Seen this kind of thing several times.<p>"Assistance" programs meant to prop people up with so many reporting requirements and perverse incentives that punish you for improving your situation to the extent that the best path is to not even try to improve your situation and be entirely dependent on the program because when you do start earning income or saving anything, they take so much away from you that there is a significant cost to any amount of improvement until well after you'd be self-sufficient. i.e. it is more expensive to earn any income than it is to earn none, and the constant threat of losing support of the program (explicit threats) is much more anxiety inducing for the most vulnerable populations often than the situation they were trying to exit.<p>Being homeless, getting into a program to help the homeless, and then constantly being threatened with a return to homelessness if somebody doesn't do the paperwork exactly right is just crazy, but I've seen it first hand.
My sister is disabled and has this problem. She has a pile of cash at home as a result of it rather than safe in the bank or in investments. Like, you'd think someone who's paralyzed has a life that's hard enough, but yet we've created infinite hoops for her to jump through still.
It's unbelievable how much time, money, and wasted potential productivity the USA spends trying (and failing) to make sure that "undeserving" people don't have access to government welfare benefits of various kinds.
My key takeaways:<p>* SSI is run by the Social Security Administration (SSA), and it is a basic income of sorts given to some people who have little or no other income<p>* While SSI and its asset cap are obviously not taxes —the government is paying out money, not taking it in —there’s a similar property to many tax systems: as you make more money and become more self-sufficient, you lose some of those gains to government policy<p>* You really do have to play “hot potato” with your money, never saving more than three months of income (assuming you get the usual benefit) at a time, unless you can divert your money into a category that’s excluded from the SSA’s definition of resources<p>* So to manage life as a disabled SSI recipient, you might need to carefully separate out your different types of spending between your ABLE account and your ordinary checking account —which still can’t get above $2,000<p>* “It's making all disabled people into accountants, because you have to be one to follow these rules."<p>* That $2,000 limit is not indexed for inflation and has not been updated since 1989
I've seen this in my own extended family.<p>$OldFamilyMember died and left some money to $DisabledFamilyMember who would lose benefits if he took it. $DisabledFamilyMember and $OtherHeirs agreed the money would instead go to $UpperMiddleClassFamilyMember who is most responsible and least in need of money.<p>This would be a short path to an infuriating outcome in many families, but in this case, fortunately, the adults involved all acted like adults instead of children.<p>Although legally it was now $UMCFM's money, $UMCFM kept the money in a separate account and would send checks whenever $DisabledFamilyMember reported they were struggling with unexpected expenses (e.g. replacing a dead refrigerator).<p>Years later, the account ran out of money, but AFAIK $UMCFM never informed $DisabledFamilyMember of this fact, and $UMCFM continues to support $DFM's unexpected expenses to this day from $UMCFM's own pocket.<p>Some details changed to protect the privacy of all involved, and other details may not be accurate as I got some of this second- or third-hand, I was still rather young when this situation started, and it's been many years since I've heard anything about this.<p>I can only imagine how infuriating and demoralizing it would be if $UMCFM wasn't there to help out, $DisabledFamilyMember was on their own, and either (a) took the money and lost their benefits, or (b) didn't take the money and then had serious consequences due to lack of money (i.e. having to live without a refrigerator when it broke).<p>There should be some judicial principle or constitutional amendment that says a law can be thrown out if (1) it doesn't make logical sense, and/or (2) it actively defeats its stated objectives.<p>Anyone want to try to write a compiler that can check a legal code for consistency and automatically resolve conflicts by removing laws in a defined order until it's -- I don't quite know if this is the right terminology -- logically satisfiable by a non-empty set of models?
SSI != SSDI<p>SSI: Supplemental Security Income<p>SSDI: Social Security Disability Insurance<p>SSI is a government subsidy, or payout, for those living in poverty. There are income and asset caps that define the poverty level.<p>SSDI is a "single payer" insurance program. Everyone who earns income is required to pay premiums into this program. When someone becomes permanently disabled, no longer able to earn income, they receive payouts from this insurance program.<p>These programs are not the same thing. And the requirements for each are not the same.<p>The cruel reality of healthcare expenses blurs these two things together, for the expense of suffering a medical catastrophe, and ongoing medical support, will indeed drive almost anyone into poverty.<p>And yes: if you become disabled, it will take you almost two years to qualify for SSDI. That's not a strict requirement of the program, but it's a consequence of how the program works. Most families, unable to earn income for that long, won't have much in the way of cash by the time their SSDI review has come through.<p>But it's possible to become permanently disabled while having more than $2000.<p><a href="https://www.disabilitysecrets.com/page7-5.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.disabilitysecrets.com/page7-5.html</a>
I genuinely feel like the way a lot of government programs are designed, they actively discourage being responsible.<p>My sister received government assistance when she was under 18 because my father is disabled and retired. At the end of it she received a letter that she "surely had saved up some of it by now" and that anything she had saved would have to be returned. She would have been better off just spending it and going hog wild.
Means testing (making sure benefits only go to poor folks) is such a colossal waste of time and money. And it creates perverse incentives where becoming <i>slightly</i> less poor can lead to a huge drop in benefits.<p>If we gave everyone food stamps, and we raised marginal tax rates a tiny little bit, then we would not need to spend any effort on validating who was and wasn't allowed to receive them. It would remove the stigma of having them. It would enable people to just get them without having to apply or understand paperwork.<p>The willingness to disguise cruelty as "just following the rules" in America is astounding.
I learned this first hand when my family member started receiving SSI, and they said the government check your bank account to see if you have too much money. As a result, you see a line of elderly line up at local banks when it's payday, to withdraw the money out as cash and to keep the bank account balance as low as possible.
this is really tough for people with disabilities, since a lot more stuff then depends on medicaid. An easy example, if you qualify for medicaid then you qualified for the emergency broadband benefit, which was good for 50/month off internet. Or more complex, you get a budget to spend on home health care workers, transportation, respite care, therapeutic activities, etc., go over and you lose thousands of dollars of services necessary to live. thats even ignoring the actual medical benefits of medicaid<p>able accounts that are listed have pretty big caveats. and are themselves confusing [like 529, you can buy them in any state, all with various fee structures]. the best course of action is to set up a special needs trust and able account and move money between them cause they each have different restrictions. but setting up a trust itself costs a couple thousand for the lawyers, which you arent allowed to save.<p>my sisters disabled, but luckily NJ has a program called workability that raises these limits if you have a job. otherwise its impossible to save.
"Homeless and poor people are so lazy and irresponsible with their money, they can't save it and invest it like smart and noble rich people. But also they save too much money and are cheating the system when they need assistance despite basic necessities being made as difficult and expensive to obtain as possible!" /s<p>This reminds me that I actually had a conversation with my soon to be former boss arguing that we shouldn't have a minimum wage because of its relation to the poverty level. His thinking was that upping the minimum wage means the government has to spend more on benefits, so we shouldn't have one and let the magical free market figure it out. I asked him point blank whether these things should be tied to inflation and the cost of consumer goods, but unfortunately I can't remember what his exact response was since I was a few beers in. I do remember though that it was a weaselly cop-out of wilfull ignorance and wishful thinking.<p>I really wanted to pick apart how stupid that was, but it wasn't worh it. I'm still shocked that an otherwise intelligent person could think that's a sound policy, but I think that same thinking underpins terrible laws like this.<p>No one actually wants to look at the numbers of what things actually cost (food, housing, healthcare, etc.), wages, inflation, or how expensive it is to be poor, compared with wages and public assistance. Nope, instead we'd rather just use arbitrary numbers and emotionally abuse people by telling them it's their personal failure when the system exploits them as designed.<p>The current system of applying for public benefits in the US is what Kafka would've dreamed of, had he been a sadist.
My brother is on disability, and has an ABLE account so that my family can give him some money above the disability funds.<p>His handicap is not physical, and he is not capable of doing the reporting himself, and he is often unpleasant. So I spend several hours a month dealing with his wadded up receipts to document every ABLE expense. It's invasive and humiliating for him, and a huge burden for me.
Blind person here; I'm not on SSDI myself, but I have friends who are. All this policy seems to encourage is financial crimes, bordering on money laundering. It seems like everybody is doing it, or at least everybody who I've talked to. I've seen everything, from very careful financial planning, including buying things and paying bills a lot earlier than needed in anticipation of large influxes of money, to withdrawing money in cash, which is easy to hide and easy to justify to a government official, to putting money in weird accounts which the IRS is unlikely to audit. I'm sure people who actually live in the US have seen a lot more examples of this than I have.
People have no idea. I've done Darpa internships in IT and full stack developer internships in DC, and could have a lucrative career someday, but I'm stuck in this strange pocket of SSDI where I can't afford to return to work for less than $70k and I'm not yet worth that much.<p>I'm literally better off doing unpaid or minimum wage internships for the indefinite future until I can hit that benchmark.<p>My programs pay for everything. My food, my power bill, the interest on my student debt. And if I save one cent over $7200, I lose my medical subsidy so I'm constantly having to find inventive ways to spend money. It's a weird problem to have.
I went to a special high school for kids with autistic spectrum disorder and we were basically all educated and given assistance for during transition to graduation getting SSI immediately.<p>So I've had SSI my whole life essentially. I've had to live with these restrictions since I was basically 20. I moved out from living with my dad only a handful of years ago. I'm 33 now and I get 870 something dollars a month plus an extra from the state itself and I get supplemental nutrition food stamps and I also get my rent lowered and mostly taken care of and I just have to pay $103 a month for rent.<p>Doing literally anything that would be considered taking in income would just be stupid for me to do because of any of the penalization that comes with it. Saving money would just be not a good idea even though it would be a great idea to have some sort of a safety net... But my stepmother and actual father have things just in case for that for me so I'm lucky in that regard...<p>I have extreme anxiety when it comes to managing any of this or managing a lot of things especially over the phone and my dad has had to manage most of that for me directly and I've had to sign a lot of paperwork to make sure that he can talk for me. I basically consider if I didn't have him that I would be homeless or dead right now.<p>I had a single job during my adult life and I was only a couple years ago. It was through a job placement program for people with disabilities and I was working for some local racing engine shop that needed someone to help with computer things. I helped build them a website with e-commerce stuff all over it and made sure everything was following all the right rules to do all of that I help them build a Facebook presence... A whole lot of stuff in just a couple weeks. I was a brand new person working there out of only like five people that work there and I was the only one who had a brand new computer that I had to build myself out of parts they bought for me that I asked for... But none of that really matters because I realize that the woman at the job placement who managed my case was dating the owner of the engine shops son. As soon as I found this out that just gave me extreme anxiety every day and I felt like I was being just used and I quit. I'm not going to get exploited like that being somebody's computer monkey boy with no proper management.
Disability benefits in the US is so absurd. I would characterize it as all or nothing. They often completely ignore people with “marginal” disabilities but if you are rich enough to afford a good lawyer, you guessed it, you can qualify for all these programs. Once you see it you can’t unsee how inefficient these programs are. There’s an entire industry designed to exploit government resources.
The same thing happens with university: For the FAFSA students are expected to contribute 95% of their savings before benefits kick in.<p>So this punishes students who save their money, and rewards students who waste it on frivolous things.<p>Then there is the "spend down" for Medicaid. Same story - you need to waste your money before benefits kick in.
Know a number of folks on SSI. Yup. This is real. One person I know keeps cash, when their account gets too high. That’s not so safe, as folks on SSI are often living in less-than-wonderful environments.<p>Also, people who take Social Security early, are prohibited from earning over a certain amount, but I think that’s different.
I live in france, and a few "counties" (départements) implemented such thing, at a higher amount (about 20k), but for welfare recipients. The amount is about 500 euros per month.<p>Some sued and got the decision canceled.<p>I guess it's an in-progress situation as the new government will try to pay all welfare potential recipients, not only just the ones who ask for it (about 1/3 of people who are eligible don't file for welfare). It's a bit of a problem because "counties" have more recipients than others, so it should be the whole state of france to take care of it.
I just got Kicked off of SSDI(I also revived SSI because my SSDI income was below 75% of the poverty level) but I plan to appeal but that $2000 dollar asset limit last set in 1987-1989 and never indexed to inflation is just too draconian and needs to be recalculated for 2022 dollars and actually Indexed to the inflation rate.<p>So now I have to choose between early retirement and only getting about $320 per month or appealing my SSDI/SSI Case or just reapplying for Disability as someone over 62 years old. But low income retirees can not qualify for SSI until they reach 65 years old if they are not Disabled but the SSA has been bumbling Disability Reviews ever since congress/president allowed those Continuing Eligibility Reviews to begin again from the Pandemic forbearance period that's expired. And that's not been Fair for some elderly recipients because the SS offices are barely reopened and Congress just had hearings on the lack of SSA's ability to service SSA client requests. I was unable to get my appeal forms sent to me because the local SSA office was unable to be reached by Phone, so terrible is the SSA customer service system.<p>The SSA is so very much dysfunctional that congress needs to review each and every Elderly/Disabled person's Eligibility review for the past 6 months since that Eligibility review process was restarted. And that Asset limit forced me so save outside of the banking system in order to pay for some needed Crown replacements and other dental work because Medicaid/Medicare has limited Dental coverage. And that $2000 dollars will not even pay for a single Crown replacement at the going rate in the NE US for uninsured dental work(About $2800 for a single Crown and buildup for that crown).<p>Really all this SSI/SSDI and all the SSA administrative review costs to do all that for folks over 62 should be replaced by some Reformed Social Security income floor that sets the minimum SS benefit at 75% of the poverty level for anyone 62 years or older and then there would be no need for any retirees to be on SSI to begin with. SSI was created because of the SSA's inability to properly calculate the true costs of any projected future costs of living for low wage earners so the SSA/FICA/Retirement Taxes have been insufficient for many lifetime low wage earners.
This is how it works in Sweden as well for försörjningsstöd, which is something you can get if you have no income and you actively look for work. However, if you’re disabled, I’m pretty sure other rules apply.
Made a throwaway for this.<p>Despite being highly educated and qualified, my spouse and I have to turn down work and stay within proximity to the poverty line to ensure access to healthcare for my spouse that has a chronic health condition.<p>There’s literally no reason to get a good job unless it pays $200k+ right off the bat, because up to that point healthcare costs would be in excess of 100% of our combined income.<p>This is intentional. The United States maintains a population of poor people by design. Any politician that says otherwise is literally lying!
Here I was feeling bad that a feature I designed and released had some edge cases around a small browser feature I hadn't fully considered.<p>This article is truly inspiring - I guess shouldn't be so hard on myself if the very government that runs this country is constantly [m]ucking things up time after time. But hey, the people affected are only the poor and the disabled who make up the bottom rung of our society, so who cares right? If anything 33 years was a blazing fast turnaround time.
This is a horrible policy, but it seems there is a possible solution (for people with good enough credit, which means the most vulnerable people cannot do this):<p>Get a mortgage on house that will take a while to pay off.<p>In order to “save” you pay extra towards the mortgage<p>In order to “withdraw” money (if needed) you take out a small loan against the house<p>Some bank should make a mobile app which does this, in combination with Zelle.<p>SuperHomeSaverApp<p>With free instant transfer between your bank accounts and home
I actually faced this while researching how to aid a family member under the representative payee program and began to wonder how to spend their funds in ways that would benefit them and avoid accumulation of assets and all that stuff to remain below 2k.
<a href="https://www.ssa.gov/payee/faqrep.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.ssa.gov/payee/faqrep.htm</a>
This was intended for the destitute to cover month to month expenses. It’s not designed for people with even modest means as an extra nest egg. And the host of ways to gather disability money really blows the mind.
SSA’s next biggest job after doling out cash is to watch for waste, fraud, and abuse.
Can confirm from second-hand experience that this is a very real problem.<p>There’s a “cliff” that makes it so many people get stuck. There needs to be a gradual decline in assistance as income goes up, and it should never ever get cut off for got because of a fortunate month or year.
Yes, this has been a problem for many years. I used to be a legal aid lawyer, and one often heard about people having to get rid of assets to qualify for life-sustaining benefits.
this whole discussion reminds me of the [Speerhamland system in England](<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system</a>), which was supposed to guarantee everyone enough to eat, but because it made up the difference between the employer's pay and the speerhamland rate with government funds, it effectively created a maximum wage in the countryside.
It’s sad to say but if you’re depending on the governments assistance don’t expect to be treated particularly well unconditionally.<p>I believe the fact these amounts are not pinned to inflation is generally intentional. The whole thing needs to be overhauled.
So much entitlement. You want the free money, there are rules. The 2000 dollar limit is perhaps too low--so that's something that can be adjusted--but the whole point of SSI is for <i>low income</i> disabled people. That's the point. SSDI is a different but similar program without that 2000 dollar limit.