If you are in the United States, you may want to consider applying for disability. This is ethically questionable if you can support yourself working. It may or may not be a rational economic decision: see below.
Pros:
Many part-time jobs are not designed for people with significantly and arbitrarily fluctuating energy levels/availabilities.
Almost no part-time job available to someone without social influence or significant skills will let you earn a comfortable living with a guaranteed income level. Some part-time jobs available to people with skills but not social influence will let you earn a living (ie. freelancing), but the income level is not as secure as a disability check would be. Income security is extremely valuable to people with (for example) some types of anxiety disorders.
You can get a lawyer to help you appeal disability rulings, if you are denied the first time you apply, without any out-of-pocket cost.
Free health insurance (admittedly it’s not great health insurance, but it will probably prevent you from going bankrupt).
You qualify for other government programs such as food stamps and subsidized housing, which stretch your money further than the dollar amount you receive would indicate for your standard of living.
Disability can be collected indefinitely.
Because you do not have to work, you will have a lot of free time.
Cons:
Being on “disability” is low-status like “welfare”. Your reference class will be used to play political football. Specifically, most disability/entitlement programs are currently perceived as unsustainable spending by the Republican/Tea Party ideological cluster.
Your disability check is highly dependent upon the health of the US government’s finances.
You need to have a valid disability diagnosis (and a cooperative doctor/psychiatrist; note that you can be prosecuted for fraud if another doctor/psychiatrist examining you could reasonably argue that you aren’t disabled).
You will be living at the poverty level. You will never get a raise beyond standard-of-living unless Congress passes one.
Any money that you earn from jobs, tutoring, etc. results in a proportional deduction to your disability check, usually large enough to make it uneconomical to get a part-time job. (Given that the IRS is monitoring Paypal and all “normal” jobs, this pretty much means that the only way to supplement your disability checks is with under-the-table cash work.)
Student loans count as income against disability, which will significantly decrease or eliminate your checks.
Unpaid student loan debt can be withheld/deducted from disability.
You are not allowed to accumulate assets that the US government can see (past $2,000, if I recall correctly), rendering it extremely difficult to plan for the future. (The shoebox under the bed is a plausible strategy for saving, but if it is discovered, you may get accused of drug dealing and/or tax evasion.)
There exist large-scale “welfare-to-work” programs, but any corresponding “disability-to-work” programs are small-scale and/or run by non-governmental entities.
I suspect that disability is set up, without anyone being at fault, such that the vast majority of the economic incentives prevent you from improving yourself further. A more sustainable program to replace disability on the national scale, one that would not actively discourage going to work or training, would resemble a basic income-type system. Unfortunately, such a program does not currently exist in the United States. (More realistically given the general political climate here, percentage disability ratings like the VA uses would be a sustainability improvement, if they could be implemented fairly.)
I believe that it is at least somewhat ethically justifiable to take advantage of disability if you qualify for it and your disability is significantly impacting your ability to work (even if it does not prevent you from working entirely), because there is no better system in place. However, just because I may be able to justify it to myself (I do not currently collect disability, and am currently agonizing about whether I should) does not mean that you will be able to. Please make your own decisions.
I’m on disability, and the resource limit is indeed $2000 (I don’t know if that’s across the board, or just in my state). I wasn’t sure how much attention they pay to Paypal until you mentioned it specifically.
In my case, every dollar of income would cost 50 cents of SSI, so any job that earns less than $1260/month is probably not worth it. However, what I’ve read indicates that this rule is specific to blindness, and the system is less forgiving to other disabilities.
And I have student loan debt that costs more each month than my disability check, and my parents have been moving away from making that sustainable (at the current rate, I should be overdrawing from my checking account by the end of the year; I was expecting this to happen much sooner, but my parents paid much more of the bills in the first few months of 2013). This prevents “withdraw some cash to hide from the IRS” from being a viable strategy.
Without the loans, however, I could both live on SSI and have money left over for other things, assuming I was efficient with electricity and eating. The amount received depends on how many people you’re living with, marriage status, property/car/stock ownership, etc.
You are not allowed to accumulate assets that the US government can see (past $2,000, if I recall correctly), rendering it extremely difficult to plan for the future. (The shoebox under the bed is a plausible strategy for saving, but if it is discovered, you may get accused of drug dealing and/or tax evasion.)
It wouldn’t only look like tax evasion but effectively be tax evasion.
You might do some online work that pays you in bitcoins.
I have no anxiety disorder. I’m okay with doing freelance but don’t think I’m skilled enough. This could buy me some time to solve that problem until I get really good at webdev or poker or something. On the other hand, an acquaintence had trouble getting disability, and she’s very bipolar and prone to full blown manic episodes, pyschotic breaks, etc. so I’m unsure of my chances of even getting it, even if I do decide I want to. I feel a bit guilty about considering it but the possibility of becoming financially independent later assuages my guilt somewhat. Can you elaborate on what qualifies in practice or link to something?
If you are in the United States, you may want to consider applying for disability. This is ethically questionable if you can support yourself working. It may or may not be a rational economic decision: see below.
Pros:
Many part-time jobs are not designed for people with significantly and arbitrarily fluctuating energy levels/availabilities.
Almost no part-time job available to someone without social influence or significant skills will let you earn a comfortable living with a guaranteed income level. Some part-time jobs available to people with skills but not social influence will let you earn a living (ie. freelancing), but the income level is not as secure as a disability check would be. Income security is extremely valuable to people with (for example) some types of anxiety disorders.
You can get a lawyer to help you appeal disability rulings, if you are denied the first time you apply, without any out-of-pocket cost.
Free health insurance (admittedly it’s not great health insurance, but it will probably prevent you from going bankrupt).
You qualify for other government programs such as food stamps and subsidized housing, which stretch your money further than the dollar amount you receive would indicate for your standard of living.
Disability can be collected indefinitely.
Because you do not have to work, you will have a lot of free time.
Cons:
Being on “disability” is low-status like “welfare”. Your reference class will be used to play political football. Specifically, most disability/entitlement programs are currently perceived as unsustainable spending by the Republican/Tea Party ideological cluster.
Your disability check is highly dependent upon the health of the US government’s finances.
You need to have a valid disability diagnosis (and a cooperative doctor/psychiatrist; note that you can be prosecuted for fraud if another doctor/psychiatrist examining you could reasonably argue that you aren’t disabled).
You will be living at the poverty level. You will never get a raise beyond standard-of-living unless Congress passes one.
Any money that you earn from jobs, tutoring, etc. results in a proportional deduction to your disability check, usually large enough to make it uneconomical to get a part-time job. (Given that the IRS is monitoring Paypal and all “normal” jobs, this pretty much means that the only way to supplement your disability checks is with under-the-table cash work.)
Student loans count as income against disability, which will significantly decrease or eliminate your checks.
Unpaid student loan debt can be withheld/deducted from disability.
You are not allowed to accumulate assets that the US government can see (past $2,000, if I recall correctly), rendering it extremely difficult to plan for the future. (The shoebox under the bed is a plausible strategy for saving, but if it is discovered, you may get accused of drug dealing and/or tax evasion.)
There exist large-scale “welfare-to-work” programs, but any corresponding “disability-to-work” programs are small-scale and/or run by non-governmental entities.
I suspect that disability is set up, without anyone being at fault, such that the vast majority of the economic incentives prevent you from improving yourself further. A more sustainable program to replace disability on the national scale, one that would not actively discourage going to work or training, would resemble a basic income-type system. Unfortunately, such a program does not currently exist in the United States. (More realistically given the general political climate here, percentage disability ratings like the VA uses would be a sustainability improvement, if they could be implemented fairly.)
I believe that it is at least somewhat ethically justifiable to take advantage of disability if you qualify for it and your disability is significantly impacting your ability to work (even if it does not prevent you from working entirely), because there is no better system in place. However, just because I may be able to justify it to myself (I do not currently collect disability, and am currently agonizing about whether I should) does not mean that you will be able to. Please make your own decisions.
I’m on disability, and the resource limit is indeed $2000 (I don’t know if that’s across the board, or just in my state). I wasn’t sure how much attention they pay to Paypal until you mentioned it specifically.
In my case, every dollar of income would cost 50 cents of SSI, so any job that earns less than $1260/month is probably not worth it. However, what I’ve read indicates that this rule is specific to blindness, and the system is less forgiving to other disabilities.
And I have student loan debt that costs more each month than my disability check, and my parents have been moving away from making that sustainable (at the current rate, I should be overdrawing from my checking account by the end of the year; I was expecting this to happen much sooner, but my parents paid much more of the bills in the first few months of 2013). This prevents “withdraw some cash to hide from the IRS” from being a viable strategy.
Without the loans, however, I could both live on SSI and have money left over for other things, assuming I was efficient with electricity and eating. The amount received depends on how many people you’re living with, marriage status, property/car/stock ownership, etc.
It wouldn’t only look like tax evasion but effectively be tax evasion.
You might do some online work that pays you in bitcoins.
This is only liquid assets right? A car wouldn’t count against that?
I have no anxiety disorder. I’m okay with doing freelance but don’t think I’m skilled enough. This could buy me some time to solve that problem until I get really good at webdev or poker or something. On the other hand, an acquaintence had trouble getting disability, and she’s very bipolar and prone to full blown manic episodes, pyschotic breaks, etc. so I’m unsure of my chances of even getting it, even if I do decide I want to. I feel a bit guilty about considering it but the possibility of becoming financially independent later assuages my guilt somewhat. Can you elaborate on what qualifies in practice or link to something?
retracted until i rewrite this