This is planned poverty; the system is set up to keep disabled people poor.
And this is pretty much typical of assistance programs in the United States.
For things like unemployment insurance -- which is the one we're all concerned with during the pandemic -- one is eligible only for a limited amount of time, generally not more than one year. The size of the benefit is determined by one's needs and available assets. Additional income during the benefit period reduces payment. In Utah, one must give evidence of having applied for at least five jobs during each week benefits are received. This is the epitome of a program designed to help people temporarily when they lose their jobs for economic reasons.
What's darkly humorous (and I don't mean to make light of others' plight) is the rhetoric is floating around that people will want to remain on unemployment insurance because the benefits are more than they can earn at minimum wage in a full-time job. This is factually true. Unemployment insurance is meant to provide an actual living benefit, and -- at least in Utah by statute -- requires a calculation of each individual's existing non-discretionary financial burden, and a reasonable margin for basic comfort. This does not occur when setting actual wages. The U.S. federal minimum wage was originally proposed as a basic living wage to sustain life. It has not been increased -- even to account for inflation -- since 2009, when it became $7.25 per hour. At 40 hours per week full-time employment, that's a gross monthly income of $1,160. To put that in perspective, the monthly rent for an apartment in the buildings adjacent to a property I own, managed by a large commercial residence company, is $950 per month. When we say there is a wage disparity and a labor crisis in the United States, this is what I'm talking about. And this is for an able-bodied entry-level wage-earner, not someone considered incapacitated or lazy.
And because this is America, the cry comes up that we should lower the benefits, because why should we pay more for someone not to work than to pay someone who is working. It doesn't seem to occur to the powers that be that this is an excellent argument for doubling or tripling the federal minimum wage. The objection is that the giant increase in labor cost will shackle the economy. And I just have deaf ears for that when Jeff Bezos is one of the richest man in the world, and getting richer by the minutes, while his employees -- his full-time employees -- make so little money that they qualify for supplemental food assistance. I really don't think the "greed" of the ground-level employees is really the problem here.
Gillianren, your experience is typical of many groups who are simply unable to participate in traditional capitalism, through no fault of their own. As Peter B adroitly points out, the prophets of capital don't seem to have an answer to that except to maintain the bare minimum (or less) required for basic subsistence. You get to live, but you don't get to enjoy it. And many more groups are being cut out as non-participants, for even pretextual reasons such as minor criminal convictions.
It seems the intent is a cruel "survival of the fittest" doctrine. If one is unable to participate in capitalism either as a capitalist or as labor, then one simply doesn't fit the system. Nature should be allowed to take its course, because how can we become a great nation if we have to drag along with us the dead weight of non-contributors? Rush Limbaugh is infamous for saying that no nation ever taxed itself into prosperity. Yet we have modern examples of nations with happy, productive, well-educated, prosperous populations where the chronically unfortunate don't have to fear being left behind. They may have taxed themselves away from the obscene profit-mongering that's the American style, but the sure do seem to enjoy an affluent lifestyle.
And the other side of the coin, as I mentioned early in the pandemic, is that "survival of the fittest" doesn't seem to apply when it's a business. Then all of a sudden they require bailouts and affordances to keep them going under trying circumstances. It seems to me that if you're going to cut individuals out who can't participate in capitalism under trying circumstances, then you should cut out businesses who can't participate in capitalism under trying circumstances. If part of capitalism is the potential for individual failure, then part of it should also be the potential for catastrophic business failure. You could argue that businesses that don't maintain a suitable reserve have made unwise choices and should fail as a result. But no, that's when all of a sudden these organizations have intrinsic, salvage-worthy value despite their questionable behavior.
Recently the Trump administration tried to add a required-work component to programs like food assistance for children and Medicaid, the national healthcare payer for low-income recipients. (Medicare, a related program, does a similar thing for the elderly, but that's another thread.) Essentially one could not qualify for certain very important assistance programs unless one was either working or actively looking for work. Not only does the GOP vision of American involve keeping certain groups poor, but also requiring them to contribute to the labor market. America has a voracious appetite for labor at rock-bottom prices, but also the moral direction that one shouldn't receive anything from the public coffers unless one is contributing in some economically cognizable way to society.
From the mere fact that someone is receiving a public supplement to pay for medical care, one can probably infer the likelihood of an inability to work. Indeed, the intent of Medicaid in most cases is to provide no-strings payment for medical treatment precisely so that the recipient can return to the work force. And that's largely how it has been used. The GOP strategy would have provided practically no additional revenue, while making vast numbers of Medicaid recipients suddenly ineligible. There is simply no way for them to pay their way.
The Trump administration and the GOP have attempted other moral gatekeeping provisions for social assistance, such as mandatory drug testing. The marketing image presented by the GOP is that recipients of public funds are drug addicts and therefore unemployable, or drug users and using the funds to purchase drugs. That's almost never the case, of course. But it has been a well-known economic reality for years that the money spent on implementing the test programs far outstrips the amount spent inappropriately by the few errant recipients. These programs so often have the potential to be wielded as moral bludgeons, and usually according to criteria that seem ostensibly valid but which are inevitably proxies for such things as race. Note that massive bailouts to corporations do not require evidence of moral rectitude, and in fact have been given out to renumerate the losses incurred by the recipients' own flagrant malfeasance, and often to the enrichment of individual corporate officials who have less than stellar moral character.
The system is so very rigged.
