What’s been going on the past three years? It must have been those damn lockdowns!
I know, we’ll just change the definition of what disabled means!
BTW, It is extremely difficult to get on disability in the US, so this chart is almost certainly undercounting how many people are getting their lives ruined by some mystery cause.
In my state 3-5 years is the minimum “waiting period” before they will even potentially consider not automatically rejecting the application, no matter how egregiously desperate the person’s situation, so this would fit. No backpay or retroactive enactment, either.
Dying on the streets before reaching eligibility, of course, is as always a feature not a bug.
It’s extremely cool how, even if you do get the maxmimum pay out, good luck surviving on it. I was trying to convey to my therapist what it feels like living in a society who’s official position on you is “die parasite!” But i’m not sure i really got my rage and horror across"
Therapy is good in some ways but there’s an element of it that seems designed to divert people away from righteous anger at systemic inhumanity. Like it seems that an unspoken goal of therapy is to get people to come to a place of acceptance in regards to the shitty status quo rather than acknowledging the infuriating horrors that are robbing and killing us.
I feel like the old school A.D.A. activists had the right stance with their approach of lobbying for federal legislation for mandatory universal carve-outs on the basis of 'everyone starts this life disabled, best case scenario everyone ends this life with disability; disability is an inevitability of having lived, not an admission of failure
I say this to preface, Frank, my deeply weird brother, with love - if I ever catch you even joking about being a parasite again I will find you. And I will administer punishment.
Probably a hug.
