It was so close. Right there, brazenly displayed at the top of the Drudge Report, the headline; RECORD 10,996,447 ON DISABILITY. That is the number of Americans now officially “disabled” and receiving benefits from Social Security as of the end of April. We only needed 3,553 more to make that very impressive 11,000,000 mark! Frankly, with a little effort, we could have done it.
It would seem almost disappointing, if we weren’t already appalled at the sea of disability enslavement that is washing over our country.
Well, not everyone is appalled. There is an entire industry now built up designed to steer people to this dead end lifestyle. These modern day slave traders enrich themselves by shackling people to a system that will forever dictate how much they make, and what they must do to continue to “earn” their benefits. Certainly our government has been complicit, since “disabled” are not counted among the unemployed, and can often be counted on to vote for politicians likely to continue their benefits.
Of course, there are people on SSDI who are truly in need. They are too ill or have been too injured to work, and they need our assistance. I get that. Most rational and reasonable people would. But rational and reasonable people recognize that this system is being abused. They ask themselves, in an economy where jobs are less and less physically demanding, where automation and technology have reduced the stresses and danger of physical work, why do we have more people than ever on the disability rolls? In a world where the level and severity of impairments from workplace accidents is decreasing, why has our definition of disability been so greatly expanded?
It is a legitimate question. Frankly, we have people considered disabled today by conditions that would not have stopped their great-grandparents for a day. Today “disability” can be defined as “my old job is gone and I do not have the education or skills for a new one”.
I have used some inflammatory language in this article. Enslavement. Slave traders. That is of course by design, in an attempt to provoke a deeper contemplation as to what this means for our society, and the individuals now completely dependent upon it. Terry Bogyo wrote an interesting essay this last week comparing disability rates in the US with those in Canada. With almost 5% of our population now on some form of disability support, he found that we are beating Canada hands down on that front. The percent of their population on disability is a paltry 1.35%.
Are Americans that much sicker, and susceptible to injury than our Canadian counterparts? Or have we just expanded the definition of disability, and now abuse that system as simply another welfare operation? What else would we think of a system that enables dependency just because some people feel too stressed to work or otherwise cope?
The march of the disabled continues to expand. For those who were disappointed we did not hit the magic 11 Million milestone last month, take heart. We are adding thousands every month, so we are sure to hit that number soon.
In fact, it is likely we already have.