Same for right to repair, universal healthcare, SaaS etc… Companies much prefer to spend 100 million make things difficult than using that 100 million to make things easy. As long as we lose.
Well, if people could see that positive change is completely possible, they might get the idea that they could actually demand that change. We can’t have that.
The difference is companies generally profit from their activities.
They’ll gladly spend 100k fighting something that would cost 10k, because that 10k is in a different excel sheet that means more than the 100k in the other. They consider it being “smart” and it looks good on paper but makes everything worse for us.
Is this true though? Because I could foresee if you had no checks and balances on disability you would end up with a lot of dishonest people exploiting the system and then overwhelming it, making it way more expensive than just looking after disabled people. The part where people who genuinely need it get their claims denied for the sake of covering the cost of the people who denied it is straight up evil though
Have you actually looked into the cost of this proposed grifting? Like welfare it’s actually hard to “take advantage of” because it’s so little money. People underestimate the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars, and these help programs, even if some take advantage, are still drastically cheaper than all the enforcement we put around making sure people don’t grift. This is true for welfare and healthcare. The American system costs more than most countries per capita because of rich grifters, not poor grifters.
It’s just the optics, and people prefer to spend more than feel like someone is getting a leg up. It’s the entire platform of conservative governments around the world and it’s a sham. Show me numbers that are actually impacted if say, 20% of people are cheating compared to all the monej we spend trying to drive that number down. The numbers are so laughably low it’s not even a rounding error in budgets.
1 million dollars if every dollar was a second equates to a little over 10 days. 1 billion dollars is a little over 30 years!!!
Disability is hard to take advantage of because there are checks and balances. You get more money on disability than on unemployment welfare and there are plenty of people on unemployment who would take more money if they could get it. Having an open door policy on disability gives that opportunity.
We spend waaaaay more on checks and balances than if we let the occasional grifter through. It’s not that it should be completely without oversight, but we waste astronomical amounts on attempting to make it “fair”, and then the rich take advantage of that and grift anyway (politicans).
The amount of money grifters would get is so tiny in the US budget that it’s not worth even talking about. But a lot of politicians platform is to convince YOU someone else is the reason for all your troubles, and blow the impact of these grifters out of proportion so they can keep themselves in the loop and profit
It will only be occasional until news spreads. Then it will become common.
It won’t, which was my entire point. People make you believe that, and then ask you to pay THEM to keep the grifters away, grifting you in the process. This is literally how healthcare works in the US.
My wife is on disability.
We worked with an attorney to submit the application and go through the process. When she initially applied, she was denied, as I would guess most people are.
She gathered paperwork and submitted it for the appeal. We had a hearing scheduled, and on the day of the hearing, I took the day off work to take her into the city.
When we got to the lobby of the building, we walked up to the security desk told the guard where we were going. Without looking up he asked which one of us was applying for disability, but before we could answer he looked up and said, “oh. She is”, which seemed a bit unnecessary to me, but it gives you an idea of her situation.
So we get up to the office where the hearing would take place, and we check in, and there is a bit of confusion. My wife's attorney goes to talk to them, and comes back to say that our hearing was cancelled. He said he's waiting to talk to the judge to find out what's going on. When the judge comes out, she apologizes and says someone was supposed to contact us to let us know the hearing was cancelled. She said she had reviewed the paperwork and decided in my wife's favor so the hearing was unnecessary. When the attorney told us, he said it was pretty amazing because the judge rejects *every* appeal. He didn't want to tell us that before the hearing because he didn't want us to give up, but he said he wasn't expecting it to succeed. Now, my wife submitted the same information in the initial application. If that information was enough to convince the judge we didn't need to bother with the appeal hearing to approve her disability, why the hell was the initial application rejected?When my partner tried to apply for disability, she was initially denied. So she appealed with the help of a lawyer to try to put things in her favor.
The lawyer showed up with a massive stack of papers, said “wow, this is the most proof I’ve seen, this should go smoothly.”
My partner goes into the hearing. She comes out quite quickly, and tells me what happened. The judge confirmed her identity, asked her about her transgender-related healthcare, then said there’s no more questions, it seems like she can work, and that the appeal was over.
The lawyer said nothing in the appeal. On the way out, he said “huh, I thought that was a sure thing.” We never heard from the law agency again. They were the biggest agency in a major city.
Of course the denial letter didn’t mention being trans at all, instead it said she’s just lazy, and even had a claim that her medical history is likely faked.
It’s an amazing system – very successful in denying people benefits.
I work with a number of disabled people and most of them were denied initially. I think they deny a majority of them the first time around just to weed out those who aren’t serious and resourceful.
“resourceful”.
This is exactly the problem.
When everything is tied to money, being poor is a de facto crime.
Family has a disability attorney in it. Basically because they almost always get denied as a practice. It’s a bit weird.
I support UBI because I am a fiscal conservative.
There is, no joke, a surprising amount of libertarian support.
The two most prominent libertarian supporters of a UBI are Matt Zwolinski, a libertarian philosophy professor at the University of San Diego, and the economist Michael Munger.
(I think it’s important to clarify that I’m left-libertarian, not an ‘edgy fascist’ an-cap like those who’ve co-opted the label in the US.)
Just to let you know a left-libertarian is called an Anarchist.
There are a whole bunch of different ideologies in that quadrant of the political compass (for lack of a better visual aid), and anarchism is only one of them.
Yeah, it does make me nervous because it feels like a lot of libertarian ideology around UBI involves getting rid of social security, food stamps, etc. etc. without guaranteeing UBI will cover basic survival.
without guaranteeing UBI will cover basic survival.
If it fails at that, it’s just “UI” and thus doesn’t count, by definition.
Yeah, big true.
In Australia we have a system called the NDIS and while it still requires all of the above once you’re on it there is a little freedom to decide how to spend the funds that you are allocated for support.
Despite the fraud percentage rate being in single digits (even including genuine mistakes) people are still up in arms about it because they’re brainwashed morons who don’t understand that fighting this minuscule amount of fraud costs more than accepting it. They just want disabled people, whom they see as beneath them, to suffer.
Meanwhile, we spent the last decade handing out billions in corporate welfare and that was perfectly okay. We’re also going to purchase several hundred billion in US subs and piss off our neighbours because of “China” fear mongering.
We also had robodebt.
I’m in the UK and have a number of chronic illnesses that would be debilitating on their own. All together it’s honestly a struggle to survive. When I was first diagnosed 17 years ago we had a labour government. I applied for Disability living allowance (now called PIP) and Employment and support allowance and based on the medical evidence I submitted I was declared “permanently unable to work due to disability”. I was to inform them of any changes to my health but otherwise I was done. No more assessments, no more forms. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was enough for food, clothes, rent and utilities.
Then the Tory government took over and decided that my genetic, incurable and life threatening illnesses might somehow resolve themselves if they just kept bugging me enough. So every 3 years for the last 15 years I’ve had to go through increasingly lengthy and humiliating assessments, conducted by staff who are less and less qualified to make these conditions. I’m currently 15 months into my latest review. Over a year of stress, uncertainty and worry on top of what I already deal with. By the time they make their decision (and there is absolutely no guarantee the decision will be in my favour) I’ll have about a years peace before having to go through this dehumanising process again.
It’s disgusting.
It takes 15 fucking months for you to get what you deserve? I thought German bureaucracy is slow but damn. I hope for you that this changes. That’s disgusting.
I and my wife are going through this now. SSDI is all like “nah, we dont believe you’ve lost your sight”. This is why I wholeheartedly advocate for violence as a means for change because NO OTHER WAY WORKS.
You first hot shot
Weak
Would you follow me into battle?
What could ever go wrong if just got their support approved, no questions asked?
(not sure if that was sarcastic)
If it truly ever got to that point, then yes, things like spot check audits to act as a deterrent could make sense. But when our current system penalizes a community for abusing a privilege they don’t even have, it’s hard to look at the huge and unnecessary costs and say “we’re making the most out of our tax dollars.”
And yet I know someone, and know people who know someone(s), who is on disabity that shouldn’t be. Same for people who have been denied of jerked around for
Good people are struggling and suffering that don’t want to but do need the extra help. How does that build a fair system? You try so hard to prevent anyone taking advantage but they will always slip through the cracks somehow. The solution should not be to punish everyone - and it impacts us all. We are one stroke of bad luck away from being unable to work for whatever reason.
It makes more sense when you realize that half the lawmakers voting on these bills hate poor people. Like a lot.
In my neck of the woods, the infamous disability attorney Eric C. Conn made his practice and of course cleaned up through some crooked means. Though to his credit, cut through all this bureaucratic bullshit and delivered relief to a bunch of folks in dire need of it. In that respect he’s a freaking humanitarian.
Sadly, when he was finally busted all those claims got thrown back onto the dumpster fire and many got denied by default or are still in dispute.That can’t be right.
Maybe in upfront costs, but not the cost of losing a taxpayer
Yeah and there’s also that thing where people will abuse a system that doesn’t have any checks.
Certainly we could be living in a utopia if no one ever tried to exploit the system for personal gain, but unfortunately a lot of people suck.
I’ve lived next to people who abused the system, all these checks don’t even slow them down. They’re practiced at this shit and know exactly what to say to get the maximum benefit claim. All it does is make it more difficult for honest people who aren’t gaming the system.
And even after they do that, the people STILL try to put him back on the ballot
Yeesh, a “stage tribunal,” it sounds like something from the pre-christian Roman ages of throwing “unfit” people to the lions. I’ll never know why, but our best talent as humans is finding more ways to bungle simple processes with bloated amounts of red tape and hoops to jump through - especially when the people who most need the benefits are least able to navigate those things.
And the death penalty costs more than living in prison for the rest of your life. Sometimes the most profitable/cheapest way is the good way.
I wouldn’t call life imprisonment in any way “good” but I take your point.
