It was dead today, not a single person in the shop. My only reaction was the standard Florida knee-jerk--I bought a lottery ticket. I did a study of what it means to be “disabled” in America these days. Disabled means a permanent, incurable condition which prevents you from doing any work and from which you are expected to die. I’m okay with that, but I was after the financial aspects. Clearly, not a fraction of people on disability meet the criteria. How does one calculate disability as compared to welfare, minimum wage, and compensation?There is no sense applying for anything until you can put a dollar figure to it before you start. Stay with me here, it was a real chore to get this information. My intention is to give you the basics so you can ballpark your personal amount. It works like so.
Find your highest income year in the past 15 years. Divide that by 12 to get your average “indexed” monthly income. Calculate 80% of that monthly figure. This is the cap, the most you will ever get, no matter what other yardstick is used. Now, the math gets into income brackets. There are three of them:
On the first $711 of income, calculate 90%.
On the next $3,557 of income, calculate 32%.
On anything over that up to $6,000, calculate 15%.
So let’s take a realistic figure of someone who made $33,000 as a maximum in one of the immediately preceding 15 years. Your adjusted “indexed” income is $2,750 per month. (You don’t get much extra if you made over $6,000 per month, in case any of you disabled lawyers are curious.)
For the first $711, you get $639.90 and on the next $2,039.00 (which is $2,750.00 minus $711.00) you get $652.48, bringing your disability total to $639.90 + $652.48 = $1,292.38. You didn’t even make it into the last bracket. Now, you ask yourself how this amount compares to any of your alternatives. Think like a recent immigrant used to slaving for $150 per month in Asia. Is it any wonder they love America? Remember Heidi downtown? The one that watched TV all day long hoping she would win the lottery so she could watch TV all day long? She was on disability.
Of all other things, this should be a well-documented month. I biked seven miles in the perfect weather. Among other things, I used my Walgreen’s discount card, the one I gave a phony address on the application, since I was not interested in being on any mailing list and anyway, that was not part of the deal. Well, are they miffed. They want my “real” address, insisting they have a right. Is that so? Upon questioning, they want their “right” to send me advertising and sell my address to other vendors. Myself, I don’t recall agreeing to any such thing, although I am certain it is vaguely worded enough to scam most people. I’m standing firm, that never did I agree they had a right to contact me for any purpose.
I’m still watching “Band of Brothers” and allowing for theatrics, it appears to be an accurate portrayal of the WWII military. What do I mean by theatrics? By that period of the war, moving soldiers in lines or columns during battle was usually fatal. I have no figures for German capabilities, but a Soviet rifle division by that stage of the war could fire a salvo weighing 116,700 pounds. That’s up from 739 pounds in WWI. That is correct, if you stuck your nose up at the wrong moment, and the Soviets fired all their magazines without reloading, you’ll have over 53 tons of metal flying at you.
Plainly, it is foolish for soldiers to march in single file across open fields as shown in the movie. For those curious few, the best analysis I’ve ever read about infantry attacks during the period is by a Soviet author, Colonel Siderenko, published in 1970. I forget the title, but there is only one Siderenko. He has studied the realities of warfare beyond what is common in western military.
