That -literally- (not figuratively) made me want to carpet bomb cities.
Ayep. Except I'd be quick to point out that it is not strictly a city thing. Being on the draw for being "too crazy to work" is popular in certain rural areas as well. It only works if the cost of living is next to nothing, you want to live somewhere no sane person wants to live, or you're packed into a place like sardines in a can. SSDI is taxed in theory, but in reality the person is generally low enough that they get a 'refund' every April anyways.
The article is correct. It can be welfare for folks that the government wants to keep a lid on. It's literally cheaper than incarcerating them. Judicial, police, and corrections cost around $200 billion per year. Due to lovely things like mandatory sentencing, a felony essentially prohibiting you from ever getting real work, etc it gets expensive in a hurry. Government wanted to hike welfare. But not too much. SSDI is cheaper than regular welfare. And people don't get as angry at the government giving money to disabled people as they do poor people. The government hoped sliding another ten or twenty billion dollars worth of folks onto SSDI would keep down incarceration and crime rates. Not just in cities, but also in rust belt or deep rural areas where industry has been killed off by taxes, regulation and trade agreements.
(Also, Archer reference?)
Sadly, that's my experience as well. Had a woman in court the other week on a probate issue. Cancer bad in several places. Obvious that she couldn't work. She was on her fourth application for SSDI. Next case was a guy with no apparent problems who got SSDI on his second application. His disability? Bad back which prevents him from sitting for extended periods. His case before me? Involved pretrial issues of his civil lawsuit against the golf club he's a member of. His motion indicated that he's been playing golf at the club twice a week for three years, which also happens to be the period he's been getting SSDI benefits. 
*shakes head*
Second guy likely paid someone to process his SSDI paperwork. Lady likely filed herself and likely was honest. Honestly filled out her paperwork, went through real doctors instead of paperwork mills, etc. Some states hire those paperwork folks to process SSDI papers, btw. It's federal, so it reduces the state cost. Not sure if your state has that sort of program, but worth looking into:
http://www.cagw.org/media/wastewatcher/disability-new-welfareOh, lovely bit of news for you guys. SSDI was going to run through its 'trust fund' about... oh, this year. Give or take. And SSDI folks will be taking a sharp cut in benefits, or Congress will have to kick the can down the road again. Smart money is on a merger between Disability and the general Social Security fund.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/2015 numbers. 2014 'reserve' was $60b. Net was -28b. Which left 30b for 2016. Which is about what is expected to be depleted this year. So expect that crisis in the news at the end of the year or beginning of next year. And expect the suggested solution to be to roll the DI trust fund into the regular social security trust fund. Which will deplete it by 30b a year. Which will be more interesting than folks assume. Everyone here likely understands that the SS trust fund is an accounting dodge. Social security takes more in than it spends, the money is transferred to general revenue and spent. Once it crosses equilibrium, it goes from sending money to general revenue to taking money from general revenue.
In 2015, Social Security took in $802b. And spent $751. That's fifty billion dollars that went to general revenue without (allegedly, not in reality) being a direct tax. Adding a $30 billion to the "spend" side of the balance moves Social Security MUCH closer to the tipping point of paying out rather than taking in. Honestly, it's not a huge deal, for another... oh, five ish years? Then Social Security starts going deeper in the red. If the economy gets substantially better... Maybe ten years before things get interesting on that front. Not crippling, but unpleasant. Not 2030 like folks think.
