Longest sustained rise in people too sick to work since 1990s, says thinktank

Cracking down on "malingering" will drive these people to jump through the hoops for disability rather than actually pushing them into the workforce.

We see a related issue in the US--conservative obsession with pushing them into the labor force. Hint: most of those people are either taking care of someone else (and pushing them into the labor force will dump that other person into the state system, costing the state more), or are those who are marginally functional physically but fully there mentally--whose time is much better spent in school learning some sort of knowledge skill rather than minimally productive physical labor.

A problem in these situations is that all sides cheat, in reality. And once the finger pointing starts, the communication is damaged, and real problems are put into buckets along with "malingering"

Oh yeah, and with rising obesity and paternal/maternal age generally getting later and later I would be unsurprised if there was an increasing rate of actual disability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factitious_disorder_imposed_on...

The article is light on details - and misses a link to the primary source discussed - but emphasizes the degree to which the UK diverges from other countries studied in terms of labor-market participation post-COVID.

Missing is any discussion of how the UK's life (and quality-of-life) expectations and rates of disease and disability differ from other countries. The UK has notably high rates of obesity, poor diet, and low rates of physical activity compared to other (non-US) G7 nations. It's also got a National Health System that delivers above-average access to care and pretty good outcomes (but which is struggling with labor and demographic pressures.)

Forget malingering, I want to know if the problem here is just that people in the UK are less healthy than in other countries studied, and to what degree this may be offset with better access to care that inflates the share of the population out of the labor market. That might be a prelude to a more honest conversation about society's priorities than a "malingering" framing that blames the disabled.

What you've gotta do is trick them into it. Just sneak a little exercise into their daily routines without them noticing. You do that by making them live in walkable cities.