Social Security denies disability benefits based on list with jobs from 1977 | Hacker News Reader

Social Security denies disability benefits based on list with jobs from 1977

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114 pointsstandardUser110 comments

Biggest issue with disability is you cannot start working again, even as an experiment, without losing your disability. It's a lifetime disability.

It should instead be a credit, where earning income replaces the benefit $1 for $1, but if you earn over the disability limit you don't lose your credit permanently. This would encourage disabled people to try and find jobs that they can do despite their disability without the fear of being ruined if the job doesn't pan out. Over time this would help transition the "permanently" disabled into being self-sufficient and make them feel happier and less of a burden on society. People want to feel that they have agency and contribute.

Hmm, this is not correct. I work as a employment specialist for individuals with developmental disabilities, and they rarely, if ever, lose SSI or SSDI if they start working, so long as they stay under certain thresholds (hours, wage and assets). We work closely with benefits counselors to figure out where the line is with each individual, then leverage our relationships with employers to help said individual hit that sweet spot where they are working as much as allowed while still able to collect.

This always results in the individual making far more than just collecting disability alone, even if the payments are reduced.

The idea of "all or nothing" is a myth that prevents a lot of folks on disability who want to work from doing so. If you happen to be such an individual, please reach out to a benefits counselor in your state and set up a meeting.

Are you referring to Social Security benefits counselors? They are notoriously difficult to get ahold of (in NM); you have to go in person and wait in a large room for (usually) hours with several hundred people. And then what you’re told varies depending on the person.

A close friend of ours tried to work part time, reported everything, worked with job counselor etc. but after six months was unable to continue work.

It took her another six months to get it all straightened out.

It's risky. The case was well documented, a lifetime of cerebral palsy and complications, seizures. And yet the disability benefits were very brittle.

The implementation might seem inefficient if you misunderstand the design; the system is working exactly as intended.

These sorts of vague, slightly conspiratorial and cynical comments aren't helpful. "The system" isn't designed by some secret cabal of sinister tricksters who are intending it to fail specific people in specific ways.

"The system" is a hodgepodge of thousands of different laws, programs, agencies and organizations under a multitude of federal, state, county and city jurisdictions and operating under rules and budgets that were approved over numerous different sets of elected and appointed individuals over decades, each of which had to strike compromises and try to work within the existing system.

If you don't do enough to prevent fraud, you get a lot of fraud (see recent issues with covid payroll protection and other related measures, or homeowners insurance issues in Florida after hurricanes). If you do too much to prevent fraud, you get legitimate cases not getting the support they need.

No matter what the system is, you're going to have some amount of both "false positive" and "false negative" outcomes from it.

To add to what you wrote: the system is also dynamic. How it works (or doesn't) today impacts how it'll look tomorrow. Interventions can be made, and they may initially improve things, and then the world at large adjusts to balance them out. It needs continuous tuning.

Conversations like this are part of it too, though I admit it's frustrating to see the same problems being highlighted over and over again, for decade or more, with no improvement in sight.

> No matter what the system is, you're going to have some amount of both "false positive" and "false negative" outcomes from it.

And don't forget the feedback loop when people see the bad outcomes and demand there should be a law...

> “The system” isn’t designed by some secret cabal of sinister tricksters who are intending it to fail specific people in specific ways.

That’s true; the elites rigging it to fail often are not at all secret about their intent, the most common of which–for the entire inadequate social safety net–is to ensure that it errs on the side of maintaining economic coercion driving people into accepting poor terms in the labor market to ensure aggregate output and low labor costs and minimize consumption of government-supplied benefits even when it would yield a palpable increase in living conditions.

> "The system" is a hodgepodge of thousands of different laws, programs, agencies and organizations under a multitude of federal, state, county and city jurisdictions and operating under rules and budgets that were approved over numerous different sets of elected and appointed individuals over decades, each of which had to strike compromises and try to work within the existing system.

Yah... the problem is, there's a critical mass where the main job of the system becomes to perpetuate the status quo. Efforts at simplification or to raise efficacy are threatening to too much of the system and attract substantial resistance.

I think a core problem facing the US is a lack of administrative capacity in government. We have excessively complicated systems collapsing under their own weight, but steadfastly defending their own existence. We have the political right thinking this is an inevitable characteristic of government, and so they create a self-fulfilling prophecy by kneecapping administrative strengths whenever they can; and we have a political left that is so excited about all the things government can do to help that they don't spend nearly enough effort considering how we can build the administrative systems necessary to reap these benefits.

If you wanted to embed dark patterns, wouldn't such an opaque system be ideal?

I don't think "the system" such as it is is designed by a secret cabal of sinister tricksters, but they do get a seat at the table, don't they? And they're not exactly going to come out about being in the secret cabal are they? That would be a pretty poor secret cabal.

I think it isn’t exactly as conspiratorial as you are portraying it. It is a mess and some of that is an amalgamation of cruft. However limiting social spending is a major political point of conservative politics, like it or not.

There is very little effort towards making the system better for people who rely on it. And a lot of that is specifically due to politics.

The barrier between a recipient of benefits and the SSA is insane and has the obvious effect of making it harder to access those benefits. That isn’t just happenstance.

People living off SSA benefits aren’t exactly living large. I know because I work in a field that provides income based services and is almost entirely funded with federal/state money. Preventing fraud is not the primarily objective of the SSA when it comes to benefits, it is preventing paying out at all.

Edit: On the PPP Covid loans, I agree they were made in a way that allowed them to be abused. The thing about that though is that corporate welfare is the only acceptable form of welfare based on recent history. We throw millions at telecoms companies, who are often the worst rated companies in the country. Verizon even told the federal government that more money wouldn’t help them roll out infrastructure any faster, but the government still gave them more.

The obvious difference between social welfare is that people have a major inequality of power and that leaves them in an incredibly disadvantageous position to climb over a very tall obstacle. Corporations meanwhile pay lobbyist out the ass to basically ghost write legislation to benefit them personally, as well as get government money. But hey, that’s free market capitalism, right? Sorry this is a little aggressive and I don’t mean this as a personal attack on you, just got a little angry as I watched a client struggle with the VA over benefits between the time I wrote this post and this edit.

> It should instead be a credit, where earning income replaces the benefit $1 for $1, but if you earn over the disability limit you don't lose your credit permanently.

This creates a steep marginal tax rate (100%), which still results in a disincentive to work. It should be a more gradual phase out.

>This creates a steep marginal tax rate (100%), which still results in a disincentive to work.

? This is not the system being described.

Suppose you get $10kpa in SSDI, and the system described is in place. You then start working part-time and get paid $10kpa. What is your increased take home pay? $0; the effective marginal tax rate was 100% for dollars 0-10000 you earned. That means there's no incentive to take up a low paying but still useful job.

It could be even worse; SSDI isn't taxable, but you'll be paying various payroll taxes on that $10k. So possibly over 100%.

When I left the military on disability, I was also helped to sign up for SSA disability. I received both VA and SSA disability, and the SSA lady that helped me told me something about how I could work for up to 1 year and still maintain eligibility for SSA. I tried to get a job to see if I could work with my condition, but then SSA reversed course, told me what she said was wrong, and I was ejected from the disability program. I was lucky that my condition was semi-temporary, the VA still supported me, and I could find work which I could do, and thus wasn't put on the street. Now I can work mostly fine, and I don't rely on any disability payment. Other people I talked to had similar stories where they were told one thing by a VA or SSA administrator and later were punished for doing something wrong. Disabled folks and veterans are put through the ringer daily for no good reason.

> Disabled folks and veterans are put through the ringer daily for no good reason.

And if you have the audacity to navigate the phone tree to a human and accidentally get off script (i.e. ask them a question that's literally not on their script, which you as the random disabled citizen can't possibly have visibility on), you had better check your privilege. Because they are not going to help you any more. You fell off the last leaf node in their knowledge graph and are now something foreign to them. It can get very Kafka-esque.

*wringer

> Biggest issue with disability is you cannot start working again, even as an experiment, without losing your disability. It’s a lifetime disability.

One of the worst things about the US social safety net, almost as bad as how weak it is even in total and in theory, is how piecemeal it is. Workers Compensation (and, for veterans, the VA) provide benefits that apply to partial and temporary disability, whereas Social Security provides benefits for only long-term total disability (that both prevents your past work and prevents transitioning to new work.) But evolution in jobs and working conditions, evolution in medical and assistive technology, and, frankly, refinement of knowledge about the initial injury can change what once seemed to be in one category to the other, and vice versa.

The whole thing is one giant trap of playing the game right, or falling through the giant cracks never to be seen again. Worse than that, all the means testing and adjudications and determinations are actually /expensive/ - mountains of paperwork and appeals and this and that and the other all because the US is simple obsessed that someone, somewhere, might be getting something they don't deserve.

(Without, ever, of course, facing that there are a lot of people getting what they didn't work for, they aren't generally trying to scrape by on a disability check or some unemployment though)

We can't have nice things because of massive fraud. There is always tension between ease of receiving services and those looking to exploit the benefit.

We can and should do better, but it cannot be perfect.

Which still happens?

If people think TSA is theater…

> We can’t have nice things because of massive fraud.

Creating multiple separate bureaucracies, often with similar functions, creates more fraud vulnerabilities and more cost to preventing fraud of any given type.

Our system is not designed to prevent fraud, but to enable it.

Yes, exactly. Simplicity is what prevents fraud, not more complexity. Our systems need to be fundamentally redesigned for simplicity at the core.

Comment from a heretic economist was that in the US you have gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over raising capital gains a few percent or the marginal tax rates for people with seriously enough income. And yet for low income people the loss of benefits that comes with earning a bit more money can by on the order of 40%.

Whether intentional or not, the system is really good at keeping poor people poor and stuck, and rich people richer and mobile. It is anti-human.

Some metaphors of demon-lords with hordes of indentured servants come to mind. The servants bound in fiery chains mucking through tar, and the demon-lords flying around with fiery wings between castles.

Won’t take many more steps for that imagery to be real. It would seem making money our collective master may have had some unintended consequences.

> We can't have nice things because of massive fraud. There is always tension between ease of receiving services and those looking to exploit the benefit.

Massive? Source?

Imagine the government put a giant bowl full of money in front of every city hall, and said that you should feel free to take from it if you're starving for food. It's enforced by the honor system. This system is extremely easy to use and efficient in delivering funds. How long does the bowl last, and what proportion of funds go to the intended recipients?

Obviously, not long and not much, so we build systems around the bowl of money to prevent fraud. These systems inherently cost money, making it less efficient, and reduce ease of use, meaning people who genuinely need the money have a much harder time accessing it.

SSDI in particular is rather infamous in that it's rife with fraud[0] but also extremely difficult for the genuinely disabled to utilize[1], to the point where it's pretty accurate to say that the SSA is willfully blind to people in genuine need. The article we're all talking about is an example of that.

[0] https://www.nationalreview.com/2013/06/rogues-gallery-social...

[1] https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/lawsuits-lay-out-accusa...

So what you've done here is invent a hypothetical, state by fiat that it would end poorly, then used that complete fiction to argue that we build systems to prevent fraud then point to massive fraud in the system we built to prevent the fraud that you stated we need to build to prevent it.

Like I dunno, maybe if the thing we're doing recursively fails to work we could try the other thing for a bit and check.

I'm pretty sure you don't actually reject the outcome of my hypothetical.

And, yes, fraud is endemic, we try lots of systems, and some work better than others. Building ones that attempt to satisfy multiple constraints at once makes things harder.

I do actually. Although it's pretty easy to reject because both the hypothetical and the outcome are pretty vague like obviously a big bowl of cash is gonna lose most of it's money to the wind. But to be clear I do think a system where any one could receive money without first demonstrating "need" could be successfully continuously funded and would help a lot of people that "need" help. Although in my system "need" is in scare quotes because I don't think that its only the starving for food that have a moral claim to aid.

I'd also point out that in a system where I just ask the mayor for a hundred bucks and he gives it to me, there can't be fraud. There's nothing to defraud. It's only once we start adding shit like "prove you're poor enough" or "prove you can't get paid for work" that we have something to commit fraud about. Indeed the more constraints you add the more frauds become possible.

At the very least, you shouldn't be spending more on gatekeeping to prevent fraud than you'd lose to said fraud. I'm pretty sure that our system is way over that line.

It's not all because of fraud.

There's also a lot of crossover between the people defining the programs and the people administering the programs. So programs get rules written in a way that the software from the firm they are close to can handle it, but are hard for their competition to work with. None of it is actually defined with the taxpayer and beneficiary's interests at heart. (Source: worked for an agency in the space and saw it first hand).

Bit odd that the US tolerates, even celebrates, massive tax avoidance but spends a lot of money on preventing relatively small sums of benefit fraud.

This doesn’t seem correct to me. We can’t have nice things because of fear of massive fraud. I’ve heard that programs like SSDI have around a 1% fraud rate. I’ve also heard they deny something like 70% of claims on first application and 90% on appeal. That seems like way too much denial for a system that’s doing pretty good fraud-wise.

A high false positive rate doesn't imply a low false negative rate. If you're building a well-functioning system you have to consider trade-offs between the two, but a badly-functioning system can achieve both high false positives and high false negatives.

Exactly. The only way to get SSDI is to quit work forever.

On cancer (stage 4) treatment, but returned to work part time by stretching myself. However, it makes me ineligible for SSDI since it is above the ludicrously low earnings threshold.

It should instead be a credit, where earning income replaces the benefit $1 for $1

This does not incentivize anybody to start working -- every dollar they make (and hence, energy they spend) adds nothing to their monthly balance. If you want to realistically get these people back into the workforce, you will have to allow them to make money on top of their benefits (e.g. up to 125%) before you start tapering off the benefits they receive.

It's the same problem around the world. You're either 100% capable of work or 100% incapable. It's _really_ hard to make the bureaucracy believe you're at 50%.

Or, hear me out, your ability work fluctuates daily or weekly depending on how bad your condition is!

Even though that's a great idea, you end up with articles about how Business X is exploiting disabled people.

I recall when the PRWORA was being considered and touted as a way to provide an escape from poverty, but employers who hire workers who would be trapped in social program-driven poverty are now being maligned as somehow evil for doing so.

About 15 years ago I made a documentary film about homeless people (https://graceofgodmovie.com). Two of my subjects had the same medical condition, a seizure disorder resulting from a head injury, which made it effectively impossible for them to work. (To quote one of my subjects, "It's not that I'm incapable of working, the problem is that I'm not reliable. Most people don't want an employee who might lapse into a seizure on the job...")

Both applied for SSD. One was approved, the other denied, and so one ended up on the street and the other didn't. The judge who denied the first subject didn't give a reason, which became the basis for an appeal that went all the way to a federal circuit court. The appeal was denied.

I am trying to think of a job where someone with seizures could work safely and can't think of a good one...

...software engineer?

Nearly any other white collar, sit in front of a desk, job?

Was this supposed to be sarcasm?

Because essentially any regular "office job" or "desk job" would work.

How do you get to that job?

Public transit or taxi/ride share? Lots of people with medical conditions where you can't drive work just fine. Also if you live in a city you can probably walk to work.

Also even with seizures you can drive if you're on medication and haven't had one in a while.

How do those people get to the store or to the doctor?

Someone else goes to the store for them. Or they get driven to a dr appt. Sometimes 'disabled' really is more debilitating than people expect.

Sure. But a lot of times it’s not. As a counter point, I have a relative with cerebral palsy that has a shockingly normal life for as disabled as she seems to me. In a lot of ways it’s terrifying to see her getting around but she lives a very full life. People, in spite of disabilities, need not just be warehouses until they die.

Not at all, genuinely curious at what would be a safe job. Not something I have ever had to think about, not saying that people who have seizures can't work.

Office is the safest I guess but still has risks. For example, if someone is in the office in a cubicle and has a seizure they could hit the desk corner or go unnoticed for a while depending on how many people are in the office that day.

Any white collar remote job is fine. No risk to the business.

Think of it instead as “risks beyond staying at home”. Falling and hitting your head could happen to anyone, and I’d wager it happening at work is far safer as you are more likely to be quickly found.

Years ago my uncle got a seizure while sleeping, fell out of bed, and ended hospitalized for weeks with a skull fracture. With these kind of conditions more or less anything in "unsafe" to a degree.

Exactly - and I’ve read enough stories of this sort of thing happening to people living alone, and no one notices until things start to smell - whereas even in a practically empty office worst case you’d be found (hopefully still breathing) by janitorial or security when they make their nightly sweep.

Way more likely to happen in your sleep, ime

My fifth grade teacher had a condition that caused her to have seizures.

I remember it being very foreign and new to me. I had no first-hand experience with seizures before. But she just calmly explained what seizures were, what would happen, and what we should do. She designated a few students to call the nurse if she had a seizure and the nurse cared for her after that.

She did have a seizure a few times during the school year, but it didn't affect her ability to effectively teach us. She was one of the best teachers and one of the most positive people I have ever met.

She was a fantastic teacher and friend. Rest in peace, Ms. Osinski.

Thank you! It's not something I have really had an opportunity to think about. I've worked with people who have had other kinds of disabilities both physical and mental, the world they have to navigate and challenges they have are, for lack of a better work, astounding.

I remember back in school we took turns using a wheel chair for a day to get a vague sense of what it would be like. How you would have to plan your route around the school, getting through doors. Just the difference in perspective in the hallway. For something like seizures, that is harder to think about so I appreciate your reply as opposed to the derision.

What do you think people with seizures do with their free time - hang out in a padded room all day?

There's plenty of office jobs where the risk of having a seizure at work are no different than the risks of having a seizure surfing on your own time. Hell, you could stock retail shelves at night with no more risk than when you go shopping on your own - so long as you aren't operating a forklift.

My friend CW had grand mal seizures (major epileptic 'fits' for which he had a 'brain pacemaker' fitted which was a little successful). Sadly he died after a seizure when he was home alone, about 15 years ago.

He was quite capable, we were assistant cub scout leaders (UK) together and whilst he couldn't be solely in charge of the kids he could lead activities and games. He also took part in climbing, hikes, watersports, etc. The principle cub leader (Akela) was determined to help him take a full part as a leader and in activities; both great people. Outside scouting my friend did fundraising for epilepsy charities, playing with a rock band, and helped kids to come to terms with their epilepsy too.

CW had applied for jobs but couldn't get anyone to keep him on; he spent a lot of time playing video games. In some ways it was easy for him not to work, but he would get frustrated that he felt he wasn't contributing; that he was reliant on his parents.

He couldn't work, as others have said, because he might have a fit basically any moment and leave a puddle of blood and require emergency care. Employers weren't keen to take that responsibility on. To be fair, it was quite scary, he did have some warning that he was likely to have a fit (eg when tired) but not exactly when. He'd be walking along and simply fall face first on the floor -- he had a lot of scars on his face and forehead, but refused wearing a helmet.

He had been hoping to get an assistance dog; they can tell when their owner is going to have a seizure; the owner then can get themselves to a safer place, call someone to check on them, et cetera.

My friend wasn't the sharpest tool in the box, but was not stupid. Jobs that suited would probably be low level administration type jobs. But, he would have managed manual labour if he was paired with someone sensitive to his condition, especially if he had an assistance dog (no heavy machinery though!).

Aside: I don't see why your comment deserves downvotes. Recognising one's ignorance on a topic is the first step towards wisdom.

I appreciate you sharing, I am sorry to hear about your friend. My guess on the downvotes are they interpreted my question as saying that I didn't see a place for people with seizures in the workforce. I guess I could have tried to phrase it better...

Part of the reason I asked what I did is because I feel that work and having work is important to people. It's one of the things I think about as we introduce more and more automation.

Some people are good with physical things, some with more mental and other things as well(caring, making something, etc.). Not having jobs that are able to satisfy leads to a large amount of our public strife.

I think about one of my uncles, he self described himself as a hellion when he was younger and credited either the Navy or the Merchant Marines(I think he was in both) as straightening him out. My understanding now is that you have to have a clean record to join, they are more professional organizations.

I have a friend who works with Doctors without Boarders. He goes into areas and sets up camps. He has a very strained relationship with his wife and kids because he is always going off someplace. He tried to stay, both working for others and then owning his own business but when I talked to him, he was not happy. He could not stand to be in the same place doing the same thing, he needed the newness and challenge.

I think about this when ever we talk about offshoring or industries going away and how people should just change jobs. It is a difficult problem.

That all dovetails well with my thoughts about the more [AI] automated future. Thanks for sharing.

You're getting a lot of pushback, and it is genuine for good reason, but to add some anecdata - my seizure/migraine complex is triggered by scrolling on screens, videos, sometimes opening a new tab or window. The office jobs aren't a guarantee for us sadly.

I know someone who had a seizure disorder and worked as a registered nurse. There's plenty of opportunities

What was the court's reasoning for denying the appeal? This sounds terrible, unfair, and unjust.

> What was the court's reasoning for denying the appeal?

I don't know. The layer wouldn't talk to me (because client confidentiality, despite the fact that my subject was wiling to sign a release). I learned about the appeal results through my subject, who was not an entirely reliable source. It was emotionally wrenching for me just to watch him talk about it. I can't even imagine what it must have been like for him.

It's possible that there are public court records if you really want to know. If you know how to look these things up contact me off line and I'll give you the info you would need to locate the records.

> This sounds terrible, unfair, and unjust.

Yes. That was kind of the point.

However, there is more to the story. If you want to know you'll have to watch the film :-) You can find it on iTunes and Amazon. But I'll tell you this: the subject was a psychologist with a masters degree.

Thanks for your work in creating the documentary. My mother went through a very similar situation to your subject who was denied, and died shortly after her final denial.

People don’t understand just how arbitrary the outcomes are of the system.

The reliability is a huge factor. That's why my sister (bipolar disorder) and I (MS) have some employment issues. She can work consistently, but bipolar meds stop working sometimes and don't fully level her out. I can work, but my health fluctuates based on things like the weather and my stress level. Luckily I'm educated enough and my skill sets are rare enough put together that I can demand some concessions but my sister doesn't have that since bipolar also prevented her from finishing her degree.

> writing that he had “job opportunities” in three occupations that are nearly obsolete and agreeing with the expert’s dubious claim that 130,000 positions were still available sorting nuts, inspecting dowels and processing eggs.

Whether 'nut sorting' is an actual job or not seems less important than "are there any nut sorting jobs open within a reasonable distance from the applicant?".

Someone with a disability may need familial support. Telling someone they have to move - possibly their entire family - across country to take some bullshit minimum wage job which may go away 6 months from now to avoid paying out some reasonable social security disability claim is ... nuts. And they don't need sorting.

Or someone like me, who is trained for a very specialized profession and then ended up disabled right out of school. I got MS my last semester of graduate school, so I was then stuck in the 'need to live near family for support but the career I trained for would require me to move' problem. There are usually 1 or 2 positions posted per year within this area in my field.

I sucked it up after a mental breakdown and accepted that field is closed to me now, but I had tech/programming skills to fall back on. It's not how I like/want to make a living (there's a reason I didn't go for a CS degree) but most people in my situation don't even have the option.

It's the same Department of Labor that does this:

> More than $163 billion in pandemic-era unemployment benefits was likely issued in error, with a big chunk due to fraud, according to a U.S. Department of Labor report.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/27/fraud-had-significant-role-i...

The amount of inenffiencies and fraud is quite astonishing.

When talking about expected magnitudes of loss due to fraud, it's much more useful to talk in terms of relative (as opposed to absolute) magnitudes.

This is the expected and typical behaviour of a monopoly organization after several decades.

I really, really, really do not think this story gets any better with multiple private entities (startups perhaps?) competing to make determinations about disability pay. In fact that sounds horrible.

There is a huge number of other possible organizational solutions.

Among the 200 other countries, I'd bet there are dozens who handle this better.

Private businesses are just as inefficient and wasteful, as anyone who's worked in a large corporate bureaucracy can attest. It's just that they have very little transparency, so you don't hear about it on the news.

Private businesses can be just as inefficient but when they are and don't clean up their act they tend not to survive too long.

Public institutions are indeed bound by some rules that force some inefficiencies. But after decades working both in the private and the public sectors I can say with confidence that the public sector is substantially less efficient, for a myriad of reasons, some legitimate and some not.

> Private businesses can be just as inefficient but when they are and don't clean up their act they tend not to survive too long.

Or they just push the inefficiencies to wherever they screw the least profitable customers, which none of their competitors especially want either.

> they tend not to survive too long.

Usually they try regulatory capture or anti-competitive behavior first.

Both can be bad, but private businesses tend to be much less wasteful than government because you have to make money or you go out of business, whereas government can waste your money without any thought of profit and just tax you more next year.

As someone that has worked for the Military and Fortune 500s, both are bad, but the government is in a different league when it comes to wasting money.

> Both can be bad, but private businesses tend to be much less wasteful than government because you have to make money or you go out of business, whereas government can waste your money without any thought of profit and just tax you more next year.

Unfortunately there are numerous private businesses that have monopolies or abuse their market dominance to knee-cap their competitors. The result is, in my opinion, worse than the government because they do have a profit motive and will agrressively drive up prices or lower wages/quality.

Private businesses being inefficient does not have the same moral concern since they aren't taking people's money by force like the government does.

They are, by virtue of not paying taxes due to losses.

It’s an indirect loss of the public and the publics money.

Only, the big ones have captured the government-contract market. Is there really that much difference?

I’ve worked for the US government, large NGOs, and large corporations. The difference in waste between government and corporations is qualitative, with much more waste occurring in government. NGOs sit somewhere in the middle in my experience. The entire structure of how government operates encourages and facilitates waste, it lacks the negative feedback loops that constrain corporate waste.

Not only are there no consequences to waste in government as others have pointed out, the entire incentive structure around government spending actively incentivizes waste. This waste serves an organizational function in practice, but there are many ways to achieve those functions without lighting giant piles of money on fire. In corporations, waste tends to be the product of neglect; there are significant incentives to reduce waste once it rises beyond a certain level. Corporations may be less sensitive to the threshold conditions that cause them to reduce waste than may be optimal but they are always there.

Waste is built into the system. Government departments are encouraged to spend their entire budget even if they don’t need to. They have to do this to justify the same or larger budget next year. Everyone in or around the government knows this.

In corporations, there's plenty of waste that occurs as a result of someone trying to advance one's career (pointless projects that never ship, or worse yet, ship and then demand maintenance etc).

Comparing the SSA and DoL is really apples and oranges. Dealing with the SSA feels like something from the ancient past compared to other aspects of the U.S.govt.

Isn't the unemployment system run by the states? I'm sure the DOL has a lot of problems, but the fact that they issued a report on misallocation of unemployment funds overseen by the states doesn't seem like one of them.

Fraud was an expected result of generous pandemic era benefits. A system which reduced fraud would have been slower at getting benefits out to intended recipients and less effective at keeping people home to reduce Covid spread.

The article explains that the Department of Labor has already created a new system for tracking available jobs, but the Social Security Administration isn't using it.

You've got to evaluate the entire process to really assess the "inefficiencies".

I haven't read the actual report, but this article is really poor at giving me the right set of information.

Did the program deliver on its stated goals? Was the outcome an overall net positive? How positive was the outcome? How did the errors or fraud contribute against those goals? How costly are the counter measures? Are they even worth putting in place? How effective do we predict they'd be? How confident are we that they'd even work? How much delays would have resulted from putting them in place? Etc.

I like to start at least with the question: Was it a net positive?

At the very least if it was, then it was a better decision then doing nothing. Now you can dig into the details and retrospect to learn how it could be done next time in an even more effective manner.

https://archive.vn/HgmCl

Don't those vocational experts testify under oath when they make claims that there are all of those jobs that don't actually exist anymore? Is that not perjury?

Yes. But they're testifying for the Government, the same Government that has sole prosecutorial authority in these cases.

I don't think it's a good idea to view 'the Government' as a monolithic entity.

A local, elected DA could get super popular taking these experts to court over perjury concerns. That DA has no involvement in the social security process or agency at all.

I spent majority of my career implementing ERPs for commercial companies. Then I helped implement one for Canadian government and was shocked (in my previous ignorance) how much more accurate and pragmatic it was to think of it not as "I'm implementing system for various departments in a single large organization" and more like "I'm implementing a single erp for Walmart, air Canada, Canadian tire, Costco, Ontario hydro, Toronto raptors, and 100 other companies with various systems, standards, processes, Interfaces, versions, data, speeds, attitudes, cultures and relationships".

It reminds me of similar revelation when I realized that judge is not necessarily in cahoots with police, and in fact may be very humanly annoyed or persnickety with them.

Humans are humans and relationships are infinitely complex.

But that doesn't really fit with the narrative that's being pushed about how the government is an inefficient monopoly.

Perjury is essentially not prosecuted, especially against so-called expert witnesses. Essentially every party would accuse their opposing party's expert witnesses of lying about something under oath and if anyone actually suffered for it, it would become difficult to find expert witnesses. Or that's approximately the summary I heard from Popehat (Ken White) at some point.

You also have to prove it.

It's not perjury to make an incorrect statement, it's perjury to intentionally make an incorrect statement, so you have to demonstrate that it's willful, not just point out the incorrect statement.

I imagine that the vocational findings are designed to appear mechanistic, whether they are or not (and stating a mechanistic outcome isn't an untrue statement).

Perhaps the burden of proof is inverse -- require SS to enroll people in the local job that they believe exists.

…and ensure their success in it by enforcing accommodation requirements. It’s very common for the SSA to claim that someone can do a particular job that their impairments would realistically prevent.

And it is so hard to get back on the Disabilities list once you are removed.

My dad is in his 80s. He has an "90% Disability" in the form of hearing loss due to being in the army and manning missile tubes for his 20s. He kept us safe from the Russians, and he has a lot of great stories about German Women, and German Spies, and Russian Spies... to hear him tell the stories of being part of the first American military force in Germany since WW2... I know he really enjoyed it. But, training German soldiers, and running missile tests with loud sirens, left him pretty much deaf as a rock. Age didn't improve the condition.

Long story short, Dad was almost 80, and I had bought probably 4 sets of hearing aids before I realized, "Hey can't we get the VA to pay for these?" And yes, turns out we could -- but it took over a year of pestering the right people to get him qualified. The funny point here... Dad has a really hard time with automated phone systems. High-pitched voices, especially. And all these systems use female voices... When left on his own, he couldn't move the needle. "Press 7 to schedule an appointment..." yeah -- he can't hear to press the right button.

So it took a lot of my time. Lots of patience with the VA... and we got it.

The first thing we had to sign was a form saying, "No back pay, not responsible for anything in the past. Not gonna cover any past bills." OK, fine.

Then Dad offered to help a neighbor and help out at the cash register at a local gas station / bait shop over some holiday weekend. And he sold the guy at the store a horse trailer and an old pickup. And, not thinking, he just got one check for the "wages" and equipment.

Anyway all hell broke loose. Like the same people that take a year or more to get you in the door, will come down on you in a matter of weeks if you mess up. And because Dad couldn't deal with the phone calls, "Press 8 to speak to a real person to explain your claim..." he just ignored them. Dumb on his part.

So then 2 years later, we got Dad's disability payments back. They didn't offer to back-pay for the time they mistakenly kicked him off. Total shit show how hard they make it.

And the use of all this automated shit, when they know he's "90% disabled for hearing" -- no way around any of it. It's all pretty garbage. Best thing to do is just not need help. =P

https://archive.md/2022.12.27-202725/https://www.washingtonp...

If you medical records from doctors they aren’t good enough for SSDI. SSDI takes years and your money to jump through the hoops and apeal after apeal. Their game is to discourage you so you go away. Denial is the name of the game so people at SSDI have jobs.

>But after spending at least $250 million since 2012 to build a directory of 21st century jobs, an internal fact sheet shows, Social Security is not using it, leaving antiquated vocational rules in place to determine whether disabled claimants win or lose. Social Security has estimated that the project’s initial cost will reach about $300 million, audits show.

This is the kind of thing that makes it really hard for people to trust the US government with things like Healthcare. Some days I see the problems with healthcare in a much smaller country (Canada) and think those skeptics are right...

This certainly needs to be fixed.

Having said that when I think of job titles today and the “Senior Full Stack … Recruiter” who contacted me.

I don’t know what would replace it.

I think that the judge who had rendered this verdict should apply for disability themselves. Mental disability that is.

Non-paywall versions: https://wapo.st/3vhsJ8J or https://archive.vn/OCh2P

This is worth reading for the photo of the pneumatic tube operator, the nut sorters, and the list of job titles. Click "+ Show 117 more" at the bottom of the list to see them all.

I have a vivid memory from when I was a kid in Oregon around 1960 and my mom took me to the downtown department store: the pneumatic tubes.

At the checkout counter, your order slip and check or cash would go into a carrier and whoosh up to the accounting department on the second floor. Then another whoosh and you got your change and stamped receipt.

A few of my favorite jobs from the list:

  Cutter-and-Paster, Press Clippings
  Getterer
  Telegraph-Service Rater
  Vamp-Strap Ironer
  Wafer Breaker, Semiconductors

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