RyansWorld: Disability pension

'''Special Note: Please note that this scenario is meant to be read as entertainment, not as an accurate prediction of the future. Also note that the viewpoints and opinions that may come across in this scenario are not necessarily the viewpoints and opinions of the author.'''

Disability pensions will become obsolete by the end of the 2020s thanks to affordable technological advances related to genetics, robotics, and nanotechnology.

Prior to that decade, pensioners received free medical, dental, prescriptions, and vision care for not working. Parents and spouses of pensioners often attributed their dependent son/daughter/husband/wife's pension to "God's will," stating there was nothing either they or the one that is receiving caregiver support can do to have a job or start their own business. Governments have been putting restrictions on disability pensioners in recent years in the hopes that medical technology will allow them to hold full-time jobs.

A typical pension experience
A typical disability pension is paid monthly to a "benefit unit" which can consist of a single person between 18 and 65 (or a senior citizen who is ineligible for Old Age Security or Canada Pension Plan) and any others who may require the person's support. This can be any corresponding dependent adults who do not qualify for assistance (though they are subject to workfare requirements), children under the individual's care, or a spouse. The ODSP benefit has two main components: a fixed basic needs allowance, and an amount for housing that is variable. For those who do not have independent cooking facilities and/or cannot provide grocery receipts, a "Board and Lodging" amount is provided instead. All costs are verified through submitted receipts and information sharing among other government agencies.

The following is usually provided with a disability pension:
 * free prescription drugs related to the disability in question
 * Dental coverage
 * Vision care (Including assistance with the purchase of eye glasses)
 * Medical transportation assistance (verified as medically necessary by a doctor)
 * Nutritional assistance for pregnant and breast-feeding women.
 * Coverage for medical supplies related to a recipients disability
 * Transitional coverage for those who no longer meet financial eligibility or move on to full-time work.

Termination of disability pensions
By the 2030s, autism will be eradicated worldwide, as the formerly mentally disabled leave their anti-psychotic medications and automatic government money and pursue high paying jobs at places like Toyota and freelance work-at-home jobs (everyone will pretty much work at home by the year 2030). While disability pensions have allowed the disabled to become parents and have dependents of their own, they could not own a house and were dependent on their government landlords to give them a 99-year lease so that they could have a house in the suburbs like their neurotypical parents. In most cases, a disability pension was not granted without a legal guardian, making marriage a more complicated process than with people that rely on employment for their source of income.

But as more autistics received the nanobot surgery cure and more handicapped people could afford stem cell products, governments decided to spend money that was being spent on social assistance programs elsewhere. While dealing with a larger cost of living, most people will make at least $5000 more per year in 2028 than they did in 2008.

A lot of formerly autistic people will take their innate levels of intelligence to become doctors, lawyers, politicians in addition to other highly-skilled careers.

Where will the money go?
These governments of the future (extremely liberal by today's standards but rather conservative by the standards of the 2030s) decided to develop new and massive employment programs in addition to maintaining the new maglev train tracks. The new governments will also bring back sexual education in junior high schools for the post-rock generation whose parents were never taught sexual education beyond simple abstinence lectures.

Precedents
The apparently debilitating illness, Tourettes Syndrome, that causes involuntary 'ticks' does not prevent people taking on highly skilled jobs as described in Oliver Sack's 'An Anthropologist on Mars'.

In Sack's view the disabilities are part of a spectrum of human mentality.