I like them both a lot but the original is a classic I keep going back to. Maybe I’m just the right age for it.

I wanted to downvote your stupid ass but op asked for unpopular opinions. So fuck you here’s an upvote.

That’s a tautological statement. We define words like sentient and sapient in terms of what we are.

Saying “this lifeform that we can’t communicate with in any meaningful way (for these purposes) has emotional or cognitive experiences that we would recognize as meeting those definitions” isn’t falsifiable and therefore isn’t science.

If at some point someone invents a human to mollusk translator so we can discuss our experiences, this topic can be revisited.

Until then words like “may” and “possible” should be used.

They’ve been saying that my entire life, my dad’s entire life, and when my dad was my age, my grandfather would tell him he’s heard the same things his entire life going back to the 40s.

For a couple decades the disingenuous doom -and-gloomers told us no way could social security ever deal with the baby boomers. All through the 80s and 90s they told us we might as well privatize it or kill it all together. The only time wall street shut up about it was when they were too busy jerking off to the thought of getting their hands on that money. Well, the youngest of the boomers turn 60 in '24, they’re almost all in and the end times keep getting pushed back, from the 80s to the 90s to the 00s to the 10s to the 20s and now 2035. It’s like a doomsday cult that keeps pushing the date when the apocalypse doesn’t arrive at the appointed time.

You’ll have to excuse me for not getting worked up over the 40th new year I’ve heard for the sky falling.

And for what it’s worth, managing the COLAs, the cap, the percentages, and anything else the SSA has done throughout it’s existence isn’t “tomfoolery,” it’s accounting. And damn good accounting so far. The SSA being such a well run government institution probably makes republicans hate them almost as much as the tax itself.

Reposting from another thread:

Social security has been 10-15 years away from being insolvent for 80 years. It will always be 10-15 years away from being insolvent because of the way it’s calculated.

When the CBO or whoever scores it they can predict certain things like the number of recipients, the size of their payments, and inflation. They aren’t allowed to take into account things that Congress may (but definitely will) do in the future, like raising the cap on social security taxes roughly with inflation. It went up from $160200 in 2023 to $168600 in 2024. This is a rare bipartisan, uncontroversial thing. Congress almost always follows the SSA recommendation exactly.

It would be more accurate to say “if the social security cap stays at $168600 for 10 years, social security will be insolvent.”

The people pushing this bullshit know it’s bullshit. They do it to make people think they’ll never get social security so they can get enough voters on board with killing it, like they’ve been trying to do for 88 years.

Don’t fall for it.