A common canard is that government doesn’t work. It DOES work — just often not the way intended.
If we pay people not to work (including SSI and SSDI), fewer people opt to work. It works EXACTLY as any honest economist would predict.
With SSI, one has to PROVE that one can’t work in order to receive the benefits. Ignoring the fact that the system has become too corrupt — dispensing such status far too easily — it’s an incredible anti-work incentive program. Sadly, such programs work all too well.
Salient opening paragraph of article below: Paul Hippolitus, the director of the UC Berkeley Disabled Students’ Program, recalls that when he entered the disability employment field in 1971, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated 33% of adults with disabilities worked either full or part time. In September 2015 that estimated rate was down to 20%. “After 44 years of laws, education efforts with employers, tax credits, accessibility efforts, education access—how can this possibly be?”, he asks.
How indeed.
Why is California’s Disability Unemployment Higher than in 1971?—Paul Hippolitus Explains
Former California Employment Development Department Director and author, The Autism Job Club (2015, with R. Holden)
Tuesday, November 10th, 2015
Berkeley Disabled Students’ Program , recalls that when he entered the disability employment field in 1971, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated 33% of adults with disabilities worked either full or part time. In September 2015 that estimated rate was down to 20%. “After 44 years of laws, education efforts with employers, tax credits, accessibility efforts, education access — how can this possibly be?”, he asks.
Drawing on his nearly 45 years in the field, Paul points to two dynamics. The first is the disincentive structures of the federal disability benefit programs: Supplemental Security Insurance (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). The second is shortcomings he sees in the job preparation programs for workers with disabilities.
Paul is one of our state’s experts on employment for adults with physical and development disabilities (Paul, like many of us, dislikes the term “disabilities”, but uses it as the shorthand term most widely understood today).
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To read the rest of the article, go to the link: