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We’re all just temporarily abled

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#441

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Jiro wrote: post #414
WorldMaker wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point though. The rich already have all the benefits, plus more, but we also make the poor spend a lot of time, money, effort, and stress on "proving" they are poor to get the baseline benefits just so the rich "can't" use them (even though the truly rich have access to better and more services). If the rich already have plenty of access to stuff why are we forcing the poor to go through all these extra "p…

Unfortunately, the desire to soak the rich is a thing. (A sentence that is not seen very often.) Of course, the problem isn't really the rich . There aren't enough of them to strain the assistance budget even if they do all take the free lunch. The problem is the people who are richer than the ones who are eligible, but aren't actually rich. There are a lot more of them, and the money to give them all free things may…

> The problem is the people who are richer than the ones who are eligible, but aren't actually rich. There are a lot more of them, and the money to give them all free things may just not exist.

But it does though, because those are the people the existing system is screwing the most.

If you're all the way at the bottom, whatever the government provides is what you get because you have nothing else.

If you're all the way at the top, you have the resources to buy whatever the best of the best is.

But if you're in the middle, you can't afford to pay the taxes to fund public schools you don't use and pay for private schools, so you get stuck with public schools. And then we end up with this catastrophic districting system where you buy into a better public school system by spending more money on housing -- and making sure that there is more political support for keeping housing unaffordable because it's the way the middle class gets their kids into a better school district.

If you just give everyone the same amount of money, someone at the 40th percentile income doesn't have to massively overpay for a house, they can just add 20% more of their own money to send their kids to a better school. And someone at the 25th percentile income who is willing to sacrifice more for their kids can do the same thing, instead of having no path to do it at all because it would require them to get mortgage approval for a single family house in a suburban school district which is forbidden at their income level.

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#442

Post by zamadatix »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #333
dgellow wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes me think, how does one learn to use a screen reader? (Or alternatives for other handicaps) It seems fairly technical and challenging to learn, but I feel it would make sense for abled engineers to practice using those. I personally wouldn’t even know where to start, I only enabled the screen reader a few times by mistakes and have no idea how I could learn to be effective with it if I need to at some point…

Just turn off your monitor.

You can also learn Linux by just uninstalling Windows. 15 minutes of good starting material will save you untold amounts of unnecessary headache though.

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#443

Post by dingnuts »

mrguyorama wrote: post #419
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The American disability system is basically proving (very painfully) that life is barely livable to get scraps of help. Like below poverty levels. Yep, SSI disability is a system designed to keep you in poverty. The current max benefit is a little more than $900 / mo. That's basically unlivable unless you also happen to have section 8 housing, which when I asked, had such a huge waitlist it was unusable. $900 / mont…

Also, the second you have slightly more than pocket cash to your name, all your disability and SSI type benefits go away. You cannot work yourself out of disability, because getting a job that can't exclusively pay for all your needs will still kill your benefits, leaving you worse off than the horrid poverty of exclusively relying on the government. So many people in America who are on government benefits for life w…

>to things like Dollar Tree where you can pay double the unit rate to buy a small portion of a normal product.

It seems like you're implying that Dollar Tree is unethical for putting forward an investment in order to take advantage of economies of scale and then paying for overhead, shipping, and retail space to sell their goods at a profit.

What do you propose as an alternative to this? Should these goods be taken from those who are able to produce them at a wage set by the government and then distributed to those who need them, as prescribed by SSI, after nationalizing Dollar Tree and its ilk? How will the amount that the producers are owed for their labor be determined, or does this even matter?

Or maybe if this kind of discount store is immoral, maybe it should be banned. Are you suggesting that the customers of Dollar Tree would be better off if they simply went without whatever wares Dollar Tree has? Or that individual consumers should somehow gain access to the economies of scale that arise with being able to afford, eg, an entire container ship full of junk coming from east Asia?

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#444

Post by MSFT_Edging »

I had a bout of gout recently for the first time in my life.

The pain in my foot was beyond anything I've experienced. I couldn't drive, I bought a cane and hobbled with the side of my foot. I was miserable every hour I was awake, and was even woken up by it a few times. Thankfully it only lasted 10 days but it was incredibly eye opening.

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#445

Post by munificent »

Justsignedup wrote: post #233

How many people I know got hit by a car and had their life ruined horribly. Or a bad surgery. Things totally out of their control. We need to see disability as a cost to society we must pay, not a failure of individuals which is more or less what were treating it. The American disability system is basically proving (very painfully) that life is barely livable to get scraps of help. Like below poverty levels. I really…

> We need to see disability as a cost to society we must pay, not a failure of individuals which is more or less what were treating it.

You frame this as a binary choice, but it's clearly both.

I understand the desire to destigmatize and focus on systemic problems. But I really hate when health issues are framed as only societal/systemic problems. Doing so is factually incorrect and worse, robs individuals of their sense of agency.

One of the main failure modes I see of progressivism (which I am otherwise happily a member of) is treating all problem's as society's fault. And then progressives wonnder why they feel so dispirited and defeated all the time. Maybe it's because we adopted a worldview that gives us no sense of agency over our own lives?

(Of course, one of the well known failure modes of conservatism is blaming individuals for everything.)

The right answer is that it's both. Like the serenity prayer says, do the stuff you can and accept the stuff you can't. Both are equally important.

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#446

Post by cogman10 »

zie wrote: post #427
cogman10 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but what happens when I die and there's 90k in the account? In 2->5 years, you'll need to start rolling money into the SNT, yet the only person that can do that is my kid. What if they don't have the wherewithal to know they have to do that? Able works if my kid can make ok financial decisions. It's a bad idea if they can't.

If they can't make OK financial decisions, it doesn't really matter does it? There are 2 choices: - Either you set it all up ahead of time and they have someone you trust to watch over them after you are gone. - They get shunted into the system and whatever happens, happens.

I didn't say I'm not preparing things. I'm saying an able account isn't a slam dunk.

An able account, if mismanaged, can disqualify my kid from Medicare. That means costly and time consuming legal intervention to correct while my kid misses out on medical care they need.

The third option is waiting on the able account (not the SNT). There's little harm in waiting.

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#447

Post by avtar »

dgellow wrote: post #240
sideproject wrote: post #30

I once sat on a zoom call with a vision impaired user to do some accessibility testing on our site. First, it was enlightening for me to see how she navigated through our site using her screen reader. Second when she landed on our booking page we got so embarrassed because she couldn’t use our date picker. A basic HTML version would have done the job. But a few weeks back we had debated over which fancy jquery date p…

That makes me think, how does one learn to use a screen reader? (Or alternatives for other handicaps) It seems fairly technical and challenging to learn, but I feel it would make sense for abled engineers to practice using those. I personally wouldn’t even know where to start, I only enabled the screen reader a few times by mistakes and have no idea how I could learn to be effective with it if I need to at some point…

> That makes me think, how does one learn to use a screen reader? (Or alternatives for other handicaps)

VoiceOver on Mac or NVDA on Windows are good, free options.

There's an accessibility playlist on Youtube that provides an introduction to both:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R-6WvAihms&list=PLNYkxOF6rc...

A more in-depth demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0m7VEHoXMI

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#448

Post by cogman10 »

mech7654 wrote: post #422
cogman10 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I have a child with autism. The American system is cruel beyond imagination. To qualify them for social security and Medicaid I have to leave them impoverished. They can't have more than $2k worth of assets in their name. Instead it's a complex lawyer game of trusts to give my child any sort of inheritance. Yet they are basically guaranteed to end up in a group home (Even though I own my own home) because a care…

If you don't know already, go look up ABLE accounts. If your child became disabled before the age of 26, they can create an ABLE account and keep much, much more money in their ABLE account than they would otherwise be allowed to keep. ABLE account funds can be used for living expenses that cover the majority of expenses for most people- housing, healthcare, transportation, etc.

I'm aware. My kid is severe and whether or not that is a good idea is something I'll have to wait on. They aren't far enough along to really make the call on setting one up.

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#449

Post by lo_zamoyski »

memefrog wrote: post #201
ekidd wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I powerlifed for years, with a truly excellent coach for much of that time. For what it was worth, she was Starting Strength certified and a successful international masters competitor. She fixed a subtle problem with my deadlift using nothing but the wrinkles on my T-shirt; my recovery improved dramatically. At 40, I was stronger than I was as a high school wrestler. I loved lifting. I remember casually picking up a…

Far more people are hurt by not doing enough exercise than are hurt by doing too much.

True, but statistics has nothing to do with correctness. Something done in excess, in either direction, is done in excess regardless of how many people do it.

The via media comes with difficulty as it requires reason and discernment, whereas extremes are easy and mindless, and people either under-exercise (the more common case) or over-exercise.

But historically, I would argue that we see more extreme "fitness" fads today than we did previously. Really dumb stuff that no longer has anything to do with health or fitness or beauty and more to do with some weird obsession.

Re: We’re all just temporarily abled

#450

Post by cogman10 »

macintux wrote: post #364
cogman10 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, self-inflicted disability (morbid obesity for example) should be subject to a different test of means than birth defects. I don't really agree with this. First, I don't see "abuse" of the system being a major problem that needs to be defended against. If someone wants to destroy their future health by Homering, let 'em. They aren't extending their life by eating themselves to death. But even if that's…

The dreaded “welfare queen” trope has cost so many lives, so much misery. We’d rather countless needy people suffer than dare give someone else more than he/she is due.

Yup. I support expensive social programs with minimal means testing. I'd rather give every kid a school lunch on my tax dime than have kids go hungry because their parents weren't poor enough to get a free meal. The wealthy kids parents are already subsidizing meals so why not let them have a free meal as well?

It's silly to bill people twice for the same product to make sure the underserved aren't accidently helped.

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