Disability is not a medical problem. Disability is an employment problem. "Disability" is how our society says "essentially unemployable". And by "essentially" I mean "intrinsically": it is a property of this person that they are so undesirable to employers that requiring them to compete on the labor market is a death sentence.
Did you read the article I linked?
Yes, after my original reply; see edits.
Yes, "disability" means you can't work, for whatever reason. But it still seems we should be able to distinguish between disability due primarily to individual medical problems and disability due primarily to job-market problems -- either mismatches between the market and the workforce, or an overall shortage of jobs.
(The example combining back problems and no college degree is both, and has potential solutions on both medical and education sides.)
Yes, some of these disabilities (of both types) are incurable... but some can be cured, and we're more likely to find cures if we identify the problem correctly.
But it still seems we should be able to distinguish between disability due primarily to individual medical problems and disability due primarily to job-market problems
That's what I'm trying to encourage you to relinquish. There is no distinction between "due primarily to individual medical problems" and "disability due primarily to job-market problems". Because there is no concept of disability except as pertains to the exigencies of making a living in a society.
Disability is entirely socially constructed by what avenues our society provides for earning a living.
The belief that there are "medical" and "non-medical" disabilities is a fond fancy of the middle class. White collar people want urgently to believe a set of things (which are not true) for reasons of reassurance:
1) The infinite fungibility of human talent, i.e. "I could grow up to be anything I want to." Projected onto people who lose their jobs due to changes in society, it becomes, "Just become something else, the way I know I could if it happened to me; prove my fantasy that anybody can do anything."
2) That the category of "disabled" is well bounded, and that they're not in it unless something physically catastrophic happens, i.e. "I am secure in my professional identity and it would take nothing less than a hugely traumatic injury or shattering illness to take it away from me; certainly not that I could wake up tomorrow and discover that my profession requires me to use a technology which I will be at a profound disadvantage in learning or using." (Which, btw, has been the basis of some quite good SF stories.)
3) That the difference in classes is education, i.e. "Well, they should just get education and they'll be like me, safe from being disabled". Keep begging the question of why they don't already have "educations".
The example combining back problems and no college degree is both, and has potential solutions on both medical and education sides.
Here's a magic wand, it simultaneously cures back problems and grants college degrees, to everyone on SSDI who has back problems and no college degree. Use it and tell me what changes.
we're more likely to find cures if we identify the problem correctly.
We know what the problem is, we've know what the problem is for over 100 years. The range of variety of human endeavors at which one can make a living in an increasingly industrialized capitalist society will only shrink; as the variety of types of work shrinks, people without aptitude will find themselves rendered uncompetitive and the remainder will have to compete ever harder for the remaining jobs; as competition increases in the labor market, wages plummet.
The jobs went away and are never, ever, ever coming back, and a lot of the people who relied on those jobs are not repurposable.
OK, I get that "disability" for this purpose means "unable to get and keep a job, for whatever reason(s)." I get that many, perhaps most, of those reasons have nothing to do with the individual (e.g. most of the industry has left your town). I get that many of those reasons won't change in any likely near-future economy.
What I'm saying is that some of those reasons are connected to the individual, and some of those reasons (individual or not) are remediable, and some of the people currently on SSDI could, with the right intervention, have meaningful jobs, and would be happier there. And declaring them to be medically disabled just because it's simpler than doing a more thorough analysis won't produce "the right intervention".
Here's a magic wand, it simultaneously cures back problems and grants college degrees, to everyone on SSDI who has back problems and no college degree. Use it and tell me what changes.
Some of them get physically-demanding jobs in the service sector (which is largely minimum-wage already, so this doesn't further depress wages for the people already working there). Some of them get desk jobs for which they are now qualified. Both of these groups are now making more money than on SSDI, and contributing more to the local consumer economy.
And yes, a lot of them still don't get jobs.
How many drummers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
I get that many, perhaps most, of those reasons have nothing to do with the individual (e.g. most of the industry has left your town).
It's always individual+context. Disability is the interface where personal traits meet social context.
Some of them get physically-demanding jobs in the service sector (which is largely minimum-wage already, so this doesn't further depress wages for the people already working there)
1) From the story [27:48]: "About thirteen thousand a year. But if your alternative is a minimum wage job that will pay you fifteen thousand a year? A job you may not be able to get, a job you may or may not be able to keep, that probably won't be full time, and that will, very likely, not include health insurance?"
2) It won't depress nominal wages. But it sure will depress the average wages, won't it? There's only so many jobs and magically pulling someone out of the disability pool and putting them back into the labor pool doesn't cause there to be more jobs to go around. It just increases the supply of labor.
And so what happens is that if not this guy, then some other guy gets popped off the left end of the bell curve as Least Able To Get And Keep Employment. And we have a name for that. It's "disabled."
Patching up the current batch of disabled and dumping them back in the labor pool just moves the goal posts.
Some of them get desk jobs for which they are now qualified.
In Hale County? The place there are so few desk jobs, most people there can't imagine such a thing exists?
Okay, so they move. Let's say you have a 40-something who had a back injury and now she has a degree. Has two: gets a masters in, I dunno, something clerical... library science. Moves to New York. Find herself applying for library jobs, in direct competition to people like your lovely lady wife. Whom do they hire? The candidate with the 20 years pertinent professional experience or the candidate fresh out of grad school with 20 years experience gutting chickens?
Well, she'll just have to get an entry-level librarian position. There's lots of those, right, and she won't have any trouble getting a job with a degree, right? Thank goodness the magic wand took care of any student loans. That would have really sucked.
So....
Both of these groups are now making more money than on SSDI
...no, actually.
Here's the thing. It's not that I disagree with you in the slightest that investing in people is a good thing; I don't disagree in any way that SSDI provides demoralizing, grinding poverty, better than which is most employment.
The thing I disagree with is your insistence that there is "medical" and "non-medical" unemployment, and that attempting to discriminate cases on that basis will do anybody a damn bit of good. Whether the reason you make it to 40 without a college degree or other entry into white-collar work is because you have dyslexia, or are blind, or spent your childhood in an oncology ward, or ate paint chips, or have ADHD, or were busy holding together the family farm while a parent died, or because you just weren't very good at school work and opted out in 8th grade, or because the money was good enough at the factory when you were 20, or were failing classes through elementary school because your drunk parent was beating the crap out of you, at 40 that reason is now a part of you as much as any tumor, and as disabling.
We live in a capitalist society which means we compete for jobs which means that there will always be losers as well as winners. Whatever qualities hirers choose as their job criteria, there will always wind up a bell curve distribution of those qualities in the labor market. There will always be some people hanging on to the left end of the curve.
In a society -- I hear post-Plague Europe was like this -- with much, much more work than workers, this is fine: even the least able human is still able to contribute labor of value to the market sufficient for him to earn money.
But we don't live in that society. We live in an industrial society, where nothing is quite so useless as a merely able-bodied person.
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no subject
Did you read the article I linked?
Yes, after my original reply; see edits.
Yes, "disability" means you can't work, for whatever reason. But it still seems we should be able to distinguish between disability due primarily to individual medical problems and disability due primarily to job-market problems -- either mismatches between the market and the workforce, or an overall shortage of jobs.
(The example combining back problems and no college degree is both, and has potential solutions on both medical and education sides.)
Yes, some of these disabilities (of both types) are incurable... but some can be cured, and we're more likely to find cures if we identify the problem correctly.
no subject
That's what I'm trying to encourage you to relinquish. There is no distinction between "due primarily to individual medical problems" and "disability due primarily to job-market problems". Because there is no concept of disability except as pertains to the exigencies of making a living in a society.
Disability is entirely socially constructed by what avenues our society provides for earning a living.
The belief that there are "medical" and "non-medical" disabilities is a fond fancy of the middle class. White collar people want urgently to believe a set of things (which are not true) for reasons of reassurance:
1) The infinite fungibility of human talent, i.e. "I could grow up to be anything I want to." Projected onto people who lose their jobs due to changes in society, it becomes, "Just become something else, the way I know I could if it happened to me; prove my fantasy that anybody can do anything."
2) That the category of "disabled" is well bounded, and that they're not in it unless something physically catastrophic happens, i.e. "I am secure in my professional identity and it would take nothing less than a hugely traumatic injury or shattering illness to take it away from me; certainly not that I could wake up tomorrow and discover that my profession requires me to use a technology which I will be at a profound disadvantage in learning or using." (Which, btw, has been the basis of some quite good SF stories.)
3) That the difference in classes is education, i.e. "Well, they should just get education and they'll be like me, safe from being disabled". Keep begging the question of why they don't already have "educations".
The example combining back problems and no college degree is both, and has potential solutions on both medical and education sides.
Here's a magic wand, it simultaneously cures back problems and grants college degrees, to everyone on SSDI who has back problems and no college degree. Use it and tell me what changes.
we're more likely to find cures if we identify the problem correctly.
We know what the problem is, we've know what the problem is for over 100 years. The range of variety of human endeavors at which one can make a living in an increasingly industrialized capitalist society will only shrink; as the variety of types of work shrinks, people without aptitude will find themselves rendered uncompetitive and the remainder will have to compete ever harder for the remaining jobs; as competition increases in the labor market, wages plummet.
The jobs went away and are never, ever, ever coming back, and a lot of the people who relied on those jobs are not repurposable.
no subject
What I'm saying is that some of those reasons are connected to the individual, and some of those reasons (individual or not) are remediable, and some of the people currently on SSDI could, with the right intervention, have meaningful jobs, and would be happier there. And declaring them to be medically disabled just because it's simpler than doing a more thorough analysis won't produce "the right intervention".
Here's a magic wand, it simultaneously cures back problems and grants college degrees, to everyone on SSDI who has back problems and no college degree. Use it and tell me what changes.
Some of them get physically-demanding jobs in the service sector (which is largely minimum-wage already, so this doesn't further depress wages for the people already working there). Some of them get desk jobs for which they are now qualified. Both of these groups are now making more money than on SSDI, and contributing more to the local consumer economy.
And yes, a lot of them still don't get jobs.
How many drummers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
It's always individual+context. Disability is the interface where personal traits meet social context.
Some of them get physically-demanding jobs in the service sector (which is largely minimum-wage already, so this doesn't further depress wages for the people already working there)
1) From the story [27:48]: "About thirteen thousand a year. But if your alternative is a minimum wage job that will pay you fifteen thousand a year? A job you may not be able to get, a job you may or may not be able to keep, that probably won't be full time, and that will, very likely, not include health insurance?"
2) It won't depress nominal wages. But it sure will depress the average wages, won't it? There's only so many jobs and magically pulling someone out of the disability pool and putting them back into the labor pool doesn't cause there to be more jobs to go around. It just increases the supply of labor.
And so what happens is that if not this guy, then some other guy gets popped off the left end of the bell curve as Least Able To Get And Keep Employment. And we have a name for that. It's "disabled."
Patching up the current batch of disabled and dumping them back in the labor pool just moves the goal posts.
Some of them get desk jobs for which they are now qualified.
In Hale County? The place there are so few desk jobs, most people there can't imagine such a thing exists?
Okay, so they move. Let's say you have a 40-something who had a back injury and now she has a degree. Has two: gets a masters in, I dunno, something clerical... library science. Moves to New York. Find herself applying for library jobs, in direct competition to people like your lovely lady wife. Whom do they hire? The candidate with the 20 years pertinent professional experience or the candidate fresh out of grad school with 20 years experience gutting chickens?
Well, she'll just have to get an entry-level librarian position. There's lots of those, right, and she won't have any trouble getting a job with a degree, right? Thank goodness the magic wand took care of any student loans. That would have really sucked.
So....
Both of these groups are now making more money than on SSDI
...no, actually.
Here's the thing. It's not that I disagree with you in the slightest that investing in people is a good thing; I don't disagree in any way that SSDI provides demoralizing, grinding poverty, better than which is most employment.
The thing I disagree with is your insistence that there is "medical" and "non-medical" unemployment, and that attempting to discriminate cases on that basis will do anybody a damn bit of good. Whether the reason you make it to 40 without a college degree or other entry into white-collar work is because you have dyslexia, or are blind, or spent your childhood in an oncology ward, or ate paint chips, or have ADHD, or were busy holding together the family farm while a parent died, or because you just weren't very good at school work and opted out in 8th grade, or because the money was good enough at the factory when you were 20, or were failing classes through elementary school because your drunk parent was beating the crap out of you, at 40 that reason is now a part of you as much as any tumor, and as disabling.
We live in a capitalist society which means we compete for jobs which means that there will always be losers as well as winners. Whatever qualities hirers choose as their job criteria, there will always wind up a bell curve distribution of those qualities in the labor market. There will always be some people hanging on to the left end of the curve.
In a society -- I hear post-Plague Europe was like this -- with much, much more work than workers, this is fine: even the least able human is still able to contribute labor of value to the market sufficient for him to earn money.
But we don't live in that society. We live in an industrial society, where nothing is quite so useless as a merely able-bodied person.
Nitpick