…Like I was
NO! Let’s ALL suck on the government teat!
Even though I would probably have a higher standard of living if I wasn't so dang stubborn.
What is SSDI? Social Security Disability Income?
It used to go against my morals, but then I realized that the Gov’t is NOT a moral enterprise.
If someone in a helicopter were flying over your town, dropping $100 bills, wouldn’t you step outside to grab some? That is my view of Gov’t now.
At this point, I’ve worked nearly 20 years and had countless thousands stolen from me by the government during that time. Worked all through college, too...tutoring, construction, running summer camps for kids, threw lumber at a sawmill 8 hours a day in 90 degree heat for three years, etc.
How many never work a day and go on disability from the moment they turn 18?
It’s my money. The government stole it from me, but somehow, I should be too moral to legally take it back? My feet and back have been horrible for 7-8 years now, but I keep working like a sucker. Meanwhile, I see “disabled” people playing basketball at the local courts and buying expensive food with EBT’s all the time.
That said, I won’t do it just because I would still feel like a mooch. But, if I had a little less pride...
I’ve likened it to going out to a restaurant with people you are only slightly acquainted with and everybody splits the bill evenly. My dining behavior doesn’t change in such circumstances and, while I’d prefer to pay individually, I don’t change what I would typically order.
Perhaps we all need to become the 500 lb guy who devours everything on the menu starting with the most expensive items and sits there all day until people stop wanting to split the check.
Did you attempt to find a cure for your back pain? [not pills]
When filling for the bennies, use the spanish language forms, they rubber stamp those....
A question to all that see stealing as OK. Are you stealing from “the government” or “the taxpayers” (aka the 40 some percent that actually pay taxex)?
The other path, the one most working guys take when they find themselves in intractable untreatable pain, is to take drugs to keep working. No way was I going to do that I knew exactly how that goes. First you wear out every doctor you can find until no doctor will give you a scrip. By then you're an addict and you need the drugs whether you have the pain or not, and you still have the pain, and you start using street drugs.
I took the path that almost no one else does. I stopped working. No drugs, no work, no addiction and no taking money from the government.
To your point, which is essentially to Cloward and Piven the system and make it collapse, I began to think that might be a rational strategy about four or five years ago seeing the trajectory of politics in this country. But there's no need to do anything to try to collapse the system. 0bamaCare is going to do that without any intentional help. It should be painfully obvious about a year from now.
Ironically, after 26 years of 24/7 pain, my back and neck problems began to resolve themselves and now, two years later, there is only a faint hint of it left.
I work for a public school district. We have parents who either manage or attempt to get their children on SSDI for all manner of disabilities related to their poor school performance. This has become the new “welfare”.
Oh, and, No Thank You. I do not want to live off the teat of others who work hard and pay taxes. I would rather fend for myself.
I blame my current tinnitus (constant ringing in the ears) on the years of almost-daily use of ibuprofen and (less often) acetaminophen. Though I have almost stopped using those meds, sometimes it is still necessary, and the next day the tinnitus is always much worse.
I should have limited my OTC pain med usage to two days per week.
The points I intended to make were:
Get Federal money and distribute it charitably. Our ideas of how it should be spent locally are much better than Uncle Sam’s.
We should be getting our money out of the hands of Washington by whatever [legal] means possible. Times have changed. But one constant is that morality depends on the situation. What is manslaughter in peacetime is valor in war. What was mooching in the 1970s is strategy in today’s conflict. Whatever amount one can get from DC and distribute intelligently means less available for them to use on other less-intelligent pursuits.
The post wasn’t about me. (I think my sore back is what writers call an allegory or something). But thanks for the words of concern, nonetheless.
Had I been a better writer, I might not have had to settle for being a nuclear physicist!
my sil had been on two rounds of disability....once when she was very young and stayed on it for all the years her children were growing up and then suddenly, she could work....but that only lasted a few years...then poof....she was disabled again...
as everybody knows, if you collect disability, you get a lot more money than just regular SS at age 62....its really crime almost...