[quote=bearishgurl] …..Regarding social security (OASDI and death benefits), I have posted before that I believe the current laws unjustly enrich those who never worked, did not work the required amount of quarters and minors whose deceased parent did not work enough or for a high enough wage to justify the benefits paid to them. For these reasons, I am wondering if the fund is sustainable enough for those who DID contribute the required amount of quarters of FICA to be able to receive OASDI benefits when their time comes. SS has been totally mismanaged, IMO.[/quote]
BG, with you on this one, and as you well know, I’ve ranted on this topic a few times. I’m so tired of hearing politicians go on about whether or not there will be enough to cover SS payments and Medicare for retiring seniors, yet NEVER mention the other groups that are sucking off the SS teat. There are now more applications for SS disability than there are for SS retirement payments. That’s insane! This assault on the system by the allegedly disabled has been going on since at least the late 70s, and both political parties have stood by and done absolutely nothing. This is not what the SS system was set up to do, and if the politicians decided that there had to be some sort of program for disabled Americans, they should have set up an entirely new and separate program. The umbrella has been enlarged, over and over, to the size of a circus tent, but there’s no fabric left to cover the frame.
They need to look at survivors’ benefits carefully, also. Okay, I have to make a really humiliating confession here, but please don’t let this dilute the message I am trying to send by doing so: I was watching an episode of MTV’s “Teen Mom” recently (There! I said it.), and Farrah is trying to get her 15 month-old Social Security benefits. For the uninformed, Farrah is a 17 year-old high-school dropout with a super-Christian ultra-psychotic ex-cheerleader mother who was arrested for bloodying Farah’s nose (actually, I was cheering the mom on when she did that, but she really is nucking futs!) and a baby girl who has had accidents from being left in dangerous situations so many times that betting pools have been set up in Vegas on when the kid’s going to land up in the PICU. Well, it seems that Farrah got preggers, despite getting As in her advanced-placement abstinence-only education course. She cut off contact with the 18 year-old father 3 mos. into her pregnancy, and he died in an MVA two months prior to the baby’s birth. Farrah has refused to allow the baby any contact with her father’s family, despite their attempts to do so. However, this season we were treated to harrowing scenes of an overwhelmed Farrah struggling to make it as a single teen mom (“It’s not faaaaairrr”, she sobs at regular intervals), and increasingly sentimental revisionist tales of her history with Derek (the father), ultimately revealing that Farrah plans to apply for Social Security Survivor benefits for her daughter “who deserves them”. Great! Taxpayers now get to foot the bill for at least 21 years of SS payments to a kid (actually the kid’s mother) whose sperm donor paid roughly $2.91 into the system.
Okay, I’m pissed off enough about this. But now there will be how many other 15 yr-olds out there, lucky enough to have deceased baby daddies, making a beeline for the nearest SS office so they can cash in on this bonanza. In fact, I predict some sperm donor homicide in cases where the father hasn’t had the decency to croak before his time.
Then there are the television shows and news reports on freaks of nature like Octomom and the Kirton family of “Autism x 6” who reveal how they struggle through their ordeal with NO government aid at all, but then let it slip that their offspring receive social security disability payments for ADHD and Asperger’s Syndrome.
The Social Security Administration’s definition of qualifying disability is as follows: “…condition must be severe enough to prevent them from doing any kind of work for which they are suited”. ANY kind of work for which they are SUITED. That doesn’t mean work that you have performed in the past, or the profession in which you got your degree. It means if you cannot work as an electrician, or as a nurse, or as a draftsman, you may have to take a job as a file clerk or a machine operator. Total disability in its genuine form is not often encountered. In FY 2009, there were over 2.8 million initial applications for disability benefits, over 430,000 more than FY 2008. In FY 2008, the number of initial applications exceeded FY ’07’s by 100,000. Does anyone else have difficulty believing that, in 2008, almost 3 million people developed a condition or sustained an injury that made them umnable to perform any type of work at all? Or that between 2007 and 2008, the number of these conditions/injuries increased by 400%?
But the Social Security Administration continues to approve the applications, and make the payments. Believe it or not, obesity is a qualifying condition, and lawyers recommend that their non-obese patients gain 60 or 70 pounds to increase their chances, not only at approval of benefits for a co-morbid condition, but at a judgement that will not be reviewed in the future, since obesity is so difficult to treat.
I can’t imagine that the fund is large enough to sustain anything NOW, much less years from now. I find it shocking enough that these kinds of payments are being made to individuals who have made little or no contribution to the fund. If lawmakers are ignoring this area of the SS crisis or, worse yet, totally unaware of it, the fallout will be devastating.
BTW, here’s a link to an interesting article published in the Washington Post last March during the health care debate. It’s about a Tea Party leader/activist, quite vocal in his calls against government intervention and interference in the lives of Americans, who apparently doesn’t object to intervention in the form of monthly disability checks. I’m experiencing some doubts regarding his claims of total disability in light of the work he does with his antigovernment group and the blog he manages to maintain. Perhaps I just don’t have a heart….
