Hire The Handicapped -or- Ten Thousand Maniacs

I am of two minds about the handicapped. On one hand I think ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) is a good idea. If you are building a new building, it doesn't take a whole lot to make it easier for people in wheelchairs to get through the doors. On the other hand, if we are going to devote acres of prime parking space to the disabled, the least they could do is get out there and use it!

And who rates a break for being disabled? Certainly military veterans who were crippled in the line of duty, and people who are disabled through no fault of their own, as in an physical accident or an accident of birth. But what about those people who have eaten their way into a wheelchair? Or those who smoked themselves into one? And how about the idiots who did something stupid and suffered the consequences? And how do you tell the difference?

I suppose I should count my blessings as I am still walking around and have all my faculties. Crazy like I am isn't generally considered a disability.

Roughly 20% of the US population has a disability of some sort, and about half of them (10% of the population) have a severe problem.

Chart from Chartbook on Disability in the United States.

I've been thinking that we could really use a consistant basis for all our statistics. I mean what does a hundred million people, or a trillion dollars really mean? It doesn't mean anything. It may as well be infinite. I'm never going to see that many people or that much money all in one place. So I was thinking we should give all our financial and population statistics in relation to a more manageable number or people, say like ten thousand. You probably know a hundred people, you may even deal with a hundred people every day. And each of those 100 people will know a hundred other people. So crossing two degrees of seperation, which isn't very far, you have a 10,000 people. 10,000 people is like a small town, or half a dozen villages, or a neighborhood in a big city. It's number you can relate to, sort of.

So for this example, out of your average town of 10,000 people, a thousand have a real problem. That's a pretty large number.

In terms of disabilities, this line from Wikipedia put a different spin on the situation:

"Several chronic disorders, such as diabetes, asthma or epilepsy, would be counted as nonvisible disabilities . . ."

Most of the time a person with one of these disorders could be perfectly fine, but occasionally they could cause real problems.

Update November 2022 replaced missing chart.