Would you want your kids to be autistic at all?

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Excellent point, Janissy. I'm also thinking about the fact that two of my son's aides have gone on to school to learn to be teachers. One wrote us a long letter about how inspiring it had been to work with him, and how it influenced her career choice. She was the most incredible, creative, flexible aide ever and I'm thrilled she will be a teacher someday. (Though devastated to lose her.) Caring for people who need our assistance is not just the humane thing to do, it benefits our society overall.

I'm not sure if I'm missing what you mean, but do services for disabled people truly threaten the survival of the rest of society? I hear arguments in the media about $60 billion in tax cuts, and how we need to be considering cutting social services ("austerity"), when the overall gov't budget is something like 3 trillion dollars. How come no one ever suggests cutting defense spending by $60 billion (like with those extra jet engines they don't want or need) and leaving everything else alone? It seems more an imagined threat than an actual threat.

The autistics who are employed evade diagnosis, leading to skewed figures. The unemployment rate is probably a lot lower, though still high.

Also, autistic people get fired from or not hired to jobs they're perfectly capable of doing because employers preferentially hire unqualified, airheaded NTs with great social skills and no ability to actually do the work.

Austerity programs that impact the poor and disabled are not going to save the economy. Taxing people in upper income brackets slightly more than we do now will do far more good than trying to minimize relatively cheap services for people with disabilities.

Also, what Anbuend said about cost already addresses the money concerns.

This is really about how one frames the debate. Such as the idea that autism is an epidemic, rather than the far more likely case that people who were already autistic are more reliably diagnosed now. The presentation of it as an epidemic in the media is little more than PR and simply not statistically supported as far as I've been able to research. The same, incidentally, is true of the so-called "obesity epidemic*." The fact is numerous factors play into how much weight people gain as a population, and most of them are structural and institutional in nature, or impacted by genetics, health conditions, or medications (or a combination of these things). Locating the problem in obese people completely misses the point, and is little more than scapegoating - as is the concern about an autism epidemic.

I am not, by the way, saying that kfisherx is doing any of these things. I am talking about how this information has been framed in the media.

Also - to kfisherx - sorry about the lack of a direct reply. I'm trying to dig up citations for a better response, assuming I don't get distracted.

* And how much of this is actually medical problems caused by obesity or simply medical treatment for obese people?

Last edited by Verdandi on 24 Feb 2011, 8:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I wouldn't my child to be NT, I would be worried about not being able to look after a kid because their brain works so much different from mine, which would be the case with NTs. I would want to have an autistic kid without sound-related sensory issues.

This worries me, too. If I have an NT kid, I might be as bad a mother for him or her as my NT mother was for an autistic one. However, I try not to think too much about the qualities of hypothetical children that may or may not ever exist. Having expectations for a child before he or she is even born or specific hopes for what a kid will do or be is a dangerous thing.

HA HA HA! Of course. The economy is made better by all the people who are hired to service all the ones who need it!! !

If only is worked like that...

Look folks, it is simple Math here and simple economics. On this planet you are either contributing or taking (dollar-wise). If a specific demographic has more taker than givers than that demorgraphic is NOT helping overall economics.

And Anubend did NOT address the money issue at all. She merely stated that abled people require services too and that people should take care of each other. Nice but dollars do not add up in the current societ/infrastructure. Like I said... In an "ideal" world maybe but in this world.... Doesn't add.

If we want the economy to thrive, people need to have money to put back into the economy. The government needs to spend, people need to spend. In order to spend, you need money. In order to have money someone else needs to spend so it gets to you. This is monetary circulation, and is handled via goods, services, taxes, employment, and so on.

It was pointed out repeatedly during the food stamp cuts that food stamps themselves are an economic stimulus, that people having money to spend on food stimulates the economy because that is circulating money.

Higher tax rates for those who already pay an extremely miniscule amount of their income (let alone their net worth) on taxes would be far healthier for the US in so many ways than cutting costs by eliminating assistance for people who need it - as I said, programs for poor and disabled people. If these people have money to spend, that goes back into the economy. If you spend money on services and support, that goes back into the economy. How on Earth does it make sense to keep pulling money out of the economy and allowing the wealthiest people in the nation to concentrate more and more wealth in relatively few hands. How is this particular model good for the economy? How does it help to make it harder and harder for an increasingly large segment of the population to even participate in the economy? How is this a healthy state of affairs?

The United States 2011 budget is a requested 3.83 trillion dollars, and somehow 60 billion dollars is supposed to be a monetary crisis that will break the bank? 1.57% of the budget? Especially when a percentage point or two increase in taxes to upper income brackets would cover these expenditures with change to spare and barely impact the people in those brackets?

The US is not the way it is right now just because it's that way. It's that way because people who have power to make choices keep making choices against the populations' best interests, hence we not only have people in permanent poverty, but a shrinking middle class and an increasingly wealthy upper class. This situation is resolvable, but whenever it comes time to make the decisions that would correct the problem, many representatives and senators vote the way the lobbyists want (that is, the professionals who are paid to go to capital hill and legally bribe them - and who has the most money again?), and not in a way that would actually help the US as a nation.

The cost of supporting autistic people is barely a blip of a problem against a backdrop like this.

Anbuend did address the cost issue: She pointed out that we already spend tons of money on accommodations that no one perceives as accommodations because temporarily able-bodied neurotypical people use them. Yes, disabled people and neuroatypical people also use many of these accommodations as well, but frequently need more accommodations.

Of course.... 60 billion is just a blip so let's ignore it... or furthermore... let's keep on keeping on by pro-creating the issue.

Sorry... the logic doesn't work for me.

Just because it isn't breaking the entire bank (I do not believe I ever said it was btw) does not mean it is a problem to ignore or take lightly.

With respect to accomodations for disabled versus non, please define the accomodations that NTs need that autistic people do not need (and that subsequently offsets the dollars thereby "addressing the cost") since THAT is the topic we are discussing...

Last edited by kfisherx on 25 Feb 2011, 9:35 am, edited 3 times in total.

But everyone has problems. There's no such thing as a perfect person. And ASDs have positives too, it's not all bad.

My basic opinion is that although a person may realize they stand a high chance of having autistic children (for whatever reasons), if they want to have children---then they should have children. As the father of two sons (one diagnosed with AS like me, the other probably AS too), my wife and I have absolutely no regrets. And if I could go back in a time machine and be able to press some magic button to cause two different children to be born (possibly autistic, possibly NT), I would not press it---I would want the two sons I have.

People have to be ready to accept any child that God might give them, before they get busy. That would be a good way to eradicate abortions.

That's not at all what I said. What I did say is that we can easily take care of people with a more intelligent use of taxation and resources, and that 60 billion dollars is actually easily manageable. The problem isn't that people need help, the problem is a lack of willingness to ensure that the resources are there. I also do not find talking about "60 billion dollars" as a problem to be convincing when there are many more expenditures that far exceed this to much less benefit to any US citizens.

As for keeping on having children - I'm a pretty firm advocate of reproductive justice, and I do not see the point of instructing people to have or not have children. In the past, women of color and disabled women were sterilized against their will, and while I know you are not advocating that, I do not agree with telling anyone they should not have children.

I don't agree with any degree of involuntary reproductive control.

WHOA!! ! where and how did we LEAP into involuntary reproductive control??

The point I am making is that it is PERFECTLY logical and sensical to state that you would NOT wish to reproduce knowing that you could give birth to an ASPIE given the hardships (fiscal and emotional) that it could result in. So many here want to argue against the logic but their arguments are 100% emotional so far.

Fiscally speaking it is an irresponsible decision unless you have the means to support and provide for any child you bring into this world to have children. If you think it is okay to give birth and just rely on services that SHOULD be there IF we made gross adjustments to the way we are as a society that is your decision but do not ask me or everyone to believe that is a "good" or "right" decision.

While I do not regret AT ALL having the two children I did have, if I had to do it all over again knowing the risks, (assuming I did not "know" my current children) I would NOT opt to breed. It just doesn't make sense on any level except an emotional one.

I felt very bad today and nearly had a crying fit at work thinking about the possibility of my child (if I ever were to reproduce) turning out like me, or worse (low functioning). I'm sure others struggle with this. I definitely think it's worth discussing.

This will be long. It had to be to explain everything in enough detail. Deal with it, I'm not capable of making it shorter or even of reading it through well enough to bold the most relevant parts. 

I did address costs, you just ignored me.  Many of the "services" going to autistic people are overpriced and many of them are unnecessary. They're overpriced because of greed:  People jack up the prices because they can. Because they want to get every penny possible out of insurance companies. Anyone who has ever seen the exact same item used for nondisabled people and disabled people can tell you this. 

I have had various speech devices that cost $200-400 because they were priced realistically. The exact same kind of devices are marked up to $10000 for insurance purposes. And this happens throughout the disability industry because of greed on the part of developers. I'm part of a project designing devices even more cheaply to be distributed to autistic children in the same manner as One Laptop Per Child. It's possible to drastically cut the costs of services without removing the services. 

And on to the unnecessary. Also because of greed, there is an entire industry devoted to convincing parents that unless they are buying super-expensive services and programs for their autistic child to be in nonstop, then they are neglecting their children. In many cases these "services" have no proven benefit and have plenty of possible damaging effects. But parents are taught systematically that unless they are frenetically busy doing things "for" their children every hour of the day, then they are damaging their child. You don't see this so extremely for other developmental disabilities because only autism has the mystique that it's actually possible to cure your child if you just try everything in sight. 

It's that mentality that caused that ridiculous overprivileged woman to say she was sending her son to Harvard every year of his life. Most parents could never send their autistic child to Harvard even once and I guarantee they will do just as well as that woman's child. You could probably easily save billions without this mentality. 

You totally missed my point when I talked about how my extended family has been dealing with autism for generations without any money. They were very poor. They managed. Often they managed better than many of these rich people do with all their BS about spending constant constant money on their children. All the money in the world won't "solve" CP or intellectual disability and it won't solve autism either. Further, most autistic people are in what most would call the mildest ends of PDDNOS and AS and will never need that many services. If you cut down services to what's necessary instead of just "vanity" services you could save lots and lots of money. Watch what dirt poor families have managed to do with virtually nothing and emulate it. Leave the services to those of us who really need them for survival. End employment discrimination and even many deemed very low functioning can get jobs.

Then there's the way the money is actually used in services. Institutional services are the most expensive due to high overhead costs. Eliminate institutions, integrate autistic people into our communities, and a lot of that goes away. Even more goes away if this integration works the way it would in a far less ableist society. Many autistic people only really need a neighbor or housemate checking in to make sure they eat and stuff. Costs nothing. Also costs nothing in services for an autistic person to pay their neighbor to buy a little extra of what food they're going to cook and cook it for them along with the food they were already cooking anyway.  Many many things autistic people get services for now could be handled like this at no or minimal extra cost if communities behaved like communities ought to and worked together to help each other. 

Hint:  This is how the least ableist sorts of poor people have been doing things for generations, often without even needing disability labels -- "That's just how Bob is." Real communities look out for each other, whether disabled or non, without requiring money that nobody has anyway. And people who've known hunger are often the ones who will share their last can of beans with you while those with the most to give walk by with their nose in the air saying "Not my problem."  Real communities know that anyone's problem is everyone's problem to solve and will take huge steps to look out for each other. I've seen it. I live it.  For a long time I would go to my physically disabled neighbor and strap on her compression boots that keep her alive and out of the hospital, because she had no funding for people to do this for her. It took 15 minutes out of my day and I did it literally until the moment I became physically unable to do so anymore. She has done similar things for me. Lots of our neighbors help each other because this is what anyone with a shred of decency does and none of us expect payment. 

Promoting real communities with a real sense of responsibility and common decency can go a long way to cutting costs as well. I've noticed this is less common in more affluent communities as well as communities that live in milder climates. Around here you know you can rely on your neighbor even if he hates you to help you out in the next blizzard. Necessity creates tighter bonds, I think. Time was that the autistic community worked like this as well -- if someone's cat got cancer you'd get a Paypal fund springing up within minutes to help them out. These days it's become fragmented and in many cases outright cruel, which is exactly what is happening to communities all over the place right now. The best thing to do is resist the sociopathic tendencies of society at the moment and embrace everyone helping everyone else. 

Disabled people can help each other, too. Each autistic person has a different set of skills. Combined, the right five autistic people can compensate for each other's difficulties. Better yet have a mix of disabled people. I can't bathe myself but I could bathe someone else. I once knew a household where the blind guy pushed the wheelchairs and the wheelchair users helped him navigate. And contrary to popular belief most autistic people are capable of helping and caring about others, including most labeled severe. One guy when faced with the task of teaching people with severe intellectual disabilities to comb their own hair, he couldn't manage it. They didn't have the abstraction capabilities to understand a part of their bodies they couldn't directly see visually. So he taught them to comb each other's hair and was wildly successful. I know an autistic woman who when she has trouble navigating social stuff at conferences will deliberately seek out people with intellectual disabilities (who usually run circles around us socially) and ask them how to do it. They're always glad to help and it works every time. 

Disabled people helping each other works so well so frequently because of that principle that people who've known real hunger are usually generous with their food. And the thing about community stuff like this is you don't even have to like the person you're helping, you do it because it's right and because it could be you needing help from them next. This is about true and genuine responsibility, caring, community, etc. Not that toxic BS that responsibility just means pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and if your neighbor can't then screw him. This stuff may all seem really weird in a cultural context where the trend right now is people being ripped apart from each other, pure individualism, society-wide sociopathy being the norm.  (And make no mistake people as dollars is a symptom of that sociopathy.) But it is the only way people will survive -- forget just autistic or disabled people, but just PEOPLE. We need (genuine) community because it is all that will save us. Many autistic people have only heard community as about socializing, but real community is about everyone helping everyone else to the best of their ability (although sometimes there are people so toxic to a community that they have to leave, these are sociopathic types, not disabled people I mean when I say this -- calling someone's genuine needs toxic is itself far more toxic than those needs could ever be). 

These are things that people in the geographically isolated poor communities much of my family is originally from took for granted about the world. They didn't even have special services for disabled people. They helped each other out -- everyone helped everyone as much as they could. Again I'm not talking utopia or romanticizing, I'm talking real world communities with real flaws. Yes disabled people missed out on some things they badly needed because those things just didn't exist there. But people were not singled out as disabled the way we are here and now. It was just people helping people and each person was individual in what that help might look like. Hard to imagine right now, I know, but that's how some of my extended family lived within living memory. It's no coincidence that when I first met some of those family as an adult -- in a wheelchair, nonspeaking, highly odd body language and mannerisms -- nobody batted an eyelash. I remember fearing them hating me for looking "slow", and my dad laughing and telling me that half of them looked pretty "slow" too and not to worry. He was right. (That's part of where the adult autistic people have always been. No sudden epidemic. Sorry.)  

Oh yeah, and the money hasn't actually left the country. It's just all in the hands of the super-rich while everyone else gets squat. The solution to that is not to blame disabled and poor people for being a burden on society, the real burdens are the ones with lots of money who only want more and more even though they have everything a person could dream of realistically wanting. Talk about taxing them vigorously before you complain about poor people getting our pittance. Otherwise you're just playing into the ableist/classist propaganda that scapegoats us for the economic problems of the world. 

Do all that and you'll see a drastic reduction in costs of services. Do all that really properly and you'll find that what once were called "services for the disabled" are now just "people helping people", little to no differentiation between disabled and non, possibly it all even happening without anyone feeling the need to exchange money over it. Also remember that in these scenarios the disabled people are always contributing themselves (even if certain people cannot imagine how) so don't even think of pulling out the "what a horrible burden" card. Disabled people are only a burden if people in general are a burden, because there is no fundamental difference between our needs and anyone else's other than how acceptable it is to meet those needs without being labeled a burden. 

And don't even think of telling me yet again that I just don't understand money and am just saying a lot of meaningless stuff with no economic impact. All of what I've just said is just the long version of what was in plain sight in my last post. And maybe think next time that someone who's been looking into the real meaning of disability for over a decade may just have a clue or two that someone without this background might not have thought of. 

The worst thing for disabled people today is the inability of many people to see past the propaganda they've heard their whole lives about what disability does and doesn't mean. And their inability to imagine any better way of doing things. 

If you want to find a way of doing something as cheaply as possible, look for poor people who have managed to do it and learn from them(/us). Not that all poor people have always handled disability well, there are horror stories aplenty (but then same with rich people). But some have. And the ones that have, often have much much better attitudes towards disability than the mainstream society:  It's just a fact of life. It doesn't have to set people apart. And people helping each other (as a community, not as just say one person doing all the work for nothing) is a given regardless of kind or severity of disability. 

So there, I've spelled it all out in great detail. I told you it wasn't just abstract feel-good crap. Not when my survival's on the line as much as anyone's (and more than most) if the draconian service cuts come through because the people who have everything won't do even a fraction of what people with virtually nothing will often do for each other. (Which makes me sick -- it's that kind of mentality I consider sociopathic on a society-wide level instead of an individual one. Marked by avoiding such pesky things as consciences or responsibility of each person towards each other person. Responsibility in this context means you do everything in your power to help everyone else you can. Not that you do the much lesser contribution of just having a job but doing nothing else. The whole idea that jobs are the measure of contribution to society is also part of that destructive anti-real-people mentality -- look past the propaganda and into the underlying effects of such an idea and it becomes more and more obvious.)

All of these things are necessary even outside of disability-specific issues. It's the only way people will survive what humanity may have to deal with soon (and what large parts of humanity are already dealing with), let alone thrive.