Can a Nation Built By Giants Survive the Disability Industrial Complex?

Flopping Aces ^ | 02-09-25 | Vince

[Starman417]

Vivek Ramaswamy got himself in some hot water a couple of weeks ago when he tweeted about American culture. He’s wrong on the big picture, but his comments about American workers hit a nerve…

While the US Constitution and free market capitalism set the foundations for American prosperity, it took a rugged, passionate, free people to build it. From George Washington to George Washington Carver to millions of other Americans, the United States carved out a continent of forests that seemed to go on forever, fertile plains, vast mountain ranges, and scorching hot deserts.  Over time American frontiersmen, settlers, and entrepreneurs forged a country that seemed to have all of God’s blessings in abundance.

Conditions were rarely easy for most Americans throughout most of our history. Coal miners spent 12 – 16 hour shifts in dangerous mines in which they sometimes couldn’t even stand up. Frontiersmen built a homestead and a farm out of a thick Appalachian forest while fighting brutal winters and a tenacious Indian population. Slaves toiled for years at backbreaking work during freezing winters and boiling summers. At the end of the 19th century over 50% of Americans still lived and worked as farmers, a far more dangerous job than most people understand. The Industrial Revolution brought sweatshops and drove a thirst for steel, trains, and petroleum, industries that brought new dangers.

One sometimes has to marvel that the colonies survived long enough to coalesce and challenge the British for independence and then grow and prosper (mostly) for over 200 years as it changed the world.

Were the Americans who carved a nation out of a continent somehow different from Americans today? Were the Americans who crisscrossed a continent with railroads, telephone lines, and highways so different than Americans today? Were the Americans who won two world wars and sent a man to the moon so different than Americans today? Were the Americans who invented the mechanical reaper, air conditioning, vulcanized rubber, and the microchip so different than Americans today? Not based on DNA they weren’t. But that doesn’t mean they were the same. While the DNA of the American people today is no different than that of the people who invented the elevator or the light bulb, the American people writ large certainly appear to be.

Go back a little more than one generation and it seems like Americans were something of another species. Compared to 2025, they appear to be relative supermen. In 1970 there were 79 million people working in the United States supporting 1.5 million workers on Disability Insurance (SSDI). That means that one person out of every 52 workers was on Disability… Fast forward 5 decades and it seems as if the country has turned on its side. By 2024 the number of Americans working had risen by 100% to 161 million people. During that same period however, workers receiving disability insurance skyrocketed up 380% to 7.2 million. Today, instead of one out of every 53 workers being on disability, it’s one in 22! That number is particularly interesting because the United States of 1970 was a far grittier place than the United States of 2025.

First off, the United States in 2025 is a much different workplace than the one that existed in 1970. In 1970 fully 25% of the American workforce worked in manufacturing while 50% worked in the service industry. Today, 8% of the American workforce works in manufacturing while over 70% of workers work in the service industry. Given that designing a website, taking an order at Chili’s, or greeting a guest at Marriott is generally less dangerous than welding together various pieces of a Ford Ranger or operating a blast furnace at a US Steel plant, America should be a safer place to work. And indeed it is. The death rate for American workers in 1970 was 18 per every 100,000 workers. By 2023 that rate had dropped to 3.5, a decline of 80%.

But of course, work is not the only place where one gets hurt. Today, virtually everywhere Americans go everything seems safer. Cars have seatbelts, antilock breaks, and airbags. Houses have GFCI circuit breakers in bathrooms and kitchens and smoke detectors in almost every room. Lawn darts are but a distant memory and towns across the country require helmets for bicycle riding and virtually every appliance and medicine comes plastered with book-length warning labels. At the end of the day, America has become a far safer place to live and work than it has been at any time in its history.

But somehow in that much safer America, the total of people listed as disabled and receiving disability payments has skyrocketed:  The government spends more on disability than on food stamps and welfare combined.  American workers paid .5% of their paychecks for SSDI when it began 70 years ago, but in 2022 they paid 2%.  That means that $2 out of every $100 an American worker earns goes to support someone not working.

[scrabblehack]

I think every hotel and motel has a lift chair for the swimming pool — sometimes more than one. Some of them look like they don’t even work.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone using one.

[Bronzy]

I do not see Unemployment insurance deducted from the paychecks I post for my employer.
However, quarterly I file unemployment taxes owed and paid by the employer.
Federal taxes, Social Security, Medicare, State Income and County taxes are deducted from the employee paychecks. Those payroll taxes are matched by the employer. Note, some states do not have an income tax.
End of year I file Federal Unemployment taxes owed by the employer. Perhaps some states charge the employee an unemployment payroll tax.

[Persevero]

I believe it’s labelled FICA

[Persevero]

On my pay stubs I see UI for unemployment insurance and SDI for state disability insurance. Long term disability is federal and comes from social security which is I think the FICA ding

[Bronzy]

FICA is not one deduction – it’s a combination of Social Security and Medicare taxes. FICA helps fund both Social Security and Medicare programs,
which provide benefits for retirees, the disabled, and children.

That I looked up.

When I had a job at a larger company, I was offered the choice of personal disability insurance coverage to be deducted from my pay. Being young at the time, I declined the offer. It is good to have but young people seldom look ahead.