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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

He does. It's an interesting read and contained lots of surprises for me.

Here's the section that I think answers your question:

> Who’s paying for this? Well, again, if we look at government numbers, it looks like it’s friends and family, meaning girlfriends, other family members, and Uncle Sam. Disability insurance programs pay some benefits for more than half of these unworking men, it seems. Disability benefits do not provide a princely income, let’s be clear about that, but they do allow for an alternative to life in the working world, which is exactly the opposite of the original, and I think quite noble, intention of disability programs, which is to provide for people who couldn’t take care of themselves, couldn’t work.

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If they qualify for government disability payments, doesn't that by definition make them unable to be counted as 100% available for employment? The author implies they are unemployed by choice but disability payments suggest that at least some of them have medical reasons to not be considered fully employable.

In some areas, disability has become kind of a hidden early retirement program. If you ask around in economically depressed areas you can find doctors who will sign disability paperwork even for people who are still at least partially capable of working. And many of them would go back to work if there were better opportunities available.

(I'm not justifying or excusing disability fraud, just explaining what's been happening.)

Citation needed.

A couple of NPR shows have covered this. Disability is a federal program and states (especially poor states) are motivated to get their unemployed people off of state benefits (like unemployment) and onto disability. For one, it saves the state money and it also removes those people from the state’s unemployment number.

https://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/

> There's no diagnosis called disability. You don't go to the doctor and the doctor says, "We've run the tests and it looks like you have disability." It's squishy enough that you can end up with one person with high blood pressure who is labeled disabled and another who is not.

The entire interview is like this. They’re not even trying to present an internally consistent argument; it’s just propaganda.

The basic premise of the article is an actual problem, though; a sizeable chunk of the population is simply unavailable as labour. This isn't just a US problem either; the situation is similar in Europe as well, including the Nordic countries despite our ever-progressive welfare systems.

It's like lot of people have simply lost hope.

> a sizeable chunk of the population is simply unavailable as labour.

That does sound like a problem. If this really is a dire problem, then let's start by forcibly disappropriating multi-generational landlords and people with trust funds of their inherited wealth, thereby forcing them to work. If that doesn't free up enough laborers to keep the machine humming, then we can start thinking about carrots and sticks for the ppors.

The issue affects nightwatch and welfare states alike, so my first thought is that it's something else. The question is what.

Perhaps this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink

Sounds similar to Nietzsche's concept of "the last man". I'd require lot more proof to consider it a fact, but it seems quite plausible.

why would you work if you get a check in the mail regardless? Is that not obvious?

It is not. Plenty of people go to jobs for extra income or for satisfaction. Plenty of people who retire get bored and pick something up to pass the time.

The difference is that modern jobs aren't worth it. No pay, no discretion to make decisions, and your entire management chain feels like they're in the same boat.

Working for a small company where you're treated with respect and given a chance to grow or flexibility or whatever is one thing.

Working for a soulless corporate chain that consistently underschedules so that you're overworked and then writes you up if you want to go see your sick/dying relative is soul draining.

Working for a corporation that refuses to give you a consistent schedule but expects you to come in on your day off to cover someone else is soul draining.

Working for a corporation who will schedule you for 36 hours even though they're short workers because otherwise they might have to actually give you some garbage-tier healthcare is soul draining.

   >The difference is that modern jobs aren't worth it.

Modern jobs are so much easier than the factory/mine/construction jobs of years past. Even the ones that still require physical labor, have huge restrictions and regulations that prevent the sort of working conditions in years past.

For all of these people complaining about "jobs these days" I would love to hear what period of history they think had it easier.

It's unclear though. Is the data set consistent in its reporting of data since 1960? In that case, the question becomes - why are so many more people on disability now (if that is the bulk of the difference) than there were in 1960?

In fact you might expect there to be more people on disability in 1960, seeing as WWII ended only 15 years before that (PTSD, etc). I suppose that those people simply couldn't get onto disability back then though.

You might expect more. The US has had several more recent wars. Medical technology keeps a lot of people alive that would have died in the WWII era, leading to higher percentages of disabled civilians and soldiers.

Definitions of disability changed a lot over these decades.

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