TIME AND WINGNUT AGIT-PROP

I first heard the wingnuts complain about the rise in Social Security Disability claims last February and now it seems that the campaign attacking the program has come to Paul Krugman's attention.  As I did, Krugman points out that this is just another version of Reagan's "welfare queens" bogyeman:

As Jared Bernstein points out, there’s a factual problem here: a large part of the rise in the disability rolls reflects simple demographics, because aging baby boomers are a lot more likely to have real ailments than those same workers did when they were in their 20s and 30s. The Social Security Administration does a formal adjustment for this reality, and as Jared says, it looks like this:


The point, I think, is that right-wing intellectuals and politicians live in a bubble in which denunciations of those bums on disability and those greedy children getting free health care are greeted with shouts of approval — but now have to deal with a country where the same remarks come across as greedy and heartless (because they are).

And I don’t think this is a problem that can be solved with a slight change in the rhetoric.