I don't quite understand what you mean the narrative here -- cash flow going negative is a fact. Attempts to discuss the COLA issues in 1970s-1980s [1] have failed. Attempts in the early aughts to divert funds by Bush Jr. [2] (long before I could even vote) were rejected in part because of skepticism stock returns would not perform well. And even today where we have additional tax breaks for seniors under the OBBA.
This has been a long running "heads we win tails you lose" with the older generations toying with the future dating back ~50+ years. Statements about "poor houses" don't mean very much when even uncapping the tax on wages for social security would only close ~61% of the gap [3]. Cuts are coming.
Social security is funded through payroll taxes on employees and emloyers. The "run out" is in the sense of the amount of money going out exceeds that coming in and the saved funds have been depleted. In this sense, it can "run out" that the savings are depleted and the plan is cash flow negative.
Second, take this for what it is: your product may not be compelling in its current form. Building it to many different markets will not make it compelling. If you had a stronger revenue, please share it. This sounds incredibly thin.
Third, dont mistake building the same thing 20 times for different verticals for bonifide software skills. When a SWE builds the thing they have built before its usually to learn a language which is the easiest part of software. There is a reason a common adage in software is "9 women cant make a baby in a month". Breath is no replacement for depth.
Interesting. Where is this product located? If I'm looking at your profile correctly, this appears to be Openship[1], which is just a collection of starter templates from something from Nextjs and something called Keystone for each vertical. Is this what it is you are talking about?
I'm very curious how much revenue this is generating.
Having see what terminal vibecoding looks like (to the point where customers say "fix your app" during renewal conversations), I don't think this is likely to happen. There is definitely selection pressure being applied to SaaS companies and I would not expect people not directly responsible (PMs, sales, etc.) to be willing to accept responsibility for technical outcomes; after all they are product, not software experts.
It is possible this leads to a decrease in salary (and positions) but I do not believe the social commentary will pan out in the manner the author proposes. The people who most argue for vibe coding will themselves never accept responsibility for the technical outcomes.
Because then the units fall into disrepair (because they no longer make sense to maintain) leading to less supply leading to lower availability of units leading to higher cost of housing.
See what happened in NYC regarding the consolidation of housing units.
Not really. Social security is a defined benefit plan that requires new payors to fund todays expenses. 401ks are a defined contribution plan. Very different.
This is true in a "yes but" sense. Typically equities of the mega caps benefitted from debt issuance on the expectation it would accelerate growth. The change to equity value loss is what is interesting: the market no longer sees this as generating growth, at least not like it used to.
Sure but people are no longer expecting these kinds of actions to generate equity gains. Before it was expected the growth would outpace the cost of capital, leading to equity appreciation. The directional change is what is interesting.
In practice this is exactly how they work, whether it was intended or not. Otherwise it would look a lot less like a defined benefits plan and more like a defined contribution plan.
> You seem to be quite confused about pensions, not only "old people" have pensions. Actually the vast majority of contributions to pensions funds come from people who aren't old at all and are actively employed.
This is exactly how pensions work: newer members to the defined benefits plan pay for older members. This isn't surprising.
> Where would they "scream"? On the internet? And who'd hear them? The answer is nobody in any PE cares about anyone screaming.
At the ballot box. There is a reason that public pensions are exempt from the PBGC reserve ratio requirements. People with pensions aggressively vote their interest.
Blockbuster actually did try to beat everyone to streaming. Notably, Blockbuster and Enron [1] entered into a 20-year partnership for online video delivery.
Sears was a different story, in that they were a real estate company with a store front and retail real estate took a nosedive due to ecommerce. But that's a different discussion.
Likely a combination of business-friendly policies (low tax, no employer payroll tax, etc.) and proximity to ports. Houston is the 6th [1] largest port in the USA.
This has been a long running "heads we win tails you lose" with the older generations toying with the future dating back ~50+ years. Statements about "poor houses" don't mean very much when even uncapping the tax on wages for social security would only close ~61% of the gap [3]. Cuts are coming.
[1] See for example this hill (https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4258578-the-day-the-soci...) article discussing he issue [2] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/bushs-shaky-retirement-pl... [3] https://www.crfb.org/socialsecurityreformer/