At the time it was hailed as compassionate because for the first time it gave people with disabilities a place in society. Now that there's more awareness for disabilities and significantly more public support, however, people with disabilities are able to get regular wage jobs far more easily.

This is absolute horse shit lol. You simply have no idea what you're talking about. The kinds of people who they target for these low-paying jobs are not single mothers with two kids and a car payment who just happen to have mild asperger's. These are people with multiple diagnosis/non-verbal/profound mental retardation/Low functioning downs ect. ect.

This isn't a matter of people having "More awareness for disabilities" or whatever that means. These people CANNOT FUNCTION IN A "NORMAL" WORK ENVIRONMENT. You need to understand and come to terms with that. These kinds of programs are designed to socialize people, Help them maybe get some VERY basic skills and feel valuable to society. But you don't understand the kinds of people we are talking about. 24/7 supervision and it takes them 2 hours to sweep a floor. And they might attack some random kid in the store. These people cannot be paid $15/hr. you need to understand that. Fucking awareness lol.