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Comment by rowls66 | Hacker News Reader

This article is nearly 15 years old (2013). According to center on budget and policy priorities, the number of SSDI beneficiaries has fallen from is peak in 2014. So this article was written about a trend that peaked a year after its publication and had reversed over the past 15 years. Odd that it would be reposted today.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/social-securit...

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I think someone may have wanted to bring more attention to this because contrary to surface level opinion and the peak on the surface; there is actually a growing number of people who meet the requirements to be eligible for disability but who do not receive those benefits.

There's a longstanding fear, and one that seems well founded, where those that meet the requirements won't actually file for it because doing so will have an adverse effect on any potential future employment.

Disability discrimination during hiring is almost impossible to prove with AI these days.

I've heard horror stories from some people at the shelter where I volunteer. One guy apparently had a county representative check the wrong boxes on benefit documents by mistake during welfare processing, saying a person was disabled because of a health condition (sleep apnea iirc) when they weren't disabled or receiving disability, and those people couldn't even find retail work afterwards.

AI has opened the floodgates to all sorts of discrimination as a result of the weights and decision-making being a black box with no accountability.

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