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Most governments will try to cover their fiscal and trade imbalances by devaluing and making all savers poorer.

“A country with monetary sovereignty can issue all the currency it needs” is also a fallacy.

The New York Times just came out with a big glowing writeup of MMT, entitled “Time for a Victory Lap*”. This article aroused the anger of just about every macroeconomist on Twitter, and with good reason — it demonstrates very little understanding of the issues at play or the state of the policy debate, and it rhetorically elevates a fringe ideology to a position of importance and centrality that it neither occupies nor deserves.

Please consult macroeconomists before writing about MMT!

Following Alesina and Rodrik’s paper redistribution is defined here as any policy that reduces the incentive to accumulate. Taking growth maximizing policies as a benchmark has its virtues since people appear to have difficulties disentangling the relationship between utility enhancing income growth and the distribution of income at each point in time. See, e.g. Amiel and Cowell (1999). Thus, any policy s5^s redistributes and lowers growth in the model.19

This Article challenges the double-distortion argument from a law-and-economics perspective. In particular, the Article contends that legal rules should be used to redistribute income, in addition to taxes and transfers. Two main reasons justify this conclusion. 7 First, there is no a priori reason why a legal rule that redistributes income should always be distortionary - a necessary condition for the double-distortion argument to be true. Indeed, it is easy to devise examples where a change in legal rules will both redistribute income and increase efficiency. More generally, there is nothing inherent in the concept of redistribution that requires such a change to be accompanied by an efficiency loss. Within economics, redistribution is defined simply as a reduction in inequality. Consistent with this definition, it is possible for a redistributive legal change to be either inefficient or efficient - even in the Pareto sense, where no one is worse off and at least someone is better off. 8 Since a legal change that meets such conditions both reduces inequality and not only is nondistortionary but increases wealth, it is unambiguously superior to redistribution through the tax and transfer system, which is always distortionary. 9

Redistribution is defined as "the act or process of distributing something again or anew." Redistribution, Black's Law Dictionary (10th ed. 2014). This Article: adopts a broader meaning, expanding on Nancy Fraser's definition, which follows: The remedy for economic injustice is political-economic restructuring of some sort. This might involve redistributing income, reorganizing the division of labour, subjecting investment to democratic decision-making, or transforming other basic economic structures. Although these various remedies differ importantly from one another, I shall henceforth refer to the whole group of them by the generic term redistribution. Fraser, supra note 20, at 73.

Human beings are dialogical beings and the significance of disability or impairment and their impact on well-being will tend to be comparative. As Sayer argues: ‘we measure ourselves not so much against absolute standards but against what others are like, particularly those with whom we associate the most’ (2011, 122). Evaluative judgements in relation to the individual experience of both disability and impairment are important. If we are to properly understand social phenomena, such as disability, we have to recognize their normative dimensions and the values attached to them. Value-laden statements, as Sayer (2011) argues, can strengthen the descriptive adequacy of accounts. Sayer demonstrates this by using the example of the Holocaust. This, he says, can be represented in two ways: ‘thousands died in the Nazi concentration camps’ and ‘thousands were systematically exterminated in the Nazi concentration camps’. The latter sentence is not only more value-laden than the first, but more accurate as well (Sayer 2011, 45). We would argue that talking about ableism, disablism or oppression does not make sense without reference to normative judgements about people’s well-being, as without such a discussion only a partial picture will emerge. The same may also apply to judgements about fair social arrangements. Disability & Society 641 CDS does not engage with ethical issues to do with the role of impairment and disability in people’s well-being and the pragmatic and mundane issues of day-today living. Imagine, for example, a pregnant woman who has agreed, possibly with very little thought, to the routine of prenatal diagnostics, and who has been informed that the foetus she is carrying has Tay-Sachs disease. She now has to make the decision over whether to terminate the pregnancy or carry it to term. The value judgements that surround Tay-Sachs include the fact that it will cause pain and suffering to the child and he or she will probably die before the age of four. These are morally relevant considerations to the mother. Whilst CDS would probably guide her to confront ableist assumptions and challenge her beliefs about the condition, considerations having to do with pain and suffering are nevertheless morally significant. The way people see things, and the language that is used to describe certain conditions, can affect how they react to them, but freeing oneself from ableist assumptions may not in some cases be enough. There may be insurmountable realities attached to some impairments where parents feel that their personal and social circumstances would not enable them to provide the child or themselves with a satisfactory life (Vehmas 2003). Impairment sometimes produces practical, difficult ethical choices and we need more concrete viewpoints than the ideas provided through ableism, which offers very little practical moral guidance. It is questionable whether the notion of ableism would help the parents in deciding whether to have a child who has a degenerative condition that results in early death. Campbell (2009a, 39, 149 and 159), for example, discusses arguments about impairments as harmful conditions, the ethics of external bodily transplants as well as wrongful birth and life court cases (whether life with an impairment is preferable to non-existence), and how ableism impacts on discourse around these issues. Whilst her analysis of such ableist discourses suggests ethical judgements, she provides no arguments or conclusions as to whether, for example, external bodily transplants are ethically wrong or whether impairment may or may not constitute a moral harm. Under the anti-dualistic stance adopted by CDS, even the well-being/ill-being dualism becomes an arbitrary and nonsensical construct. Under ableism it can be constructed as merely maintaining the dominance of those seemingly faring well (supposedly, ‘non-disabled’ people), and labels those faring less well as having lesser value. There may not be a clear answer to what constitutes human well-being or flourishing, but in general we can and we need to agree about some necessary elements required for well-being. Also, as moral agents we have an obligation to make judgements about people’s well-being and act in ways that their well-being is enhanced (Eshleman 2009). This is why we have, for example, coronary heart disease prevention programmes because the possible death or associated health problems are seen as harms. Possibly these policies are based on ableist perspective, but if that is the case then the normative use of ableism is null; eradicating supposedly ableist enterprises such as coronary heart disease prevention would be an example of reductio ad absurdum. Denying some aspects of well-being are so clear that their denial would be absurd, and simply morally wrong. CDS raises ethical issues and insinuates normative judgements but does not provide supporting ethical arguments. This is a way of shirking from intellectual and ethical responsibility to provide sound arguments and conceptual tools for ethical decision-making that would benefit disabled people. If we are to describe disability, 642 S. Vehmas and N. Watson disablism, and oppression properly, we have to explicate the moral and political wrong related to these phenomena. Whilst CDS has produced useful analyses, for example, of the cultural reproduction of disability, it needs to engage more closely with the evaluative issues inherently related to disability. As Sayer has argued (against Foucault): while one could hardly disagree that we should seek to uncover the hidden and unconsidered ideas on which practices are based, I would argue that critique is indeed exactly about identifying what things ‘are not right as they are’, and why. (Sayer 2011, 244) By settling almost exclusively to analyses of ableism without engaging properly with the ethical issues involved, CDS analyses are deficient. The moral wrongs related to disablism or ableism are matters of great concern to disabled people, and CDS should in its own part take the responsibility of remedying current wrongs disabled people suffer from. Disability and disadvantage In the final sections of this paper, we will discuss CDS in the light of the politics of disability. We will challenge its key ideas and their political use. We argue that deconstructing categories of difference is neither necessary nor desirable in the pursuit of justice for disabled people. Abolishing oppression requires recognition of the various ways different groups of people are marginalized and oppressed, and to do this requires more than an analysis of their categorization and their historical genealogy. Tackling disadvantage has been the main theoretical and political aim of disability studies and from its first inception academics such as Oliver, Barnes and Finkelstein were interested in documenting the disadvantage experienced by disabled people and how it can be prevented or challenged. It shares with political philosophy a desire to identify and critique discrimination associated with the ill-treatment of disabled people and their subordination (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007, 3). Improving the position of the worst off is generally seen, at least in an egalitarian outlook, as a matter of justice because people’s social status and well-being is inevitably related to the way society is organized. In order to create fair social responses to disadvantage, we have to have a common understanding about disadvantage, and a reasonable (non-arbitrary) way of comparing disadvantages and correcting them. The crucial issue is to define a proper metric of justice. In other words, ‘what should we look at, when evaluating whether one state of affairs is more or less just than another?’ (Robeyns and Brighouse 2010, 1). For example, what should be the primary focus for justice and how should it be evaluated? Is it the distribution of happiness, wealth, or something else, and how can these be measured? Western political thought has evolved from the contractarian tradition where people voluntarily commit to follow norms and laws they have established in order to ensure peaceful social life. Its most influential recent theorist was John Rawls (1971), whose proposal for the proper metric of justice was the idea of social primary goods; those goods that any rational person would want regardless of whatever else they wanted. Rawls’ list of social primary goods included things such as freedom of thought, movement and choice of occupation, equality of income and wealth, as well as social basis of self-respect. For Rawls the distribution of social primary goods is the main concern of justice. Rawls’ theory has been criticized for excluding people who Disability & Society 643 do not conform to the demands of normality from the spheres of justice. And indeed, Rawls did exclude disabled people from his theory as exceptions to the rule; we should, he argued, first work out a convincing theory for the ‘normal’ people and after that extend it to the ‘more extreme cases’ such as disabled people (Robeyns and Brighouse 2010, 3). Rawls’ ideas have recently been challenged by the capabilities approach, a theory developed initially by Amartya Sen and later by Martha Nussbaum (2006). Instead of focusing on resources such as income, wealth or legal rights, the capabilities approach emphasizes the significance of functionings and capabilities. Functionings refer to states of the person; things such as literacy, health, mobility, and the ability to appear in public without shame (Anderson 2010). Capabilities, on the other hand, are the real freedoms or opportunities to achieve functionings. So mobility is a functioning whereas the real opportunity for mobility is the corresponding capability (Robeyns 2011). Nussbaum (2006, 76–78) identifies 10 capabilities, ranging from life, ‘bodily health’, bodily integrity, physical security to emotions, affiliation and control over one’s environment. Capabilities provide the bare minimum that all humans should be able to achieve in terms of valued functionings and well-being. So, justice concerns ‘the capabilities to choose a life one has reason to value’ (Robeyns and Brighouse 2010, 2). Lacking involuntarily any capability or central human functioning amounts to a disadvantage. If we are to make comparative judgements about people’s well-being, we have to be able to come to an understanding of how well each individual is doing with regard to various functionings (Nussbaum 2006, 69–81; Wolff and De-Shalit 2007, 36–62). The capabilities approach is an exceptional philosophical theory in that it has been operationalized. The United Nations, and a number of national governments, most notably the United Kingdom, have all used it as a basis for practical policy development and implementation. It is the basis for the UK’s Equality Measurement Framework, a tool developed for and implemented as part of the equality initiative launched by the last government. Unlike the ideas of Rawls, it has been successfully applied to disability (Burchardt 2004; Nussbaum 2006). The capabilities approach has been criticized on various grounds (Pogge 2010; Walby 2009) but, despite its possible shortcomings, it is one of the few philosophical theories that engages with issues, including disability, in a manner that is not only theoretically illuminating but also politically practical (Sayer 2011). Working within the capabilities approach agenda, Wolff and De-Shalit (2007, 172) have suggested a way of determining the issue of disadvantage by introducing two factors: what the person has or has access to, and what they can do with it. What the person has includes both internal resources, such as talents and skills, and external resources, such as wealth, income and less tangible matters such as family and community support. How effectively these can be used depends on various structures operating in society: laws and customs, the influence of tradition, informal and formal power relations, religion, language, culture and other social norms: the interaction of your internal resources and your external resources with the social and material structure within which you find yourself, determines your genuine opportunities for secure functionings […] In short, your resources are what you have to play with; the structure provides the rules of the game. (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007, 173) 644 S. Vehmas and N. Watson Aspects of social structure are as important in determining your genuine opportunities as your internal and external resources. Accordingly, tackling people’s disadvantage can take place in three different dimensions that may or may not be related to each other: internal resources, external resources and social structures. There at least four strategies for addressing these disadvantages: personal enhancement, cash compensation, targeted resource enhancement, and status enhancement (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007, 173–174). Personal enhancement is achieved through education and training as well as psychological and medical interventions. In cash compensation, people are given money to spend as they need. In the case of resource enhancement, people are provided with resources for a particular purpose (in the case of disabled people this could mean the use of an aid to daily living such as a computer with speech synthesizer or service such as personal assistance). Effective improvement of people’s internal or external resources cannot take place without social arrangements that recognize the equal rights of all. In practice this means status enhancement, where people’s opportunities and social status are improved by social changes, such as changes in law and social attitudes and the material environment. If the aim of a just society is to guarantee its members an equal chance for a minimum level of well-being, it needs to define the kind of disadvantage that is a matter of social concern. In addition it must also be able to identify the most disadvantaged members of society, and what factors affect how well-off or badly-off people generally are. These measures enable evaluation (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007, 21). This is necessary because, under conditions of finite or scarce resources, we need to not only have general criteria on the allocation of support (Stone 1984) but also know what works and what does not. Under conditions of finite resources, society needs to decide how to allocate resources between various sectors of justice and this needs to be done democratically. These decisions cannot be taken without an evaluation of how significant certain functionings are for human well-being in general, and what kind of weight they should have in our societal apparatus (Wolff and De-Shalit 2007, 92–93). Nussbaum (2006) emphasizes that satisfactory political theory must be pluralist in the sense that it takes into account cultural variation. At the same time, and to a degree, it must also be normatively objective as people often submit to the status quo against their own interest and adapt to their own deprivations. An acceptable principle of public justice must be capable of being known by all because justice fundamentally concerns claims that we can make to others; ‘Justice embodies demands of particular persons that can, by right, be exacted from others’ (Anderson 2010, 86; original emphasis). Capabilities theorists argue that political theory should be based on an objective (albeit an open-ended and subject to ongoing revision and rethinking) list of components of well-being and relevant capabilities people need to function as equals (Anderson 2010, 85–86; Nussbaum 2006, 73–76).

Living and minimum wage movements immediately distinguished themselves by the extraordinary coalitions they elicited, and by their success during a period that for social activists was depressingly bleak. Trade unionists, people of faith, the elderly, the young, people of color, people with disabilities, and women, all angered by the growing disparity between rich and poor in a time of inordinate prosperity, were more than ready to unite in support of low-wage workers. Theirs was a powerful moral imperative. As Maria Elena Durazo, a leader in the Los Angeles living wage campaign and president of Hotel Employees, Restaurant Employees, Local 11, commented: We cannot be isolated for the very simple reason that we are not alone. The things we are fighting for—respect, dignity, a living wage, the chance for our children to have a better future—these are things that all people want. . . . We also have justice in our corner. And patience as well (quoted in Luce, 2004, p. 207). Critically, the movements provided the strongest challenge in decades to economic development policies that focused on building a “positive business climate” at the cost of people’s needs, and reasserted the responsibility of government to ensure “that fairness and justice for all prevail in our communities” (Luce, 2004, p. 13). It was these concepts that the authors wanted to introduce to Nevada citizens through Working Hard, Living Poor.

In the remainder of this paper we consider how the reform experiences in Australia, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden can inform U.S. policymakers tasked with ensuring DI’s fiscal sustainability. First and foremost to effectively design policies to curb disability recipiency rate growth, policymakers have to acknowledge why it is growing. A large body of research has shown that in advanced industrialized economies with large and complicated safety nets, both exogenous factors—population demographics, population health, or economywide shocks–and endogenous factors—changes in eligibility rules, benefit replacement rates, or access to other social programs–can influence disability recipiency rate growth. The disability reforms undertaken in the Netherlands, Sweden and Great Britain were possible once these countries acknowledged that changes in behavior rather than changes in health were driving program growth. By recognizing that their policy designs influence behavior and program outcomes, policymakers opened the door to more fundamental disability policy changes. Importantly, this acknowledgement also allowed policymakers to rethink their national disability scheme’s goals and bring them more in line with modern notions of disability. This meant discarding terminology and criteria of incapacity and replacing them with a focus on ability. More than just semantic window dressing the new Burkhauser et al. IZA Journal of Labor Policy 2014, 3:4 Page 22 of 30 http://www.izajolp.com/content/3/1/4 terminology changed people with impairments expectations from dependence on disability benefits based on not working to work. Of course, for some individuals work was not possible, but this increasingly became the exception rather than the norm. As the previous section demonstrated, each nation implemented reforms slightly differently, but all shared the goal of curbing unsustainable program growth by changing the culture and social expectations of and for people with disabilities and better aligning the incentives embedded in program design with these expectations. The data show the reforms have generally been successful. Although each of the nations recognize their reforms have not been completely successful, from the U.S. perspective these reforms demonstrate that policies matter and provide a relevant starting point for discussions about reforming the U.S. system. Below we provide the four lessons most relevant to U.S. policymakers. Lesson 1. Disability does not mean incapacity Although disability is frequently thought of as an immutable, health-based condition that limits functionality and prevents the performance of socially expected tasks (such as attending school or working), modern notions of the productive capacity of all people is at odds with this characterization. A more accurate concept of disability, and one embodied in the U.S. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF), considers disability to be the product of an interactive process between an individual’s health conditions and the social and physical environment. In this perspective, disability is neither immutable nor determined solely by health. Each of the European countries we reviewed embrace this idea. Ensuring that their citizens with disabilities have the opportunity to work in the paid labor market is now a government priority19. Key among the findings based on their successful efforts to reduce their disability recipiency rates is that a substantial share of people who were moving onto the long-term cash transfer disability programs were, with reasonable levels of support, able to find or maintain employment. Of course, a subset of workers with disabilities have impairments so severe that work is not possible, but this has proven to be a smaller portion than previously accepted onto these programs. And those now coming onto the rolls are, by demonstration rather than assumption, unable to integrate effectively into the labor market even with appropriate incentives and support20. This design offers an important advantage over programs based on categorical determinations of disability that can expand in unintended ways when individuals are incentivized to change their behavior (i.e., attempt or not attempt to work) to become eligible. The lesson for U.S. disability policy is that the population with disabilities is heterogeneous and many of its members can work. This view is at odds with the current U.S. system in which the Social Security Administration (SSA) requires applicants to demonstrate an inability to perform substantial gainful activity before receiving access to benefits or any other type of support, including work support. Embracing the ideas of many European countries about the work capacity of individuals with disabilities calls for restructuring the U.S. system to bring forward the focus on employment and make long-term cash benefits a last-resort option once rehabilitation and accommodation had failed. Burkhauser et al. IZA Journal of Labor Policy 2014, 3 Lesson 2. Incentives affect behavior Once it is recognized that the social and cultural environment faced by individuals with impairments partly determines the extent to which their impairment limits them, it is easy to see that the incentives embedded in policy design can affect outcomes. The important lesson from the reforms in our sample of countries is that it is important to correctly incentivize all actors in the process to attain the outcomes desired. In the Netherlands, this meant making employers bear more of the direct costs of the program and making employees comply with rehabilitation and retraining in order to maintain benefits. In Sweden this meant standardizing the disability screening process and holding disability gatekeepers accountable for engaging applicants in work rehabilitation plans. Sweden also mandated that employers document how they had attempted to accommodate impaired workers. Finally, reforms focused on making workers comply with the work-first approach by reducing or eliminating benefits to those workers who did not comply with the rehabilitation and accommodation plans. Great Britain has similarly made employers responsible for paying sickness benefits for the first 28 weeks of a claim, has standardized the disability screening process, and has made it increasingly difficult to remain passively on long-term disability benefits without engaging in work-related activity. Reforms have also sought to address financial incentives related to imbalances in replacement rates between disability benefits and other welfare benefits. In Australia, most recently (since 2011) it has meant implementation of a new disability benefit assessment procedure, under which eligibility for benefits typically requires evidence that claimants were unable to obtain employment through vocational rehabilitation or other employment services over a period of up to two years, during which time claimants receive NSA and associated support services. The lesson for U.S. policymakers is that program incentives affect how people with disabilities and their employers react to, and fare after, the onset of a health impairment. In the U.S., DI is funded from a payroll tax and the federal government is responsible for a great share of the costs associated with providing long-term disability benefits to working-age people with disabilities. Because employers bear no direct responsibility for funding benefits paid to former employees, employers have no direct financial incentive to accommodate and rehabilitate employees who become impaired. Incentivizing employers to make greater investments in accommodation and rehabilitation by creating a scheme that makes employers internalize some or all of the costs of moving employees onto long-term disability could curb DI growth by more effectively aligning incentives. Autor and Duggan 2010 and Burkhauser and Daly 2011 propose two different models for doing this in the U.S. As the reforms in these countries show, incentives cannot be changed solely for employers. Incentives for people with disabilities and program gatekeepers also need to be aligned with program goals to realize sizeable and lasting reductions in disability recipiency rates. Lesson 3. Early intervention reduces flows—stocks are harder A recurring theme in the experiences of Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden is that reforms focused on early intervention can be very successful at reducing the flow of new beneficiaries onto the program and/or boosting the flow of new beneficiaries off the program. For example, early intervention that coordinated employer actions with Burkhauser et al. IZA Journal of Labor Policy 2014, 3:4 Page 24 of 30 http://www.izajolp.com/content/3/1/4 the employees’ particular health shock were critical to keeping impaired workers in the labor force in the Netherlands. Such intervention significantly increased the return to work of impaired workers and reduced time on the sickness or disability program. Evidence from Sweden shows that waiting even one year following the onset of impairment significantly reduces the chance that rehabilitation will result in a return to work. Evidence from Great Britain suggests that bringing medical screening forward can help to control program growth. In contrast, none of these countries, nor Australia, has been successful to date at moving existing longer-term beneficiaries back into the labor market, although the process of re-screening and seeking to activate existing longer-term beneficiaries in Great Britain has only recently begun. Across all countries, once enrolled on disability benefits for more than a few months, only a small fraction of recipients return to work. Even when strict time limits are put in place, as in the case of Sweden, movement off the disability system for longer-duration beneficiaries is difficult. Even when it is done, most frequently it results in a shift to another public program rather than into employment. These experiences have several implications for U.S. policy discussions. First, the fact that most current DI recipients do not work is not evidence that they would have been unable to work if given alternative policy treatments (e.g., timely accommodation and rehabilitation). Indeed, the marked difference in outcomes between those given early versus later employment-oriented services in the Netherlands and Sweden shows that in a system oriented towards long-term cash benefits rather than work, many of those with residual work capacity will never return to work. The experiences in these countries also call into question the viability of ongoing attempts to gain control of the U.S. DI rolls by funding additional continuing disability reviews or enhancing post-entry rehabilitation or job training programs like Ticket-toWork. While such programs have merits, the experiences in Sweden tell us that these efforts will fall short of bringing growth in the rolls down to sustainable levels. Finally, the reforms and outcomes in these nations show the difficulties of focusing policy reforms on current beneficiaries—a practice SSA is forced to follow by rules requiring SSA-collected funds to be focused on current program recipients. This suggests that eliminating this rule and allowing SSA to focus its energies on workers with health-based work limitations who are trying to decide whether to stay on the job or apply for benefits will likely do more to curb DI growth. Lesson 4. Hurdles to reform in the U.S. are surmountable Despite this growing body of evidence that structural reforms to long-term cash disability programs can curb program growth and potentially improve outcomes for those with health-based impairments, the political coalition necessary to achieve fundamental disability policy reform has been slow to evolve in the U.S. So what are the hurdles? There are several including a number of concerns raised by supporters of the current system. (See Reno and Ekman 2012 for a summary of these arguments.) One issue raised in response to proposals for fundamental DI reform is that these benefits, while not especially generous, are essential to keeping millions of disabledworker beneficiaries out of poverty. The evidence from Europe shows that this is a very static view which assumes that in the absence of benefits, individuals with disabilities would remain out of the labor market, dependent on other forms of public or private Burkhauser et al. IZA Journal of Labor Policy 2014, 3:4 Page 25 of 30 http://www.izajolp.com/content/3/1/4 assistance for support. European disability reforms over the last decade provide plausible evidence that increased employment will occur when pro-work policies replace policies that have had the opposite effect. Their reform experience shows that a significant number of people with disabilities, who would otherwise have moved onto longterm cash benefits, were able, with reasonable levels of support, to return to work. While it is always the case that tightening the criteria for disability benefits runs the risk of denying disability benefits to those who will not be able to find work, on balance the European experience suggests that reasonable pro-work policies will both substantially reduce disability recipiency rates and increase the employment of those who would otherwise have been on the long-term disability rolls. Nonetheless it is the case that fundamental DI reform could worsen the already precarious economic position of some people with disabilities. But this should be put the context of what has been happening to the overall well-being of working age people with disabilities in the U.S. Over the past 25 years the household incomes of Americans with disabilities have stagnated relative to other working-age people. This is associated, in part, with the near continuous decline in their employment. Our reading of the European evidence is that when programs are designed to award cash transfers in lieu of work, employment falls. In contrast, when programs are designed to encourage work and award transfers only when work clearly is not possible, employment rises. Since work generally leads to increased income, especially when public policies make work pay, efforts to promote work among those with disabilities can produce positive outcomes. The most important lesson though, is that by not working, long-term disability beneficiaries will over time slip further and further behind the rest of the working-age population, whose employment allows them to benefit from increased economic growth. A final concern is that programs like DI are especially important in economic downturns where individuals with limited work capacity are not only more likely to be laid off but less likely to find a new job. Past experience of European countries, especially The Netherlands, which intentionally or unintentionally used this logic to turn their long-term disability programs into more general unemployment programs, suggests that it can be a very expensive and ultimately ineffective policy decision. Indeed, many European nations continue to struggle to regain control over their disability systems which for many decades have been used as long-term unemployment insurance programs. A key message from the European experience is that explicitly divorcing longterm “unemployability” insurance from disability insurance is critical to effectively targeting resources towards both populations. Together the experiences of other nations suggest that it is possible to balance the competing goals of providing social insurance against adverse health shocks during working-age and maximizing the work effort of all working-age adults with and without disabilities. Past disability policies in both the United States and other OECD countries have focused more on the former than the latter, resulting in rapid growth in disability transfer populations that outpaced growth in the economy. Efforts to shift to more pro-work policies over the last decade in Europe suggest that fundamental disability reforms, if done well, can lower projected long-term costs for taxpayers, make the job of disability administrators less difficult, and importantly, improve the short- and long-run opportunities of people with disabilities.

(Jack - former disability policy analyst, federal lobbyist and congressional intern, “Universal Benefits Will Help People With Disabilities Escape Poverty,” 2 July 2019, https://truthout.org/articles/universal-benefits-will-help-people-with-disabilities-escape-poverty/)

The disability community must also be included into a comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. health system. A single-payer health model is the only forward to curtail rising costs, improving health outcomes, expanding patient choice and increasing coverage to all. Lawmakers must be mindful of including people with disabilities in a single-payer program and ensure that all long-term care and disability-related health expenses are covered in full. A universal health benefit through a single-payer model will provide increased affordability, universal access and improved outcomes, while creating a health system that views disability as part of the human experience rather than a charitable burden subjected to means testing.

Under this proposal, the Federal Government would maintain a 'buffer stock' of jobs that would be available to, and suitable for, the targeted group. The JG would be funded by the Commonwealth but organised on the basis of local partnerships between a range of government and non-government organisations. JG workers would receive the Federal minimum award wage and conditions. In order to receive the award wage, those who are eligible would be required to accept a JG job that is compatible with their health and support needs. The 'buffer stock' is designed to be a fluctuating workforce that expands when the level of private sector activity falls and contracts when private demand for labour rises. Instead of forcing workers into unemployment when private demand slumps, the ]G would ensure that workers with psychiatric disability would have immediate access to a public sector job at the safety net wage. Accordingly, workers can maintain an attachment to paid employment and not be forced, by systemic job shortage, into welfare dependency. Data from the CBFT stressed the importance of quick job placement in the attainment of employment outcomes. If a participant had not obtained employment within 12 months of commencing with a disability employment service, there was only an 8 per cent chance of them doing so (Wade and Bell, 2003: 13). Through creative job design, the activities that JG workers perform can enhance both community and individual well being. Activities could include urban renewal projects, the provision of community care and meals services, and environmental schemes such as reforestation and restoring river health. We recognise that a number of people with psychiatric disability face chronic labour market disadvantage due to complex issues such as insecure housing, episodic illness or substance abuse, and poor literacy, numeracy and livingskills. It is thus proposed that JG employment could be taken on a part-time or block basis to accommodate access to support.

Means-tested public aid programs clearly can be designed and administered in a way that does not demean and stigmatize their recipient populations. Means testing isn’t the problem. It’s never fun to disclose personal financial information, but it is a normal and expected part of life in a developed market economy. We do it whenever we apply for credit or complete an income tax return. The exercise is demeaning and stigmatizing only when it is administered in a way that (usually with intent) produces that effect. Public assistance programs that provide aid to Jobless Adults are stigmatizing not because they are means-tested or impose conditions on the receipt of aid, but because they are designed to stigmatize the receipt of public aid by such persons. This has always been a primary goal of such programs – a strategy designed to deter Jobless Adults from applying for public aid and if they are granted such aid, to drive them to seek and accept whatever paid employment is available as quickly as possible (Harvey, 1999). But, the only reason there are significant numbers of Jobless Adults who need public aid in market societies is because of the endemic job shortage that exists in those societies (Harvey, 2000b, pp. 699–748, 2007). If jobs were guaranteed for everyone who wanted wage employment, along with a full array of the support services workers need (such as child care), the population of persons needing means-tested transfer benefits would be limited almost entirely to persons whose receipt of such assistance is neither controversial nor stigmatizing. Nor would progressives need to worry about applicants for public aid being erroneously denied benefits, because the consequences of erroneous decisions would no longer be so dire. Rather than abandoning rejected applicants to their own devices, they would be guaranteed decent paid employment along with whatever support services they needed to succeed as members of the labour force. Even persons who could qualify for full disability pensions might prefer a guaranteed job under these circumstances – and the obligation placed on governments to secure the right to work for all persons would dictate that an appropriate job be furnished to such persons even if the accommodations required to do so would cost more than the disability pension. As this example illustrates, eligibility determinations also wouldn’t matter as much to conservatives. If the only question to be decided is whether a particular individual should be deemed eligible for a transfer benefit or instead offered a government-funded job, conservatives might prefer the cash aid option because it generally is cheaper on an individual basis.

(Jack - former disability policy analyst, federal lobbyist and congressional intern, “Universal Benefits Will Help People With Disabilities Escape Poverty,” 2 July 2019, https://truthout.org/articles/universal-benefits-will-help-people-with-disabilities-escape-poverty/)

A new benefits program for all people that includes people with disabilities should be multi-pronged and include a federal jobs guarantee with fair compensation, health care and universal basic income with extra funding for those with disabilities who are unable to work. A federal jobs guarantee that includes people with disabilities, while also fighting for equitable compensation, will better the economic reality for those living in poverty. A jobs guarantee will not force people with disabilities to work, but simply guarantee that any person who wants to work will be able to do so while also receiving benefits.

(Jack - former disability policy analyst, federal lobbyist and congressional intern, “Universal Benefits Will Help People With Disabilities Escape Poverty,” 2 July 2019, https://truthout.org/articles/universal-benefits-will-help-people-with-disabilities-escape-poverty/)

A Universal Basic Income (UBI) with increased funding for people with disabilities who are unable to work, united with a single-payer health system and a federal jobs guarantee, will ease the transition out of poverty. A UBI would provide much needed extra income for people with disabilities living on the margins and aid in reducing poverty in the U.S. A new universal benefits system can be achieved. When investments in health care, federal jobs and income are made, economic pressure can be alleviated. These policies will have certain impact in reducing poverty for the disability community in the long run and create a system that is based on sustainable universal equality and solidarity. When a new universal benefits system is achieved and a model that accounts for people with disabilities as people, working-class solidarity is built. A universal benefits program will maintain disability rights as human rights by including all working-class people into a universal program. Under a universal benefits model, people with and without disabilities are banded together and all are invested in a system that works to meet the needs of beneficiaries. By achieving a universal benefits model, attacks to the benefits system will be easier to stop, and all people will be invested into a system that delivers economic justice and inclusion. Within the wealthiest society in the existence of humankind, a person with a disability should not be forced between living off $12,000 a year and losing much-needed benefits. For too long, people in the disability community have been overlooked by employers and elected officials. The U.S. has enough resources to fund the abolition of poverty of all workers, especially for vulnerable people with disabilities. Working people, poor people and people with disabilities must unite for a system that redistributes wealth to solve the U.S. poverty crisis and guarantees that all people, including those with disabilities, have a job, comprehensive health care and a basic income.

(Steven - Ph.D. student, Centre for Disability Studies University of Leeds, “Access to work or liberation from work? Disabled people, autonomy, and post-work politics,” Canadian Journal of Disability Studies 4.2, 2015, https://cjds.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/cjds/article/view/212/398)

However, Silvia Federici, who was among the Italian feminists (associated with the Autonomia movement) who were active in the “wages for housework” campaign, describes “wages for housework” as not so much a concrete demand as a political perspective which could be more accurately described as “wages against housework” (Federici, 1980). The demand for a wage was not an end in itself, but firstly a counter-claim to the ‘naturalization ’ of women's unpaid domestic labour as an ‘act of love’, and thus not really ‘labour’ at all, in patriarchal capitalism; thus, “to want wages for housework means to refuse that work as the expression of our [women’s] nature, and therefore to refuse precisely the female role that capital has invented for us” (Federici, 1980, p. 257). For Federici, the demand for wages for housework was therefore not meant to celebrate or glorify either domestic work or the wage relation, but was in reality more about refusal of (unpaid) work and highlighting the importance of the domestic sphere as an essential component of the capitalist system of production, and was ultimately a demand for autonomous personal power rather than for money. This perspective is shared by Kathi Weeks (2011) in her feminist analysis of the refusal of work. In Weeks’ analysis, however, this demand failed because its content did not live up to its “promise as a perspective and provocation” (p. 137). For Weeks (2011) the logical conclusion of the tensions inherent in the demand for wages for housework is to instead demand a universal basic income, which she defines as “an income paid unconditionally to individuals regardless of their family or household relationships, regardless of other incomes, and regardless of their past, present, or future employment status” (p. 138), which must be sufficient to meet all basic survival needs for everyone.xiii As Davis (1982) notes, this was a much more appealing demand than “wages for housework” to women on welfare in the US in the 1960s–70s, and Weeks (2011) points out that a basic income was one of the core demands of the US National Welfare Rights Organization (p. 144). Similarly, I would argue that an unconditional basic income is the logical conclusion of the argument made by Barnes (2012), because several of the categories of activity he includes in his expanded definition of ‘work ’, such as ‘biographical work’ and the activities involved in managing impairment, are either not measurable, or measuring them would involve an unacceptable level of paternalistic intrusion into disabled people’s daily lives.xivAlso, unlike ‘housework’, while these activities do involve expenditure of energy on the part of the disabled individual, they do not either produce or reproduce anything for capital; therefore, it is hard (at least from an administrative point of view) to see a meaningful distinction between paying people for them and paying people for ‘simply existing’. An unconditional basic income would also differ significantly from the ‘disability incomes’ campaigned for by DIG and opposed by UPIAS, because it would be given to everyone, both disabled and non-disabled, and thus would not stigmatize or segregate disabled people as a class considered uniquely dependent or ‘incapable’.xv It can be argued that the concept of unconditional basic income is incoherent, because it is impossible within capitalism (because for a government to grant it would go too far against the capitalist logic of work as definitional of citizenship to be acceptable), and it would be unnecessary without it (as if exchange-value were abolished and a ‘gift economy’ established, then there would be no such thing as ‘income’). However, in view of the broader politics of many of its proponents, it can perhaps best be seen as a transitional demand leading to the ultimate anarchist/autonomist ideal of a gift economy, based on the principle of ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’, which, taking into account both the historical materialist account of the origins of disablement and the impossibility of disabled people participating as equals in a labour market whose foundations were built on their exclusion, is arguably the only truly non-disabling economy.xvi

Twenty-five years ago, with the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), our nation committed itself to the elimination of discrimination against people with disabilities. As the momentous 25th anniversary year of the ADA draws to a close, the Department is reflecting on what this seminal civil rights law means to people with disabilities, acknowledging the progress the department has helped to make possible and looking forward to the work ahead. As Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch observed in her remarks commemorating the ADA’s 25th anniversary, “By prohibiting discrimination and ensuring opportunity, the ADA has opened doors and brought dreams within reach.” Indeed, the true power and promise of the ADA lies in its ability to empower individuals with disabilities to dream bigger, and to enable them to pursue their own visions of the American dream. The Department of Justice is proud to stand with individuals with disabilities to ensure that the ADA’s promise becomes a reality. The department will continue to use the broad array of tools at its disposal – including technical assistance, regulation development, mediation, investigation, litigation and statements of interest – to aggressively pursue the goals of the ADA. Over this anniversary year, the Department of Justice has worked diligently to advance the four goals set forth in the ADA – equal opportunity, full participation, independent living and economic self-sufficiency for people with disabilities – in a wide variety of contexts, including civic access, employment, education, integration, health care and recreation. For example, through our technical assistance on the rights of parents with disabilities, the Justice Department made clear that people with disabilities are entitled to an equal opportunity to form families, become parents and raise their children without interference based on outdated stereotypes and incorrect assumptions about their abilities to parent. And the department has continued to work to ensure that people with disabilities have equal opportunity to access quality education, including educational opportunities that are available online and educational opportunities in integrated settings alongside their non-disabled peers. The Department of Justice has fought for the rights of children like Brahm and Jayla to fully participate in all of the activities that make up a quintessential American childhood, such as going to the playground, playing sports and going to summer camp. The department has also advanced the rights of individuals with disabilities to fully participate in the most fundamental civic activity – voting. Through our 218 Project Civic Access agreements, including 15 new agreements this year alone, the Justice Department helps to ensure that people with disabilities are able to participate fully and independently in community life. We also advance the goal of independent living through our Olmstead enforcement work, which helps people with disabilities have the opportunity to live and work in integrated settings in their communities and remains a high priority for the department. Finally, we are furthering the goal of economic self-sufficiency by making clear that state and local government employers cannot discriminate against people with disabilities. In 2015, the Department of Justice entered into numerous settlement agreements and consent decrees obtaining relief for people with disabilities like Mr. Gomillia, who was fired from his job as a correctional officer after he disclosed that he used to have diabetes. In addition to resolving individual complaints of employment discrimination, the department has entered into several agreements with public entities requiring them to revise their job applications and employment websites to ensure that people with disabilities have an equal opportunity to compete for government jobs. Though our country has certainly come a long way towards achieving equal opportunity, full participation, independent living and economic self-sufficiency for people with disabilities over the 25 years since the ADA was enacted, the department recognizes that our work is not yet done. As the head of the Civil Rights Division, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, clearly stated in her remarks on the ADA’s anniversary, “We will not stop until every child with a disability can dream the same dreams as children without disabilities – and follow those dreams to reality. Until every person with a disability can pursue a life of work, family, community and civic participation. And until the dignity and value of every person is recognized without question.” The department will not rest until, to paraphrase President George H.W. Bush’s powerful words at the ADA signing ceremony, every last shameful wall of exclusion for persons with disabilities finally comes tumbling down.

Increasing effective strategies for engagement with private sector employers is crucial to increasing employment opportunities and advancement for people with disabilities. Private sector employers understand that they have nondiscrimination obligations under Title I of the ADA, and employers that contract with the Federal Government know they have responsibilities under federal law to affirmatively recruit and hire qualified people with disabilities, but hiring will only increase when more employers are exposed to high-quality, easily accessible information on the benefits of a disability inclusive workforce. They also need information on recruitment strategies and accommodations. Employers, like anyone else not exposed to people with disabilities, may see a disability as a barrier to productivity, rather than see the person with skills and talents first. Effective engagement has the power to change such biases and stereotypes, creating opportunities for people with disabilities—whatever the disability—to obtain employment. Effective engagement helps employers view employees with disabilities as a natural part of a diverse, thriving workforce. In the robust labor market of recent years, private industry has had an abundance of jobs to fill and has sought talented people to fill them, yet talented people with disabilities have largely not benefitted by the increased job openings. While we have discussed several barriers created by federal law, regulations, and programs that act as barriers or impediments to entering or reentering the workforce, a persistent and equally important barrier is employer attitudes about disability and misunderstandings and bias about employing people with disabilities. One in five people have a disability; it is a natural part of human existence, not a ban on the ability to work or to be successful and productive on the job. Disability inclusion creates sustainable, long-term performance value—the challenge is to continue sharing this message with employers and reduce such biases and stereotypes so that employment opportunities expand. People with disabilities are a talent pool that has often been overlooked, but employers can benefit by engagement with federal agencies, VR agencies, and nongovernmental organizations that have expertise and abundant resources on In the robust labor market of recent years, private industry has had an abundance of jobs to fill and has sought talented people to fill them, yet talented people with disabilities have largely not benefitted by the increased job openings. 2020 Progress Report on National Disability Policy: Increasing Disability Employment 87 disability inclusion. Such engagement raises awareness about the immense talent pool with disabilities and increases information sharing. At their best, these connections will help build pipelines between job seekers with disabilities and employers, help form partnerships with employers to create internships and job opportunities, and increase opportunities for easy access to technical assistance to employers on legal and regulatory topics—all helping increase the workforce participation of people with disabilities. The most effective strategies for employer engagement on hiring employees with disabilities are those built on positive messaging about skills and talents, which helps counter stereotypes and bias about people with disabilities, and those highlighting the fact that disability inclusion contributes to a company’s bottom line.248 Employer engagement efforts, including campaigns and networking through disability inclusion-related conferences, are an important part of the picture because they help dismantle stereotypes about employees with disabilities, helping to open doors to inclusion in the nation’s workforce. This section highlights some, but not all, of the initiatives and efforts by federal and nongovernmental entities to engage employers on the topic of employing and retaining employees with disabilities and highlights the important role that the U.S. SBA could play to dramatically change employment opportunities for people with disabilities nationwide. Notable Federal Initiatives and Efforts Engage Employers in Disability Inclusion DOL/ODEP In April 2020, DOL/ODEP selected five National Provider Organizations (NPOs) to participate in its National Expansion of Employment Opportunities Network (NEON) initiative to increase competitive integrated employment for people with disabilities.249 According to DOL, “Partnership with provider networks is essential to promoting positive change . . . this initiative will help us better understand the barriers and, most importantly, solutions to increasing competitive integrated employment for individuals with significant disabilities.” Administered by ODEP, the initiative has selected the following five NPOs: ACCSES, a Washington, DC–based network of more than 1,200 organizations serving people with disabilities across the United States; American Network of Community Options and Resources (ANCOR), a national, nonprofit trade association in Alexandria, Virginia, representing more than 1,600 private community providers of services to people with disabilities; Association of People Supporting Employment First (APSE), a national, nonprofit membership organization in Rockville, Maryland, dedicated to Employment First, a vision that all people with disabilities have a right to competitive employment in an inclusive workforce; SourceAmerica, a Vienna, Virginia-based network of more than 750 community-based nonprofits that creates employment opportunities for a skilled and dedicated workforce of people with disabilities; and the Arc of the United States based in Washington, DC, the nation’s largest community-based organization of and for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The social model of disability states that there are six different types of barriers people with disability face. Barrier removal requires expertise, collaboration, advocacy and legal backing. Everyone can play a part in educating themselves about these barriers and learn how to create new pathways to ensure our society is as accessible and inclusive as possible. Attitudinal barriers Attitudinal barriers are created by individuals who can only see the impairment and not the person with a disability. At its worst believing in the stigma attached to disability can result in bullying, isolation and even violence. On the flip side of this, people can be incredibly patronising using people with disability as ‘inspirational porn.’ Although this belief has no malicious intent, people with disability do not exist to make others feel good. Being condescending can cause just as much damage as being purposefully hurtful. Stella Young spoke about the effects different attitudes have on the disabled community in her 2014 TED Talk, “I’m not your inspiration, thank you very much.” “I want to live in a world where we don’t have such low expectations of disabled people that we are congratulated for getting out of bed and remembering our own names in the morning. I want to live in a world where we value genuine achievement for disabled people,” said Stella. This barrier is the underlying issue of all the other barriers. People may be unaware of their negative attitudes which is why it is important to make a conscious effort to unlearn these stereotypes. Everyone is deserving of the same respect and rights no matter their disability. Physical barriers Physical barriers refer to environments that are inaccessible due to the way they were designed. Examples include buildings with no wheelchair access, ineffective lighting that creates poor visibility for people with low vision, sidewalks that are too narrow for walking aids or doorknobs that are difficult to grasp for people with arthritis. There is already a lot of change being made in this space, like the introduction of wheelchair-accessible beach mats and low sensory quiet hours at grocery stores. However, there is always more to be done. Architects, designers, builders, and town planners need to put accessibility first to ensure everyone can enjoy society, rather than a select few. Systemic barriers Systemic barriers are the laws, policies, practices, or strategies designed by the government or organisations that discriminate against people with disabilities. The systemic barriers often stop people from living their day-to-day life. Someone in a wheelchair may struggle to get places if their local train station does not have a ramp or someone with sensory processing issues may struggle to complete work if they are denied a reasonable adjustment of using noise-cancelling headphones. Unfortunately, discriminatory laws and policies are often only changed after immense pressure from advocacy groups. Alastair McEwin AM is the Commissioner for the disability royal commission and strongly believes that removing systemic barriers is key to achieving inclusion. “My drive for the work I do is, quite simply, to ensure that in the future, no disabled person has to experience discrimination or barriers to mainstream society in the same way I have experienced discrimination and barriers as a deaf person,” said Alastair.

If the restrictive decisions interpreting the ADA can be understood as implementing the welfare reform argument that formed such a significant part of the legislative case for the ADA, the question remains: Where did that argument come from? One obvious possibility might be that the welfare reform argument was a purely opportunistic way of hoodwinking conservatives into supporting a fundamentally radical law. As I will discuss below, there is something to that suggestion: Disability rights advocates increasingly relied on welfare reform arguments as the political climate turned toward fiscal retrenchment and against extension of civil rights policies in the late 1970s and the 1980s.292 There can be little doubt that those advocates believed that their increasing reliance on such arguments represented the most effective strategy for appealing to the conservatives, neoconservatives, and neoliberals who now held the balance of power in Washington. But this is not simply a tale of activists trapped by their own rhetoric. The welfare reform argument for the ADA was not simply an opportunistic tool to obtain the support of newly-ascendant conservatives in Washington. Rather, it derived from and drew heavily on a movement indigenous to the disability community-a movement that was a key staging ground for and that provided important leadership to the broader disability rights movement. That movement, the independent living movement, incorporated several strands of thinking that were notable for their ambivalence 291. See discussion supra Part II.A. 292. See infra Part III.B.1. 20031 985 WILLIAM AND MARY LAW REVIEW toward disability benefits programs.29 The welfare reform arguments for the ADA picked up on and extended the criticisms of benefits programs that were immanent in the ideology of many (though not all) independent living advocates. To the extent that the welfare reform argument has led to undesirably narrow interpretations of the ADA, the problem may not lie solely with the courts-or even with disability rights advocates' tactical choice to use that argument to sell the ADA. The problem may instead lie within a set of foundational ideas of the disability rights movement itself. As I hope to show, the independent living movement reflects a curious combination of libertarian and social democratic thought. Where, as in the selling of the ADA, the libertarian aspects of independent living thinking receive the lion's share of emphasis, the result likely undermines the ability to achieve the goals virtually all disability rights activists share. In this Part, I elaborate that argument. Part III.A provides an overview of the independent living movement, with a particular focus on its origins and the ambivalence it expresses toward disability benefits programs. In Part III.B, I argue that disability rights activists increasingly adopted the idea of"independent living" as what social movement theorists call a "collective action frame." The welfare reform argument represented a particular, hardly inevitable, instantiation of that frame, one that strongly resonated with both conservative legislators and people with disabilities themselves. Useful as it was for the emergent disability rights movement, however, the move to the welfare-reform/independentliving frame had a cost, which I discuss in Part III.C. Because much of the agenda of the disability rights and independent living movements can be readily characterized as a call for costly redistribution and constant government intervention on behalf of people with disabilities, a focus on avoiding dependency costs can be used to delegitimize and undermine that agenda. That, I fear, is a significant part of what has happened in the interpretation of the ADA. 293. See Judith E. Heumann, Independent Living Movement: Organizing for an Active, Disabled OldAge (1994), at http:/www~independentliving.org/toolsforpower/tools28.htm (last visited Jan. 28, 2003). 986 [Vol. 44:921 THE ADA AS WELFARE REFORM A. The Independent Living Movement 1. The Origins of the Independent Living Movement Most knowledgeable observers trace the origins of the independent living movement to the early 1970s.294 Around that time, people with disabilities in a number of communities around the country came together in local organizations known as "independent living centers." The first independent living center, the Center for Independent Living in Berkeley, California, began as an organization of students with disabilities at the University of California.29 The first of those students, Ed Roberts, was admitted to the university in 1962. As a result of polio, contracted when he was fourteen, Roberts used a wheelchair and spent substantial amounts of time in an iron lung. Although the university initially sought to revoke its acceptance of Roberts when it learned of his disability, the institution relented after a doctor at the Cowell Hospital, located on campus, proposed to house him on a floor of that facility. Several other college-aged people with disabilities who used wheelchairs learned of Roberts' arrangement and, in the next few years, obtained admission to the university as well. Like Roberts, these students were housed in the Cowell Hospital. Perhaps owing to the political consciousness of the times, particularly on the Berkeley campus, the students who resided at Cowell Hospital began to see their situation in largely political terms.2 They organized a political group called the "Rolling Quads" and urged the university to eliminate the architectural barriers that prevented wheelchair users from moving freely about the campus. They also organized a student-run class entitled "Strategies of Independent Living." With a grant from the Federal Office of Education, the Cowell residents launched the "Physically Disabled Students' Program" (PDSP) in 1970. That organization, run by and for students with disabilities, aimed to provide such students with the services they would need to lead independent lives that were integrated into the broader community. Services included attendants to assist in dressing, personal hygiene, and other activities of daily living, as well as prompt and reliable wheelchair repair services-a necessity for wheelchair users who sought to live in the community. From the beginning, people with disabilities from both the Berkeley student body and the broader community sought to participate in the PDSP's services. The organizers of the program soon decided to create a new organization that was designed to serve the community at large. That organization, the Center for Independent Living (CIL), was incorporated in 1972. The founders of Berkeley's CIL sought to create an organization controlled by and serving people with diverse disabilities, which would provide "services that [people with disabilities could] control on their own terms, and [would be] dedicated to independence and the transcendence of other institutions."297 Moreover, instead of providing care and maintenance of people with disabilities those services would promote independence from medical and rehabilitation institutions. Above all, the Center dedicated itself to the principle of consumer control-the principle that people with disabilities should control the services they receive. At roughly the same time, independent living centers began to spring up throughout the country. In 1972, the same year that Berkeley's CIL was incorporated, disability activists in Houston started a cooperative living project that was dedicated to the same basic principles.29 Other disability activists founded the Boston Center for Independent Living in 1974.' Today, there are approximately 400 independent living centers throughout the United States. Although each center is different, as befits "a profoundly local movement, bred of the specific needs of individual communities as divergent as Berkeley and Columbus," °° most independent living organizations subscribe to several fundamental premises. "These premises include the notion that each individual is different and unique; that people with disabilities are the most knowledgeable experts about our own needs and issues; and that programs serving disabled people should be designed to serve all disability groups."s0 z As analyzed by Gerben DeJong, one of the movement's most important chroniclers, the independent living movement drew heavily on the civil rights, consumerism, self-help, demedicalization, and deinstitutionalization movements of the 1970s for several basic ideas: that discrimination is what prevents people with disabilities from achieving full integration into the community, that people with disabilities rather than medical and rehabilitation professionals should decide what services they receive and how they receive them, and that people with disabilities should have the opportunity to make their own decisions about their lives, bearing whatever risks those decisions entail. For a variety of reasons, the independent living movement became a major driving force behind the broader disability rights movement of the 1970s and 1980s. For one thing, "most of the early disability rights leaders were identified with CILs."03 The Berkeley Center for Independent Living, in particular, self-consciously positioned itself to groom disability rights leaders."0' The Berkeley CIL also organized the most significant protest of the early disability rights movement-a twenty-eight-day sit-in in the San Francisco office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to protest Secretary Joe Califano's refusal to sign the regulations implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.30 5 Even after these early days, the independent living movement continued to play a major role in the disability rights movement by providing staging areas for disability activists in communities throughout the country, a network through which those activists could share information, and, perhaps most important, organizations with paid staff who could support disability rights activities. 3° Given the significant institutional role of the independent living movement in broader disability rights struggles, it should hardly be surprising that "the philosophy of independent living formed much of the basic philosophical underpinnings of the larger [Disability Rights Movement] .. 307

What are disability politics? How do they relate to my central theses: impairment matters in disability politics and social deconstruction obfuscates and potentially harms disability politics? This section first provides a brief over- view of the disability rights movement and the simultaneous evolution of lit- erature in disability studies. This is done in order to show how disability studies scholarship from the 1980s and 1990s reflects the social movements of the past and present. The section then moves to McRuer’s book and the intriguing and insightful parallels he draws between the ways in which disabled and queer (or queer/disabled) bodies have been created over time. Based on interpretivist inquiry and recreation of genealogies of disability, one can learn a great deal about the social construction of disability and deviancy, as well as practices of control over those bodies labeled as such. The disability rights movement in liberal welfare states The story of disability politics is often one told about shared experiences of oppression, marginalization, and a struggle which cross-cuts impairment groups. Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) and other cross-disability organizations like the American Association of People with Disabilities or the Disability Rights Education Defense Fund certainly have impacted positive changes in the broader disability community around questions of accessibility, accommodation, and anti-discrimination. Most notably, members of these groups impacted passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the ADA of 1990, and the ADA Amendments Act of 2008. Oliver and Barnes (2012) discuss the rise of a broadly focused, loosely associated Disabled People’s Movement in the 1970s to its height in the 1990s as a formative era in what can be thought of as the beginning of an era of ‘disability politics.’ Figure 1 delineates different ‘eras’ of understandings and reactions to disability by the state and later by activists.

Disability rights enjoy a seemingly ironclad moral consensus, an ostensible unanimity that is striking given America’s entrenched polarization and the antagonism surrounding other identity movements. Many are wary of L.G.B.T. rights or the Black Lives Matter movement, but it seems beyond the pale — almost cruel — to oppose disability rights. Nobody wants to be anti-disability. Initially, this harmony would seem helpful. Free from partisan discord, advancements for the approximately 57 million Americans with disabilities should be easier to achieve, borne aloft by the wings of certain progress. Why, then, do rampant unemployment and educational disparities endure, and why does success remain the exception? I think part of the reason is the insulation of our pro-disabled political consensus. Its logic is rooted not in any deep belief in the equal worth of citizens with disabilities, but rather in a general aversion to disability. This is related to the charity impulse that has always surrounded disability — and has constrained liberation efforts by assuming that inequities are unfortunate but natural realities to be mitigated through compassion, rather than politically structured injustices. There is also a profound lack of disabled people in the public sphere, meaning any substantive discussion that does occur is extremely rare. I suspect many people I talk to about disability maintain an implicit hope that, if they nod as vigorously as possible, the issue will simply go away. In this way, support for disability rights is similar to the act of expressing perfunctory thanks to military veterans. It temporarily absolves us of the responsibility to address the heart of the matter. Moreover, the apparent moral consensus may be mostly superficial. In trying to enact accessibility, disability advocates encounter increasing resistance as the effort and costs involved in proposals come closer to being realized. (Consider the neighborhood store that decides it’s just too costly to install a ramp, or the community lecture that excludes deaf attendees by refusing to hire a sign-language interpreter.) Instead of facilitating change, false unity actually restrains change. It stifles the more substantive conversations true progress requires. And our inability to speak honestly — and contentiously — about disability shows how the politics of disability is in this sense non-political. We are the worse for it. In addition to greater participation in the public sphere, true progress for citizens with disabilities will require a willingness to confront the issues head-on, even when — especially when — citizens disagree on competing solutions. We must politicize disability — not in the cable-news, grandstanding kind of way, but in the term’s more formal sense. The work of the Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe can help illuminate what’s at stake. Mouffe begins with the premise that human relations are inherently antagonistic: Political change always requires controversial transfers in power or prestige, and it is an illusion to imagine politics without confrontation. Per this “agonistic” conception of democracy, a healthy political order is one that prefers vigorous, good-faith argumentation to complacent consensus. Until we publicly recognize real disagreements surrounding disability and accessibility, Mouffe would insist, we are doomed to a vacuous, empty debate that is neither political nor productive. Recall the Kovaleski incident. I’m not suggesting that the abhorrence of Mr. Trump’s actions is open to legitimate questioning. But in their forcefully reassuring comments and messages, my friends prevented any serious discussion of disability at the level where reasonable disagreement does exist. Where will the money come from to fund disability employment schemes? How do we even define “disability”? Despite — and, I would argue, partly because of — the broad condemnation of Mr. Trump for his insensitivity, there was no substantive public discussion of such issues. You may be thinking, haven’t we had enough politics lately? Maybe it’s a blessing that disability isn’t as political as it might be; it avoids the drama and messiness that now seem to define our common life. Avoiding politics might be possible if disability were an exclusively private affair. But it is fundamentally a public concern, affecting everyone directly or indirectly and revealing our obligations to one another as members of a democratic society. Issues of accessibility can be fully addressed only through public institutions and collective effort. For the disability community, there is no answer but politics.