A
Welfare "cliffs" which make it difficult for people to rise out of poverty or free themselves from government dependency
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Do you agree with what the acknowledged St John Paul II asserted in Centesimus Annus, 1991,
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3DOCTORS
Guest
Might as well chime in with another factor to consider. Mental illness. Sometimes a person who has it can fit into the work world for awhile but as stresses mount, it becomes more difficult. Job failures pile up, discouragement sets in, and hireability also goes down as the person has a history of job hopping.
The symptoms are not always visible - often because the employee with mental illness is scrambling to hide them for fear of ridicule, or in hopes that they might eventually subside. Medications are a mixed bag - sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, sometimes the side effects are almost worse than the original problem.
Mental illness that affects an employee’s job performance need not be so dramatic as someone who rants incoherently about government conspiracies while wearing a tinfoil hat. Depression, phobias, attention deficit, autism spectrum, social anxiety - many of these manifest in a pattern that might look like laziness or insubordination or wimpiness, when underneath is a desperate soul who wishes she or he could just be like the others - at least enough to get by, and without losing some of the positives of not being “neurotypical” such as increased creativity and a unique perspective on the world.
I was reading a piece yesterday on the internet about McDonald’s workers striking for higher wages. I thought, “Good for them.” Even though there may be arguments against the practicality of what they’re doing, I thought, almost nobody stops to think how much bs these low-paid employees often have to put up with. Again, we resort to the stereotype that “flipping burgers” is an easy job just because it doesn’t require a college degree. Well, I watch these people multi-tasking, running around filling orders while wearing a headset and am amazed - I have ADD and couldn’t do that, I would get the orders wrong and be having a meltdown of frustration even trying.
There are others who attempt to go into white-collar professional jobs but are brought down by things such as fear of public speaking, travel phobias, social skill problems, inability to “multitask in a fast-paced and competitive environment” due to attention and memory problems, and various other issues. Again, if they job hop too much they become unemployable.
Many who grow up in generational cycles of this are caught in a trap of bleakness that is hard to rise up out of. Because some of these subtle mental illnesses are both genetic and the result of growing up in a family where the parents are also suffering from them - if they manage to squeak by, it takes pretty much all their energy to do so. :twocents:
So some end up on disability, when really they could be making more accomodation, but they are square pegs trying to fit into a round hole.
The symptoms are not always visible - often because the employee with mental illness is scrambling to hide them for fear of ridicule, or in hopes that they might eventually subside. Medications are a mixed bag - sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, sometimes the side effects are almost worse than the original problem.
Mental illness that affects an employee’s job performance need not be so dramatic as someone who rants incoherently about government conspiracies while wearing a tinfoil hat. Depression, phobias, attention deficit, autism spectrum, social anxiety - many of these manifest in a pattern that might look like laziness or insubordination or wimpiness, when underneath is a desperate soul who wishes she or he could just be like the others - at least enough to get by, and without losing some of the positives of not being “neurotypical” such as increased creativity and a unique perspective on the world.
I was reading a piece yesterday on the internet about McDonald’s workers striking for higher wages. I thought, “Good for them.” Even though there may be arguments against the practicality of what they’re doing, I thought, almost nobody stops to think how much bs these low-paid employees often have to put up with. Again, we resort to the stereotype that “flipping burgers” is an easy job just because it doesn’t require a college degree. Well, I watch these people multi-tasking, running around filling orders while wearing a headset and am amazed - I have ADD and couldn’t do that, I would get the orders wrong and be having a meltdown of frustration even trying.
There are others who attempt to go into white-collar professional jobs but are brought down by things such as fear of public speaking, travel phobias, social skill problems, inability to “multitask in a fast-paced and competitive environment” due to attention and memory problems, and various other issues. Again, if they job hop too much they become unemployable.
Many who grow up in generational cycles of this are caught in a trap of bleakness that is hard to rise up out of. Because some of these subtle mental illnesses are both genetic and the result of growing up in a family where the parents are also suffering from them - if they manage to squeak by, it takes pretty much all their energy to do so. :twocents:
So some end up on disability, when really they could be making more accomodation, but they are square pegs trying to fit into a round hole.
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St_Francis
Guest
Oddly enough, I first heard about the guaranteed income idea shortly before reading the Fair Tax book, which proposes a “refund” of sales taxes about equal to that which is spent on average on necessities.
At first this seemed like a strange idea, but then it seemed intriguing.
At first this seemed like a strange idea, but then it seemed intriguing.
cont’d…
"Two conditions are indispensable if we are to ensure that the guaranteed income operates as a consistently progressive measure. First, it must be pegged to the median income of society, not the lowest levels of income. To guarantee an income at the floor would simply perpetuate welfare standards and freeze into the society poverty conditions. Second, the guaranteed income must be dynamic; it must automatically increase as the total social income grows. Were it permitted to remain static under growth conditions, the recipients would suffer a relative decline. If periodic reviews disclose that the whole national income has risen, then the guaranteed income would have to be adjusted upward by the same percentage. Without these safeguards a creeping retrogression would occur, nullifying the gains of security and stability.
This proposal is not a “civil rights” program, in the sense that that term is currently used. The program would benefit all the poor, including the two-thirds of them who are white. I hope that both Negro and white will act in coalition to effect this change, because their combined strength will be necessary to overcome the fierce opposition we must realistically anticipate.
Our nation’s adjustment to a new mode of thinking will be facilitated if we realize that for nearly forty years two groups in our society have already been enjoying a guaranteed income. Indeed, it is a symptom of our confused social values that these two groups turn out to be the richest and the poorest. The wealthy who own securities have always had an assured income; and their polar opposite, the relief client, has been guaranteed an income, however miniscule, through welfare benefits.
John Kenneth Galbraith has estimated that $20 billion a year would effect a guaranteed income, which he describes as “not much more than we will spend the next fiscal year to rescue freedom and democracy and religious liberty as these are defined by ‘experts’ in Vietnam.”
The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking.
The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty."
Hmmm…
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St_Francis
Guest
I once knew someone with ADD who I thought would have made a terrific explorer, like with Lewis and Clark or Magellen. I think a lot of people get diagnosises (?) not because there is something *wrong *with them bit because they don’t fit into our current society. Which is not at all to diminish any form of mental illness, but I sometimes feel there is too narrow an idea of normal in our society.
I am also not too happy with the disease model–I am still annoyed that people who go through a horrendous experience are the ones considered disordered ): (PTSD).
Anyway, I remember your pointing out that there is a statistical relationship between people who are poor and people with mental illness, and that certainly makes sense. Not everyone *can *get out of poverty–the physically disabled would also fall into this category–bit for those who can, it seems like the system is set up to make it very difficult.
And consider that the easier we make it for those who can, the easier it will be to care for people who can’t.
I am also not too happy with the disease model–I am still annoyed that people who go through a horrendous experience are the ones considered disordered ): (PTSD).
Anyway, I remember your pointing out that there is a statistical relationship between people who are poor and people with mental illness, and that certainly makes sense. Not everyone *can *get out of poverty–the physically disabled would also fall into this category–bit for those who can, it seems like the system is set up to make it very difficult.
And consider that the easier we make it for those who can, the easier it will be to care for people who can’t.
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3DOCTORS
Guest
I agree. And the way workplace expectations are set up is definitely biased toward “neurotypicals” - and I’m like you, I think differences shouldn’t be so pathologized. True, there are things I really struggle with - working memory is one - but there are also ways I can cope if I’m allowed to implement them. I remember one employer sitting me down to explain job procedures, and when she saw I had a legal pad and a pen, she barked “You won’t need to take notes!”. I explained to her as politely as I could that yes, I would, and that I was trying to be a good employee. She reluctantly let me. But the job only lasted a few days because she kept giving me contradictory messages and/or expecting me to read her mind and snapping at me when I couldn’t.
Re PTSD - yes. Especially if they are veterans. That ought to be absolutely self-explanatory. Sometimes it’s harder for those of us who have had other trauma - childhood bullying, family problems, and such, because it’s embarrassing to have to explain.
And it’d be a lot nicer to be able to make a more livable income. I will admit that on disability there is so much less anxiety for me about when I’m going to “hit the wall” with a job and lose it, which was always a sword hanging over my head (please excuse the mixed metaphor!). But for awhile on a job, things would seem to be going well, and then stresses and memory problems and anxiety problems would start to mount, and then irritability would set in and finally anger.
Then I knew it was only a matter of time.I’d considered working out of my home but it was difficult to find anything that was more than piecemeal, and since I don’t do well at pursuing leads or at tracking where I’m at with whatever clients I would have for, say, typing or something, it felt overwhelming to try to find something like that. And financially unstable. I’ll frankly admit that on disability, I don’t get much but at least I have the stability of knowing it’s there and how much it’ll be. It relieves a great deal of anxiety.
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