I was just having a conversation (argument) with my MIL about this. She claims that people have felt that SS would run out of money before they retire her entire life. Has this sentiment been tracked at all? I certainly feel like I (aged mid-30s) will not be benefitting, but the common argument is that the Ponzi scheme will find a way to perpetuate for longer
Impossible to tell, but there's factors making it more likely to happen this time than in previous generations. Probably the biggest factor is the declining population, which no government around the world has been able to materialise an answer to.
My personal retirement plans assume no social security. Anything I may get in old age is a nice bonus, but in my planning, it's not the beef.
>which no government around the world has been able to materialise an answer to.
I disagree. The whole hot political topic of "illegal immigration" is as a side effect - seemingly a successful solution to motivate (foreign) people to bump the population. Specifically - "if you have a kid in the US, the kid is automatically a citizen, you don't have to pay taxes, you don't need a green card, you work under the table so make $0 on paper and thus qualify for free food and housing (welfare) and free healthcare (medicaid)".
Honestly if we gave such a deal to young non-foreign american women free and clear, likely we'd be seeing a lot more childbirths.
Despite all the economic burden and political strife this program has caused, it may in fact extend the life of the nation and welfare.
This is anecdotal, but I remember this sentiment becoming widespread in the 1980s, along with the imminent hyperinflation and currency collapse.
Political candidates (Carter and Reagan) promised reductions in federal spending, but couldn't get past the obvious lack of any real discretionary control due to the size of the biggest ticket items such as the entitlements and military. The conservative message of "entitlements will make you immoral" was replaced by "entitlements are unsustainable," making it sound like serious economics but without any real basis.
Social Security counts on there being a larger workforce every year.
If there's ever a significant population crunch of working age people, it would be in trouble. In 2018, the cost of the Social Security program exceeded total revenues for the first time.
At current rates, Social Security is projected to be insolvent by 2034.
The only ways to mitigate this is to spend less or make more. But no one wants to pay more and no one wants to give up anything.
That early-mid 2030s prediction has been consistent all my life. It has gone up a little as rules changed but nobody was ever willing for the big reforms that could make it work long term.
This is a lovely mental model and also makes me feel a host of existential dread. I had a semblance of vision before gen AI and I think that vision needs serious revision
Which is fine. Goals shift and can even completely disappear, forcing you to pick another one. But having and pursuing long term goals at most times is still the ticket for success. My 2c.
> Edit - a couple of other things possibly helped around the same time, so I'm not sure if I ever isolated the effect of breathing. But it definitely felt like it was a significant part of it.
Hey, even if it only helped 5% of your recovery, that’s still good. It’s not like there’s any medicine or treatment that fixes 100% of a problem. It’s like saying “pickleball is a treatment for obesity, but doesn’t cure it”
My one HUGE gripe about Buteyko in particular is the nasal breathing bit. Breathing through your nose is good imo, but I don’t think it needs to be such an important goal all the time
A lot of the Buteyko studies suffer from small sample sizes unfortunately. I have heard good things about Buteyko from athletes but I’m not well-read on this. I think myofunctional therapy has more Western research done on it and is strongly related
Full disclosure: my mother runs a practice in NYC and implements Buteyko a lot with patients. It’s called HappyMyo and I helped her set up the website.
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I think Buteyko suffers from a marketing problem wherein it sounds really “eastern medicine”. I think it actually can be super beneficial to people, assuming they have the patience and discipline to commit to it for many months. It’s not easy and I think the success rate is so high because the people that seek it out are pretty determined.
I strongly encourage people research myofunctional therapy also if you snore/have sleep issues or find yourself out of breath often. It’s like physical therapy for your airway where you do lots of exercises regularly over months. I’m not even trying to advertise here, just trying to spread the word in case it helps someone.
That is something I hadn’t even considered. That is super scary; Part of me thinks it’s inevitable. People famously lack any sort of empathy for the falsely accused until it happens to them, so why wouldn’t they vote for a “save the children: use AI judges!” bill in 10 years?
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