- Yes, there is an issue about people wanting to work but the other issue is that the global economy is too quick and efficient to tolerate your idiotic car troubles or your imbecilic grandmother's death or your moronic lack of child care (cue Scandinavia) or, and mostly, your stupid health. The economy was a Ferrari and now it's only a Honda, but either way, not much time for absences and no time at all for Keisha's learning curve. Keisha isn't just unemployed, she is completely unemployable. We can argue whether auto plants should pay $20/hr or $50/hr, but for certain there is no market for unskilled labor at all. Let me correct another grand mistake of the politicians and the talking heads in the media: this problem is likely to get much, much worse, not better, as the economy improves. There are no typos in that sentence. Read it again.
Yeah, no. THING 1) My neighbors are on disability. It took one of them 28 months, the other 18, with constant investigations and denials, before they were approved. One of them legit had an I-beam fall on him at the shipyard. This whole "you have anxiety, therefore we'll slap you on SSI forever" thing is BS. THING 2) A buddy is on disability. He's got Lyme disease. While he can occasionally work, he has to do it under the table because if his social worker can verify any real income, she yanks his payments in their entirety. Yeah - there's a government employee whose caseload includes making sure my buddy earns no money. This whole "wander from doctor to doctor like a leaf on the winds" thing is BS. THING 3) I'm no psychiatrist, certainly not the last one, but I've heard a half-dozen people on disability refer to it as "retirement." They're not confused, they're making much of the fact that they're "gaming the system" because it's their only move to reclaim their dignity. They've been officially labeled broken by the system and that system functions largely on shame to encourage them to fix themselves. Meanwhile it also denies anyone's benefits the minute they earn any money on the side - I've heard the phrase "forced retirement" a few times. So no - "Keisha" understands the difference between "disability" and "retirement." And no - "Keisha" could probably tell you what it says on her disability paperwork. Trust me - she's gotta play a lot of games with that document on pretty much a weekly basis. But you? Hypothetical shrink that lays down the urban pseudonym like it ain't no thang? Sitting there judging her and interfering with her functional plan? She's not going to share shit with you because you're clearly just part of the game. And then we go and then we go And then I go "You know, my mom sounds a lot like this guy when she's on an upswing." Physician, heal thyself.Narcissism has been on a steady rise since the end of WWII and went parabolic in the 1980s; all social policies have to be understood in the context of that psychology, that culture.
As long as they-- and the inmates and the etc-- are munching on food stamps, weed, and Xboxes, nearly illiterate but keeping their nonsense within their neighborhoods, the rest of us can go on with our lives.
It's probably unfair to bring up something the author said outside of this original post, but in this case it's so relevant that it bears bringing up (NB this link is to a rehost of the article, since TLP later took it down). The Terrible, Awful Truth About Supplemental Security Income: (where TLP responds to the criticism that "Fed Gov't as pez dispenser" doesn't work for me, because I can't walk in and just collect disability payments) ...you might say, which brings us to the whole point: it's not for you. It is for the entire class of people we label as poor, about whom comic Greg Geraldo joked: "it's easy to forget there's so much poverty in the United States, because the poor people look just like black people." Include inner city whites and hispanics, and this is how the government fights the War On Poverty. In the inner cities, the system is completely automated. Poor person rolls in to the clinic, fills out the paperwork (doc signs a stack of them at the end of the day), he sees a therapist therapist, a doctor, +/- medications, and gets his benefits. There's no accountability, at all. I have never once been asked by the government whether the person deserved the money, the basis for my diagnosis-- they don't audit the charts, all that exists is my sig on a two page form. The system just is. For a less brooding/sardonic and more academic and sourced take on the phenomenon federal disability payments doubling over the last 15 years, check out "Trends with Benefits", an episode from This American Life. My point, your neighbors's experiences notwithstanding, the disability payment system has and is massively expanding. Like in Hale County, Alabama, where nearly one in four working adults is on disability. I understand. I've met dishwashers who got paid under the table not because they were illegal immigrants trying to evade authorities but because any above-the-table income would threaten their disability checks. Freakonomics, though a flawed book, stated quite blandly that weird incentives create weird behaviors. As for your Thing the Third, I admit: This blogger oftentimes loses me with his essays that seem more like free associations than a rigorously researched and sourced argument. And if TLP gets going on Narcissism, then all bets are off and after reading it, you can't help but conclude that everyone everywhere in the United States is living a fake life of self-curated branding with FaceSnaps and foodie pics. But I'm fascinated with the concept of medicalizing poverty and I don't know if I have encountered anyone discussing the merits of such a hypothesis.THING 1) My neighbors are on disability. It took one of them 28 months, the other 18, with constant investigations and denials, before they were approved. One of them legit had an I-beam fall on him at the shipyard. This whole "you have anxiety, therefore we'll slap you on SSI forever" thing is BS.
II. "That's not how it works for me!"
THING 2) A buddy is on disability. He's got Lyme disease. While he can occasionally work, he has to do it under the table because if his social worker can verify any real income, she yanks his payments in their entirety. Yeah - there's a government employee whose caseload includes making sure my buddy earns no money. This whole "wander from doctor to doctor like a leaf on the winds" thing is BS.
Goddamn it. I knew that guy. Compass Mental Health. There, and he was also the one lone psychiatrist at the rural clinic in Gray's Harbor County. He also did some private practice for the rich kidz. Rich kids? 90 minutes. Downtown Seattle? 10 minutes each. Gray's Harbor? 5-7 minutes, once a week. In '97. Goddamn it. Yep. Social workers were making $17 an hour. And he was making enough to justify driving eight hours round trip every week for one day a week. Doing state work. Fuck you. Badged.An inner city psychiatrist sees 20-40 people a day. 15 minute med checks, which in a city is 5 or 10 minutes. "Any major symptoms? Suicidality? Side effects? Here's your refill." You try and pull that off in a suburban area and the Feds will be shooting your dog to access your backdoor.
And there's plenty of money to be made for the entrepreneurial. If you want to be rich in inner city psychiatry (and you don't have to be a doc), you open a clinic and hire 1 psychiatrist and lots of (talk) therapists, usually social workers. Medicaid will pay for 1 therapy visit per week (around $60/hr) and a 15 minute med check with the doc ($40/visit). The doc usually gets salaried but proportionally takes 50% of that. Let him have it all. The therapist, however, gets very little-- $20/hr.
Fuck me? I just wanna hear you think out loud kb. ;) I'm having difficulty contributing to your hipster-hate post. Because although I feel like I have something to say, I don't know what it is. Why is that? And even curiouser, I feel somehow these two disparate conversations related.