My dad was the oldest child of an alcoholic sharecropper and a teenage mom w/o high school diploma. He and his next youngest brother had to do most of the sharecropping AND do their regular chores AND attend school while he was growing up. He left home at 16, in the 10th grade, to help his mom put food on the table for his 5 younger siblings when his dad finally just left them. This was prior to any sort of welfare or food stamp program. He worked in a dangerous and stressful job for 35 years until he had the massive heart attack that very nearly killed him. He’s told me and my brother that if he left us $1 it would be $1 more than anyone ever left him.
His company gave him disability to buy his silence against a wrongful dismissal. Fact is, he wasn’t qualified for any of their desk jobs by then. He didn’t even have a high school diploma or even GED. There simply wasn’t a desk job they could have given him that didn’t involve stress that would have called down the insurance company/OSHA gods wrath.
This is less about goldbricking and more about government regulation and lawyers inhibiting someone who could have very easily started his own business. He did the numbers wrt starting his own fixit business, and assuming he could have doctor shopped to get approval for it, would have had to work 10-12hrs a day just to essentially break even after all the insurance payments for his heart condition. His former profession was off limits as per OSHA.
He wasn’t terribly happy to be on disability. It being a sign of shame for his generation. I think that stigma is why he stays so busy. He’s afraid someone will think he’s goldbricking.
I hope I conveyed well enough my understanding of his situation. Our understanding of an economically deprived childhood has come a long way in the last couple of generations. Fortunately, the bar has been raised.