"The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit which still carries some reward."

-John Maynard Keynes-

Last year, I spent a lot of time helping people prove they were disabled in order to collect about $950 a month in disability benefits. While my office did not take on cases without merit, there were certainly some disabled clients who walked a fine line between sometimes being able to work part-time at minimum wage jobs and being disabled profoundly enough to collect benefits.

Hidden Unemployment

Source: The Lovely Addict

In March, This American Life aired a piece called "Trends with Benefits" about the increasing cost of Social Security disability claims. Right now, 14 million people collect Social Security Disability Insurance or Supplemental Security Income.* Many economists argue that rising disability claims result from two trends: an aging workforce, and a changing economy. Because the rise in the number of claims is tied to the slowing of the economy, people have labeled the group of borderline disabled Americans who collect Social Security benefits the "Hidden Unemployed". 

What happens to vulnerable people in America? 
During the course of my work, I discovered two things: 

1. Part of the process of making a disability claim involves proving that one can no longer do the kind of work they have been trained to do. 
2. Most of our clients were unable to afford current housing and living costs, even with disability benefits.

The first fact means that the application process is easier for people who have only performed unskilled work. This group is also more vulnerable to work injuries and the effects of outsourcing. The second is just plain depressing, since disabled people often require assistive care and expensive accessible housing units. In 2009, the National Coalition for the Homeless reported that 13% of homeless people are physically disabled, and 26% suffer from chronic mental illnesses. Clearly, many disabled people are clinging to a hole-ridden safety net.

*SSDI is a conventional insurance program funded by payroll contributions. SSI on the other hand, is a social safety net program for people who have not worked enough to pay into the system. It is funded by general tax revenues.

The Life & Death of the American Social Security System

Source: Modern American Poetry, The Great Depression

During the social and economic upheavals of the Great Depression, American politicians finally recognized an opportunity to create an organized program which would provide ongoing substantive care for the elderly and disabled. The resulting creation of the Social Security Administration meant that the US government could reduce national poverty through a future-oriented insurance program. However, the system was not without its flaws; changing demographics, rising inflation, and lower tax revenues now threaten to deplete the trust fund that supports Social Security by 2033.

Source: The Simpsons

How to Help Old & Disabled People

If we don't change our current tax structure, Social Security is doomed to fail within the next century. Social service workers see themselves torn between reinforcing a system which barely works at all and pushing for larger reforms. However, the backlash to Mitt Romney's comment about the "47% of voters who are dependent on the government" shows that many people are learning to acknowledge the problems with our tax and safety net systems and attribute the cause to social and economic issues, not the failure of the disabled and working poor to take "personal responsibility".