Posted on 07/23/2015 2:55:14 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Goose Creek resident Kelly Schuler said he was earning a six-figure income in corporate sales when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and after his symptoms became apparent and he lost his job, Social Security Disability Insurance payments became his financial lifeline.
Now he finds himself among the 11 million Americans who could see their monthly checks slashed by 19 percent next year, unless federal lawmakers address a looming shortfall in the Social Security fund that pays disability benefits.
The main Social Security fund that pays retiree and survivor benefits is not expected to run short for another two decades, the government said Wednesday, but the financial challenge facing the two Social Security funds is similar....
(Excerpt) Read more at postandcourier.com ...
I don’t know if you’re talking about VA disability or SSDI, but SSDI can be ridiculously easy to get. Of all the people I know on SSDI, only a handful are actually disabled. The rest lost their jobs. Bingo! They’re on SSDI.
Different pot of money for a different reason. SSI is supposed to be for people that just can’t work. Veteran’s disability is compensation for permanent injuries incurred while serving in the military. Both systems have problems. People shouldn’t be able to declare themselves to be adult “babies” and sit around in diapers all day. Sleep apnea shouldn’t be a service related diagnosis without some cranial facial or neck injury.
There would have been massive civil unrest (just the crime caused by desperation) if Obama didn’t let all those people onto another car of the gravy train. As these job losses continue, how is anyone supposed to pay for anything with $0 income (and little chance of earning any)?
A lot of that demographic was involuntarily retired by the Greater Depression; many co-workers in that age group assume they’d never be hired again if they lost their jobs. Corporate America has no more use for people accustomed to the “before-times” salaries, benefits, and work schedules...
I agree 100%: The writing has been on the wall for at least thirty years. Heck, twenty years ago I realized the government would try to take my 401k eventually; as a result I have pushed all my post tax savings for the last fifteen years into a private investment account. I don’t need SS, a pension, my IRA or 401k, I’m in my 40s and set for life with a nice cash flow from money I’ve already paid taxes on, I could retire tomorrow if I wanted to and live very comfortably. So I have little sympathy for those who claimed they couldn’t see it coming. The warnings have been out there since Reagan; I made huge sacrifices in lifestyle to sack away the money I did, and I have often wondered if it would be worth it. Seeing many of my peers and those a little older totally dependent on meager SS income, and wondering what will be left for them in the next decade, I know it was worth it. If anyone says they didn’t see it coming, they weren’t paying attention.
You don’t have to accept ‘blame’ to accept ‘responsibility’.
Trust me. None of us will have a choice but to do exactly that if we don’t turn around this ship soon.
Thousands of people who were working through their disability (to their credit)decided it wasn’t worth the effort. They simply decided to go on the dole.
Disability has become the new “I can’t find a job” refuge.
Yes, likely even for some of them not so close to retirement. Just maybe too old for that job they’d have to work so much for. Maybe laid off for someone much younger and cheaper.
There are motives aplenty. What disturbs me are the types of disabilities. From what I’ve been able to glean, an average 25% are in the “psychological” category. It begins to make one wonder if all these daytime TV lawyers hawking for disability cases aren’t also running consultant schools or have medical staff/affiliates that school the litigants on how to “qualify.”
Or PTSD...
I find it quite coincidental that the rate of PTSD went through the roof right after it was declared part of the disability compensation.
(And yes. I personally know of one soldier who faked PTSD to get more money. Never saw combat. The worst WAR-RELATED thing that ever happened to him was the last episode of M.A.S.H. The problem is that he’s required to get care for it and the meds really did screw him up. He was a normal man before that. Now he’s a mess.)
SSI is for people who never paid in to the system before they started sucking off the tit.
SSDI folks did pay in.
For some. For the mentally and severely physically ill, it is a lifesaver. SSDI is what funds the developmentally handicapped baby, the severe schitzophrenic, the car accident traumatic brain injured, the industrial accident cripple. There is a lot of good in SSDI.
True statement ... every newspaper every morning carries a story of a tragedy (usually a death) that could be boiled down to someone "didn't see it coming"
MY contention is, .. it was not put before me
EVERYone is not astute and aware at all times about every thing
Some of us had blinders ... work, family, church, food and bills
Okay what about disabled vets. I was only 19 when I became disabled while in the military. I went to college received multiple degrees, and I own my own business. (As of today, my business is still operating as I am at home taking care of a parent with advanced Alzheimer’s, whom is to be placed in a nursing home sometime in the next 45 days.) But there are people whom I know that live on SSD, who are truly disabled and wish to work, but employers since the economy went sour do not want to make the necessary reasonable accommodations to hire them when they can hire someone whom needs no accommodations for employment. It was in 1898 the German Government under Wilhem von Bismarck whom developed the equivalent to what is the US Social Security benefits for Old Age pensions and disability.
The Obama Administration has glutted the Social Security Disability Program with people whom are not qualified - in order to collapse the system.
Fine. Then they’re owed exactly what they paid in...
Oh wait. The reality is that seniors usually get back much more than they paid in.
Hence... the Ponzi scheme.
My mother is getting $750 a month. She also gets free housing, utilities, medical, and food.
She has NEVER, ever paid in that much. If she takes after my grandmother, she could be collecting that much - every month - for the next 25-30 years. (Grandma’s still alive... and collecting as well)
Somebody has to pay that bill and most seniors are getting back much more than they ever contributed.
Is it humanitarian to care for our elderly? Of course. Moral? Absolutely. Do we love and value them? Definitely.
But the numbers do not add up.
Math is not moral. Math doesn’t care about you or me. Math has no pity or mercy or religion or political affiliation.
Hopes and best wishes don’t pay the bills.
I like it when Puerto Ricans get disability simply ‘cause they speak Spanish! I kid you not.
Then the parents receive a monthly "crazy check" for each and every one of their little urchins who they have declared "disabled."
I had blinders too, including church/missionary work, family, military service including deployments halfway around the world. It took extraordinary effort to try to be aware, try to balance the risks, and to stand by the decisions I made to get an education, and to eat rice and beans for years to pay off all debt, to rent a small apartment and drive a beater car for decades so I could invest half my income while all my peers had nice homes. I could very easily have made different decisions too, I would never claim it was obvious, just that it was a known risk, and with life so fraught with challenges one never knows which risks to prioritize, but ultimately we have to live with the decisions we make.
If he would have told them the truth, he never would have been accepted. He planned for his, from the very beginning. His father worked for the VA and was service connected for a few other things.
I am a ways off from retirement and with everything I and my employers have paid in to social security and medicare (read what I could have invested on my own) I am clocking in at $240,000.00. I will see nothing close to that in return from the gubmint.
But no cuts to welfare, I suspect.
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