I seriously doubt with the current political climate (and by this I mean for 
the past 30 years or so--both parties) that they will ever remove the 
earnings requirements for either SSI or SSDI.  In the 1960's, I was involved 
in trying to get the rates greatly reduced or eliminated completely.  Then 
there was some sympathy:
on the left, you had people like George McGovern and Fred Harris who 
believed in trying to establish a guaranteed annual income.

On the right, you had the Freedmanites (Milton Freedman) who believed that 
all government social programs should be eliminated or greatly reduced 
except that a living minimum (sort of a conservatives guaranteed annual 
income) should be provided for the disabled and the elderly.  This would not 
even be means tested; it would cost too much money and create too much of a 
government bureaucracy to constantly monitor it.

In my opinion, both of these positions had at least some merit.

With the current crowd within both parties, there is this absolutist 'pull 
yourself up by your own bootstraps' and radical free marketeering that says 
basically, that the poor are lazy and evil and deserve what they get 
(perhaps a bit of an over simplification, but truer than ever I have seen in 
my own life since I have been a free lance advocate for disabled people.)

It would certainly make sense to allow the disabled to have the same 
restrictions as seniors now have--since even if they started making 
considerable amounts of money, they would then be paying taxes back into the 
system and thus helping to keep it solvent.  Of course, you can't be 
ridiculous about it. If somebody has SSDI from childhood and then goes to 
work for Goldman Sachs and in 2 years starts drawing 300 thousand dollars a 
year salary plus bonus, we would have to cut him/her off at some point.  I 
would suggest the medium income--say about (at last research by myself about 
$42,000 annually.)




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Harvey Heagy" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, January 21, 2011 8:19 PM
Subject: Re: social security problem


This is a classic example of why we need the earnings test eliminated once
and for all, and why both organizations need to aggressively pursue this and
stop making lame brain excuses for not doing so.
Harvey