Apr 5, 2016

Social Security Disability, Allentown's Growth Industry



Yesterday I went to the Social Security Office, across from the prison, to discuss my retirement options. I was given number 199. In addition to retirement, Social Security also dispenses money for disability. I would say from the gray hair, there were about three of us contemplating retirement, all the others were for disability. A few middle age men were carrying their fake canes. The canes aren't fake, it's the disabilities. I saw one such gentleman walk in from the parking lot, clearly the cane bore no weight, and was merely a prop. Most of the people waiting were quite young, in their twenties. Disability has been expanded to include mental conditions such as depression, anxiety, additive personality and anger management. I will say many of them did look angry to me. It was hard finding a parking space. Business also looked good at the prison. If Johnny Manana's had gotten these crowds....

reprinted from 2008

                                                Post on Emma Tropiano below

9 comments:

  1. Mike,

    One might think this would be fodder for an investigative report? But think again.

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  2. scott@7:11, when they limited welfare years ago to five years, SSI became the new welfare, and it's for life. I suppose that disproportions in ethnicity is too incorrect for analysis. one would think that when high school students are being signed up, and multiple members of one family are enrolled, a red flag would go up. when one able bodied person after another told me that they were on SSI, i knew that the system was broken. there is a cottage industry of lawyers and cooperating doctors who specialize in this deception.

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  3. From ZeroHedge: "The 2015 annual report from the Social Security Board of Trustees shows that the program’s disability component is in immediate trouble. Data from the latest report show that the disability fund will be depleted as soon as next year and unable to pay full benefits to beneficiaries."

    SSDI will be broke in 2016.

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-08/social-security-disability-fund-will-be-broke-next-year

    PS: Zerohedge.com is a good site - just take your BP meds before reading.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I looked, in vain for a company that would hire me while I spent 2 years on a walker, and another 18 months on a quad cane. Believe me, those weren't props, as I had fractured my femur, my hip, and sustained an additional foot fracture from the stress of the initial accident. However my brain wasn't in a sling, and I had bills-many, many bills-to pay. I was helping support my school age daughter, my elderly quadriplegic mother and my father who had just been diagnosed with Alzheimers Dementia.

    I sent out 362 (yeah I counted them in the "sent file") resumes...for low-paying jobs like telemarketing, order-taking, and even bank teller work. I have a bachelor's degree and 30 years of consistent white collar work experience in the pharmaceutical industry. of course here in the Valley-of-Job-Death, there are few white collar jobs and virtually the ONLY growth sector is trucking, or warehouse work requiring heavy lifting. Needless to say I spent the ENTIRE 24 months unemployed while on the walker (with benefits that are pitifully lacking even for a first-timer) and then spent 18 months getting not one cent from anywhere.

    Nobody would give me a break (ha ha)..they took ONE look at me after asking me to come in...based on a stellar resume and shook their heads. Frustrating? you better believe it. And then to top it off, I read people's uninformed opinions about disability fakers and takers. That's really great that you all are so concerned. You want to un-brainwash the ignorant asses who refused to allow me to work for two years?

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  5. Your original post was in 2008. My exact same experience was last summer. Any call to investigate will be met with cries of racism. I can't tell you how many of the 'applicants' for disability spoke little or no English, which leads one to think they haven't even paid into the scam, errr 'system', for very long. What fools are we!

    Scott's suggestion that this calls for an investigation is the sure-fire way to make sure none is done. Those prideful reporters would never take the lead from a blog post; yet they slobbered all over themselves to get the latest from 'Deep Throat".

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  6. pepper @10:37, there is a whole range of people with real and faked disabilities. there are people who have suffered very real injuries, and although qualified for disability, never considered it. on the other hand, there are multitudes of people abusing the system. i've known numerous people from both groups.

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  7. That is the balanced answer that should have been incorporated into your initial post. But that's not the kind of post that draws readers I guess. Come on, we can do better than that. And a person's mental illness is a legit claim for disability- the clear slant against those with mental illness is pretty obvious in the post. Personally I don't WANT an unstable, hyper-violent person working in the next cubicle to me. Guess how those workplace shootings happen- undiagnosed / untreated mental illness. So let's say a person DOES the responsible and correct thing for his health and gets treatment that includes meds that make him UNFIT to drive a truck..around here? That's a guarantee of NO WORK.

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  8. pepper@11:26, actually, i believe that my post understates the problem. the abuse of SSDI is massive. the office is a 4th and hamilton; sit in the waiting room and make your own observation. furthermore, as a rental agent, I met hundreds of recipients who seemed to have no trouble navigating their lives.

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  9. Another fact reported by our government:

    RealClearMarkets: "The latest Social Security Administration data document that Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) rolls reached a record high of 8.85 million in March 2013, an increase of 1.6 million or 21 percent since the start of the Great Recession in 2007.

    This recession-induced growth exacerbates the long time trend in SSDI program growth that has resulted in its real expenditures increasing sevenfold, from $18 billion (2010 dollars) in 1970 to $128 billion in 2010, a trend the CBO reports will result in program insolvency as early as 2016.

    This long running disability epidemic, which hit its pandemic stage in the aftermath of the 2007 recession, has almost nothing to do with a decline in the overall health of working age Americans or in the severity of their health-based impairments. Rather, it is primarily the consequence of fundamental flaws in the SSDI program and its administration which have increasingly made it a long term unemployment program rather than the last resort transfer program for those unable to work due to their health-based impairments that Congress intended it to be. These flaws become most evident during severe during economic downturns but will remain long after we recover from the Great Recession."

    http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2013/05/15/americas_growing_social_security_disability_problem_100322.html

    ReplyDelete

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