Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Record Federal Disability Insurance Partipation

According to the latest reporting, the number of Americans receiving Federal disability insurance payments has hit a record 8.74 million workers.  To put this into perspective, that's nearly as many people as there are in the entire state of New Jersey.

In just 20 years, the amount of workers getting Federal disability payments has gone up by 260%.  In just the last 3-1/2 years, under Obama, that number has grown to more than 18%.   But, more importantly,  what this means is that, today, 1 in 16 workers is collecting disability payments; while at the beginning of 2009, only 1 in 19 were collecting insurance.  And, in 1987, the ratio was 1 in 42.

This near meteoric rise in the number of "disabled" presents several perplexing questions.  First of all, with all the OSHA workplace safety protections in place, why are so many people getting injured on the job?  And, if injuries are not increasing, do we now have a rabid fraud problem in the disability insurance program, or, are disabled workers getting laid off from their jobs at a higher rate than the general worker population?  If so, this would be a very broadly based abuse of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990; where hiring (and firing) based on disability discrimination is prohibited.  

The bottom line is that these kind of rising numbers have no logical correlation to anything.  However, what truly amazes me is that no one, in our entire government, on either the left or right side of aisle, seems to be outraged by these increases.   Obviously, this is a government program that appears to be spiraling out of control and with no apparent oversight.  All of us, as taxpayers, should be livid over this.

The primary source for the above statistics: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/8753935-workers-disability-set-another-record-july-exceed-population-39-states

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