magicalkittycat
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User ID: 3762
magicalkittycat
1d ago
Yeah, makes sense. I'm a bit bitter that I probably wont get SS benefits, but oh well.
This is a common worry but going off current projections, you will get social security. Just not all of social security, about 80-70% scaling down over the years. https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/2024/trTOC.html
Annual OASDI cost has exceeded non-interest income every year beginning with 2010. Cost is projected to continue to exceed non-interest income throughout the 75-year valuation period. Cost is projected to exceed total income in 2024, as it has each year beginning in 2021, and combined OASI and DI Trust Fund reserves decline until they become depleted in 2035. After trust fund reserve depletion, continuing income is sufficient to support expenditures at a level of 83 percent of program cost for the rest of 2035, declining to 73 percent for 2098. Figure II.D2 depicts OASDI operations as a combined whole. However, under current law, the differences between scheduled and payable benefits for OASI would begin in 2033, when the OASI Trust Fund is projected to become depleted. Scheduled benefits equal payable benefits for DI throughout the entire 75-year projection period, because the DI Trust Fund is not projected to become depleted during the period.
Basically the issue right now is that payroll taxes doesn't cover outgoing benefits enough for the OASI funds, so we're currently eating into the saved up money put into the Treasury. Eventually we'll run out of those savings (estimated around 2033) and then only be able to pay out benefits equal to the amount of payroll tax collected. But that's still roughly 80% of total benefits.
I think people gloss over the part where I'm worried about mass AI layoffs because it's just a single sentence but I think it's a great place to start for this conversation. Disability is interesting in that it's not a binary question of yes or no but rather depends on your relative ability compared to the people around you and the society you're in.
Imagine a person who is so unbelievably dumb that they can only do work carrying buckets of water from the river because they were taught it as a kid when their brain was slightly more pliable and anything else, including any variation of bucket carrying just does not work out properly. This person obviously does not exist, but if they did then they would just not function anymore in today's society with plumbing and pipes. We don't really have any jobs that are "go get buckets of water from the river for us to drink, shower with and do laundry" anymore. Plumbing turned them from abled (to do the one job) to disabled.
Obviously again this person does not exist in real life and people are more adaptable, even the dumb ones. But in the context of dumb old people with aging bodies and injuries? They might have been able to do the job they've been doing for the past few decades, but transferring them over to something else will be difficult. And in the context of a bad economy with high unemployment? They might not be able to find anything. They're not entirely equal to the water idiot, but they're not that far off either.
In that same way, it's not just the idiot middle aged men anymore that we should be thinking about. A generalist AI in the 2030s might make all of us puny humans disabled by comparison. Technology historically has freed up labor to go to do other jobs, some that didn't even exist until the labor was around to do it. But this future AI might beat us at everything. You may go from your job subsistence farming to the car factory in the past. Now you may go from your current job taken by AI to a new job that also gets taken by AI.
Maybe we'll maintain some comparative advantage and still be worth having most people work despite the absolute supremacy, but this might be an issue coming up. What happens when no one can work anymore because the robots are simply better in every single way? Some would put up that as a utopic paradise, like that silly meme of fully automated luxury communism, others worry about an automated dystopia.
But either way, a major change may be coming. And perhaps all humanity will be disabled. And even if the generalist AI doesn't come for a while, remember the great recession was only 10% unemployment.
OP of the thread here! Normally just lurk but I'll reply since it's my SSC thread.
Back to my thoughts, I'm extremely skeptical that the disability numbers could halve over such a relatively short period without some sort of accounting trickery. I could definitely see Covid having an impact, especially since the vast majority are older people. But the drop in numbers is just too great for me to take them at face value.
We've seen it before with disability, social security, etc, but often times the medicalized benefits system will just shuffle large amounts of people from one category to another once political pressure comes to bear on a label like "disability."
I agree, it's a really dramatic drop. But I also think it's useful to know that the mid aughts was also a dramatic rise. https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/di_asr/2006/sect01.html
In December 2006, about 7.8 million people received Social Security disability benefits as disabled workers, disabled widow(er)s, or disabled adult children. The majority (87 percent) were disabled workers, 10 percent were disabled adult children, and 3 percent were disabled widow(er)s.
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/di_asr/2006/sect01.html
In the same way we halved from then to now, we also had basically doubled during the time period.
If we view the surge during the recession as essentially being a temporal anomaly, then our current numbers are just a return to form with the reduction (and lack of growth relative to population) since the mid 2000s explainable through the increase in ALJ denials.
It going to some other disability program is an interesting hypothesis, but seven million people is a lot to transfer! Heck it'd be more than seven million if we assume that the expected growth had also occured too. And there's no other known disability program this large. So it seems either they genuinely shrank through some mechanism (such as just a return to form as they aged into normal retirement) or they've been heavily fudging the numbers in a consistent manner through two different administrations and Trump 1, Biden and Trump 2 (including groups like DOGE now) haven't noticed a thing.
This also reminds me of the old post by Alone on how SSI is basically medicalizing political problems - can't seem to find it but if anyone knows what I'm talking about and has the link that would be great.
Sounds interesting, but would like to point out that SSI and DI are different programs with different funding. SSI is administered by the Social Security Administration, but the funding comes from the treasury's General Fund rather than the OASDI trusts. SSI is intended as a supplemental (hence Supplemental Security Income) payment to disabled people who don't have enough credits to collect on DI.
Edit: To add, SSI numbers have also decreased too, which means that can't be where the 7 million went. And total social security recipients did go up (despite the 7 mil drop in DI) showing a lot more retirees and quite a bit less disabled. So I stand by the "many disabled people just got older" hypothesis.
1 and 2 are generally good to do just for keeping as a habit and muscle memory.
3 depends on context, generally you should go for the speed of traffic but I can't blame anyone staying at speed limit given the cost of a ticket.
4 The left lane should be for passing but with some caveats. If I'm passing a crowded right lane going 10 over and you're wanting to go 20, then you can just wait. Also no excuse for riding someone's ass ever, it is simply endangering them, yourself, and everyone around you for no actual gain. Not to mention all the people who get delayed for hours if you do crash, therefore making you way worse of a road menance.
5 Don't cut off, again it's dangerous to everyone around and causes delays if a crash occurs. Risky angry behavior like this is what makes me have to plan a few extra hours into every road trip just in case some inattentive or aggressive driving asshole can't control themselves enough to drive properly.
6 Probably not, good driving rules should be pretty universal and allowing exceptions to people who think they deserve one inevitably means egotistical people who can't handle it grant themselves a pass too.
Overall safe driving is good driving. If you want to give up your life on risky behavior go jump over the Grand canyon or something, don't make everyone else on the road sit in traffic waiting for a crash to be cleared.
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