I'm on disability, and the resource limit is indeed $2000 (I don't know if that's across the board, or just in my state). I wasn't sure how much attention they pay to Paypal until you mentioned it specifically.

In my case, every dollar of income would cost 50 cents of SSI, so any job that earns less than $1260/month is probably not worth it. However, what I've read indicates that this rule is specific to blindness, and the system is less forgiving to other disabilities.

And I have student loan debt that costs more each month than my disability check, and my parents have been moving away from making that sustainable (at the current rate, I should be overdrawing from my checking account by the end of the year; I was expecting this to happen much sooner, but my parents paid much more of the bills in the first few months of 2013). This prevents "withdraw some cash to hide from the IRS" from being a viable strategy.

Without the loans, however, I could both live on SSI and have money left over for other things, assuming I was efficient with electricity and eating. The amount received depends on how many people you're living with, marriage status, property/car/stock ownership, etc.