Elixir
Made in America
Hyperbole much? Broad-brush much? You probably can't produce a single example of a Republican who doesn't believe in disability at all; and some believe in it more than others. Perhaps the idea you were trying to get across was "The average Republican has somewhat more stringent criteria than the average Democrat for considering a person disabled."?The Republicans don't believe in disability.
And you think medical technology has improved so much just in the last eight years that this effect can account for more than a little bit of the rise in people on disability?As for the actual numbers:
As medical technology improves you get the ironic result that it increases the number of disabled. In the past many of those would have simply died.
Okay, that's a valid point. We'd need statistics on the number of people on disability that's broken down by age group in order to determine whether it's the principle cause of the rise.Also, look at the baby boomers--we still have a surge moving through the last years of working--the years they are most likely to end up disabled.
But that isn't an example of "can't work". That's an example of "nobody will hire them". When somebody doesn't have a job because nobody will hire him, normal people call that "unemployment".We also have fewer and fewer jobs for those with very minimal ability--some people have become disabled by the disappearance of any job they can do, not by their condition getting worse.
But the spirit of the law (and often it's not a doctor but a judge bending the rule) is to be compassionate, help out a guy who needs help, and get him on disability when that's what's financially best for him, never mind whether it's what Congress actually voted to do in a case like his. Which is a fine and kindly act. But the morality of bending the rules on a case-by-case basis doesn't change the fact that the guy can work; and statistics that are based on having statisticians politely go along with the fiction that the guy can't work are going to be incorrect statistics. This isn't about whether people ought to get to go on disability; this is about whether we should deceive ourselves about what's happening in our economy.Finally, we have some where the docs are bending the rules. The health issues are real but not actually completely disabling. The tough job market made it impossible for them to find work, though--companies rightly evaluated them as the riskier hire and with better choices passed them over. Now they have been out of it long enough they won't get hired anyway. They meet the spirit of the law but not the letter of it.
If one reason official unemployment statistics look as good as they do is that a lot of people aren't being counted as unemployed because they're on disability because doctors and judges were kind to them even though they wouldn't have been on disability in 2008, that means unemployment hasn't really improved as much as the official statistics claim. This remains the case whether you think those people belong on disability or not. If we assume they really can't work, and it's good and proper for them to be on disability and the 2016 unemployment figures are therefore correct, that implies that in 2008 the unemployment figures were wrong. There were a lot of people in 2008 who couldn't work and should have been counted as disabled, but were instead counted as unemployed.
Sounds like a good idea to me.(Personally, I think that in such borderline cases the government should be required to job hunt for them...
They should be used for figuring out precisely what it is the government is saying, sure. But as for adopting them for general use, why? Why should the people give the government control over how the people categorize the world? That's Newspeak.Whether your artificial definitions are right isn't a fact staring anyone in the face; it's a matter of opinion.
Both terms have standard government definitions. Since it's government data those definitions should be used.
Anyway, even if you're some kind of intellectual statist who feels people have a duty to use government definitions and think in terms of whatever concepts their government wants them to think in terms of, that's a moral judgment, not a logical one. It doesn't imply that heretically thinking for oneself qualifies as refusing to acknowledge facts staring one in the face.
What seems to escape you is that the same data-sets have been used for a long time, and while they may be skewed by factors not included, they are skewed equally. So when they show unequivocally that unemployment rises under Republican administrations and falls under Democratic administrations, you can take it to the bank.
No amount of retroactive modification of criteria is going to alter that FACT.