Alt Text:
Woman in a wheelchair saying: “THERE IS NO MARRIAGE EQUALITY UNTIL PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES CAN MARRY WITHOUT LOSING BENEFITS”
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wait what the fuck
Just another way that the modern nazis fuck over the disabled.
It’d be just awesome if ANY candidate openly supported expanding disability rights to an equality level. Instead of trying to pander to people ‘in the middle’ who theoretically don’t like nazis, but are very willing to work with them.
I honestly feel so much shame about not getting married bc I would lose my gov benefits. I’ve never thought about it like this and it makes me feel less ashamed.
My husband is disabled and receives SSDI (US). I did the math when he was awarded disability and he would be getting a lot more if we weren’t married. We had a very long discussion and long story short marriage was more important to us than money. Since we’re married the money is counted as income and I am the one who pays taxes on it. He qualified for Medicare too after the first five years on SSDI and that comes out of his benefits as well. I still buy insurance for him through my employer which I pay out the ass for but it’s worth it with his medical conditions and should I lose my job he still has his Medicare to fall back on. I dare say I pay almost as much for his medical needs as we get from the disability payments. We aren’t by any means rich but we have the basics and that’s enough. My heart breaks for him and others in the same or worse situations. His own family will say that they love him with one breath and then disparage those “freeloaders” with the other. Since the beginning of the year we’ve been religiously watching our bank account in horror wondering when the checks will just stop coming. It took years of hard work and tough decisions to get us both to a place of stability and productivity that now could disappear in an instant because we are the collateral damage in a rich folk’s pissing match. I hope they all rot in hell.
Wait disability is taxed in the US? What the actual fluff!
We get taxed more than people in other countries think we do and add on car dependency and the scam health insurance scheme…it’s pretty bad here; unless you are worth more than 10 million dollars then you get to be more of a scum bag here than in other countries.
I do understand how US taxes generally are, you’re also the only country that charges citizens taxes on income earnt when resident overseas, I have a few US friends here. But taxing a government benefit is just ridiculous double-handling and makes it duplicitous to the general public when benefit increases are discussed…
Erithrea also taxes their citizens wherever they are.
Same energy as pointing out Liberia also uses Fahrenheit.
Kind of, but they’re basically the only two in the world because no one else is insane enough to care, the US does it by bullying other countries but considering the good will of a lot of countries is starting to be impacted, I’m not sure it will last until 2028… I’m pretty sure Erithrea only has leverage by withholding important documents for the taxpayers who don’t comply.
Yup, they do.
And it’s doubly stupid because they have to file the taxes for the disability benefits they get as well, even though the government could just deduct it automatically.
Taxing disabilities but not billionaires.
Of course. The disabled produce no value while the billionaires graciously let us work for them.
(satire)
not satire,
that’s how the system works.
that’s the consequence of not owning the means of production
Satire in so far as my parody of that sentiment doesn’t reflect my own opinions
Yeah like, why not just make it lower like you’re already doing? Like “Oh look at this big pretty number of support we’re giving you but actually go fluff yourself”.
Yeah like, why not just make it lower like you’re already doing?
Intuit Turbo Tax is why.
Wait, they can’t?
Where?
It’s the US, isn’t it? This is one of those US things where they don’t feel the need to specify it’s a US thing.
It’s the case in UK, Ireland, Belgium, Australia, Canada, the US, Italy, Greece etc.
Probably others, but those are the ones I know of.
Of course, it doesn’t necessarily mean you lose all your money if you marry, but your insurance income usually goes down quite harshly.
Specifically “disability” benefits or just overall social security transfers?
Bcs that might be due to the total household income too (and the fact that unfortunately a lot of ppl with disabilities & chronic pain don’t have a lot of income).
(Overall we tend to be overly strict about such stuff bcs politicians often exploit it in a manner ‘why should we pay for a millionaires basic wheelchair?!??’ … but I didn’t know there was like a cut-off income point for overall benefits in terms of using them for specific medical things in Italy & Belgium, iirc that’s not the case for glasses & basic dental care, tho the availability of the later in Italy is poor/really basic afaik.)Well it’s the welfare people with disabilities (who cannot work due to their disability) are eligeable for. The system is different in every country but usually you have a base rate that is not enough to survive on (in the US it tends to be 8k per year, other countries aren’t much more generous), and hopefully you also qualify for other help, like maybe food stamps or subsidised energy payments.
In most of the countries I listed, both of those are slashed down or straight up removed if you marry someone with income, but especially the second. Which basically removes any freedom for the disabled person in the relationship and makes it way easier for abusive relationships to happen.
Because you end up having a huge power imbalance. You cannot fight for yourself, you rely on your partner for your daily care or for transport if you need to go anywhere. You also rely on them for money etc. The relationship can end up as heirarchical as a Parent/Child relationship. So it’s really a problem that if you choose to marry you lose all your independence.
(in the US it tends to be 8k per year, other countries aren’t much more generous)
I’m in Australia and get US$21.1k. Completely untaxed, and I can work up to ~15 hours before it affects my payment.
Yeah, I understood that (tho even that in case of divorce the disabled person would get benefits back which would empower them to seek divorce from a toxic relationship). Still inequity tho.
I was unaware of such radical transfer cuts in Europe, but I guess Italy is stagnant for decades now & it shows on social structures.
Just checked, for civil invalidity the income threshold is 17k€ net, but no income tax applies - which is disgustingly low, especially in northern Italy - but I think that might be “just” to qualify for an annuity, it doesnt cancel other disability-specific benefits, such as wheelchairs or co-financing one if the person wants a better model … not that that is much, but medicine/medical accessories/care is ofc included which is at least better than overseas.
I’m not sure but there might be some other forms of help disabled persons can take advantage of (I’m guessing, but eg like untaxed artisan work or companies getting perpetually reimbursed if they hire disabled employees).I don’t know much about Greece but not having a big social safety net is def surprising for a country with a lot of social transfers.
I guess EU should do better on the anti-wealth concentration front, it’s gotten dystopian.
My wife gets about $20,000/year in disability payments (US).
I have no idea how it’s calculated. I’m assuming it would be much more if she wasn’t married to me.
If it’s ssdi I know it’s calculated by the average yearly income prior to disability. I made ~$28k/year before applying for ssdi 10 years ago, and I get about half that from ssdi now (after col raises)
Yeah. My wife had her own optometry practice. Unfortunately her income was not what most of her patients and employees thought it was. In her last full year of working full time her total salary for the year was $6000.
That’s messed up. Place I am you actually get extra benefits if you have a disabled person as a dependent.
Or you’re supposed to, anyway, the paperwork sucks and there is a lot of malicious compliance from conservative authorities involved, but still.
There may be some areas where aid is tallied based on family income, but I don’t know of any off the top of my head. That’s more of a school grant thing, if anything.
It was the case in France a well until 2023
From the U.S. here, and the image is correct. My fiancé has chronic disabilities, with essentially no chance for recovery.
I’m employed as her caretaker, and I make about $30k/year doing so. She is on SNAP (food assistance), medicaid (government paid healthcare), and SSI (monthly payments to her bank account).
If we get married, it’ll mean a massive cost for us, since very little of these benefits would carry over afterwards. I legally cannot be her caretaker if we’re married, and my main job would put us in too high of a tax bracket for the rest of her benefits to go untouched.
It’s a shockingly bad system.
I live in the US and had no idea this is how it worked. I shouldn’t be surprised-this place is a hellhole if you’re poor. Why would being disabled be any different?
Maybe some awareness is needed here. It might do nothing - but it for sure ain’t changing if people don’t know this goes on.
Oh man, it’s complicated, John Oliver had a whole bit on it.
Basically if you’re disabled and on federal assistance, you have to stay below a certain income level.
If you get married, that double income puts you over the limit and you lose your assistance. It’s deeply fucked up.
24 minutes, NSFW:
Marriage bit is around the 20 minute mark, but really, everyone should watch the whole thing.
That’s extremely dumb. The obvious way to measure income limits is income per capita. Also, being officially married shouldn’t make a difference.
Whatever, I’m deliberately trying to block US discourse. Best of luck to anybody dealing with it, but I’m actively trying to make my Internet be as little about the US as possible, so I’m walking away now.
As a mod of [email protected], I feel your pain. US News creeps into there continually. We remove it when we see it.
Even then it’s still just mostly:
Ukraine
Ukraine
Israel
Israel
Israel
Israel
Ukraine …Have you considered that might perhaps be because of the terrible moderation policies driving people away?
Nope, traffic is good, it’s mostly just everyone wants to fixate on Israel and Ukraine.
I literally saw you arguing something was a call to violence in YPTB today, when it was just someone having an opinion on current events. People already left a long while back, and I’m willing to bet traffic isn’t increasing as much as it is on more diverse comms. I abandoned it for reading news from various sources on country-specific instances.
LOL - Saying we need blood right now to water the tree of liberty IS a call to violence. If you disagree, that’s fine, we don’t need that polluting our communities.
It’s US here, but even more specifically, an ‘adult disabled since childhood’ can not get married to anyone but another ‘adult disabled since childhood’ or all the benefits are removed. Entirely.
Which sucks cause guess what classification my husband with cerebral palsy has?? Oh well, eternal fiance for me I guess. Fiancee? One of them.
Fiancé
Not just the US, but yeah, definitely here.
And inevitably someone from that country, already fucked by said system, will pop-up & defend it how much sense it makes (so let’s not bash it too much).
:(If you see something dystopian, its from the us 🤷♀️
I feel this. If my wife got disability we could remodel our place more properly for disability. We have gotten by but just barely and she would have so much less pain each day if we just had a bit more resources.
Bro you are clearly being lazy, how about she just stops being disabled /S
that jesse wells song gets me so much as the lyrics are like this. “if you just worked a little harder”
What’s the artist’s name? Would love to find more disability-centric art
Looks like liberaljane
Thank you!
Hell yes, this is so important!
Where I live the partner gets some of the benefits as well, like tax free cars, cheaper insurance and free parking
It’s shitty; but it’s still total equality.
Equality vs. Equity
We’re incredibly lucky. My wife basically gets a salary from our health insurance to care for me.
What are the perks of marrying in the first place?
Non comprehensive, and only vaguely important to me, but being married would mean Healthcare decisions would fall to me automatically, if he dies I’d automatically be assumed to gain his belongings and home rather than very likely have his family contest his will that says the same thing but they could argue that more. They could come in and take over everything were anything to happen to him, and not allow me to see him. No survivor benefits if not married. I’m sure there’s a lot more.
Couldn’t he just put you in his will?
Yes, and he has. That doesn’t change the fact his family could come in and override decisions for medical care if he were to undergo a coma or the like. It’s also more likely they can contest the will as we’re not married and have the judge grant them it.
Similar shit happened to my WW2 veteran great uncle in law. His family who he hadn’t been close with in decades tried to take over his life from us but he managed to fight it before he died and was able to move back in the town his wife passed away in because his family moved him for a bit.
This is exactly what happened to gay couples during the AIDS crisis and precisely why same-sex marriage laws were fought so hard for.
This a preventive situation from bad family members, makes sense to be fearful that at some point, someone decides to take legal action and separate you from him, its crazy because as a couple you stay most of the time with him and very likely also share income but as other comments, marrying also implies sharing income and that affects insurance.
Boomers treat you like a real person
In Australia, we have a sort-of equivalent to common law marriage called “de facto” status. It kicks in at the one year mark and carries the exact same negative effects on a disability pension. Actually, I think the effects on welfare and disability payments occurs the second you’re living with someone you’re in a relationship with.
