-23T07:20:32","date_gmt":"2012-09-23T11:20:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=32105"},"modified":"2012-09-23T07:20:32","modified_gmt":"2012-09-23T11:20:32","slug":"federal-fiscal-follies-part-iii-social-security-disability-insurance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32105","title":{"rendered":"Federal Fiscal Follies, Part III – Social Security Disability Insurance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I wrote about Social Security\u2019s impact on wage earners<\/a>.\u00a0 But as I said yesterday:\u00a0 that\u2019s not all that\u2019s problematic about Social Security.\u00a0 It gets even “better”.\u00a0 Fair warning:\u00a0 unless you’re a bleeding-heart libidiot<\/em> who believes the primary function of government is to create a cradle-to-grave welfare state through income redistribution, what follows will probably piss you off.<\/p>\n

Of those receiving Social Security benefits, a record number \u2013 nearly 8.8 million, around 15.6% of the total and approaching 1 in 6 Social Security recipients \u2013 are currently receiving Social Security disability benefit payments<\/a>.\u00a0 Since there are about 142.1 million people in the US working, that\u2019s one person receiving disability<\/em> benefits for each 16.2 persons gainfully employed.\u00a0 In 1967, that ratio was about 65 to 1.<\/p>\n

By law (42 USC 423<\/a>) Social Security disability benefits may only be awarded to those who can hold no gainful employment of any type (and in some cases, to their dependents).\u00a0 I simply do not believe that nearly 9 million people of working age in the US \u2013 or the equivalent of about 1 out of every 17.5 persons in the US civilian labor force \u2013 are so medically or mentally \u201cBravo Delta\u201d that they cannot perform any<\/strong> type of gainful work whatsoever under any circumstances.\u00a0 (You\u2019ve really<\/em> got to be in bad shape to be physically\/mentally unable to sit at a reception desk or work as a janitor.) And information recently made public confirms that belief<\/p>\n

What’s caused this?\u00a0 Well, there has recently been a huge expansion in the number of persons receiving Social Security disability benefits<\/a>.\u00a0 And at the same time, the Social Security disability program also appears to have become \u201cEasy Money Street\u201d when it comes to awarding disability benefits.\u00a0 According to a recent Senate report, about 1\/4 of recent Social Security disability benefits appear to have been awarded improperly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here are the specifics:\u00a0 since January 2009, roughly 5.7 million have been awarded Social Security disability benefits.\u00a0 I\u2019ll let you do the math yourself to figure out how many of those were likely awarded improperly.<\/p>\n

Now, for the bottom line:\u00a0 as of July 2012, the average Social Security disability check was a bit over $1100 a month<\/a> – or around $13,300 a year.\u00a0 Multiply that by 8.8 million recipients, and that’s somewhere around $117 billion a year<\/em> – or about 18% of Social Security costs today.\u00a0 And based on what’s been made public, it looks like around 1\/4 of those disability benefits – or about $29.3 billion this year<\/em> – were very likely awarded improperly and should not be paid.<\/p>\n

“Not pretty”?\u00a0 Hell, that\u2019s absolutely butt-ugly!<\/p>\n

Like the rest of Social Security, I doubt this part of Social Security will shrink much any time soon – frankly, I personally doubt it will shrink at all.\u00a0 But it certainly looks like the DoD budget will.\u00a0 I guess continuing to pay improperly-awarded disability benefits is more important than defending the country.<\/p>\n

That’s all for today.\u00a0 But yes – there’s more to come.\u00a0 In a future article, I’ll next discuss another problematic Federal income transfer program:\u00a0 the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as “foodstamps”.<\/p>\n

Oh, and if this article pissed you off – I think you’re gonna love<\/em> the next one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I wrote about Social Security\u2019s impact on wage earners.\u00a0 But as I said yesterday:\u00a0 that\u2019s … Federal Fiscal Follies, Part III – Social Security Disability Insurance<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[189,11,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defense-cuts","category-economy","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}