mgh95

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.

[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/

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.

First I know what next is. Its standard enough.

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.

[1] https://github.com/openshiporg

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.

Also in OFAC compliance. It just comes up in a lot of places where workflows are compliance heavy.

Compensating controls also come up in the context of BSA/AML.

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.

Interesting how the market has reacted to this news (down 1.7% after hours)

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal

Not necessarily. Unions are typically organized as a not-for-profit. The legislation acts on all entities including unions.

It's a privilege to come into this country, its a privilege to live in Sydney. If you don't like it, you can leave.

I hate to put it like this, but that's exactly what the poster is doing.

if it's judged only by the time it is expected to be in use (work hours), reliability is likely even worse than the 24/7 measure.

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.

[1] https://pangea-network.com/busiest-and-biggest-ports-in-the-...

I wasn't around for the .com bubble, but this is what I imagine it was like.

The most important question is whether they make or lose money on each customer, independent of their fixed R&D costs.

The ZIRP era called and wants its business strategy back. Half the problem is as frontier models are released free as in free beer models with "good enough" performance pop up. Half the arguments about LLMs are "you're not holding it right", which borders on indicating that it's unable to distinguish between two sufficiently close LLMs.

But you still won't get with 170k in the Bay Area, what you get in Paris, Madrid, Nantes or Barcelona with 80k.

Note the 170k eur is in Spain -- not the bay area. I compared salaries of Google in Spain to the average salary of a senior SWE in Spain. The point isn't that the big tech pay more in the bay area compared to Spain. The point is the big tech companies pay more in Spain compared to other Spanish companies.

And 170k eur in Spain is much more than 80k eur in Spain.

I don't think I am. Spanish employees of Google benefit just as much from Spanish employment law as Jose's Web Dev Shop. It's the purest comparison considering it's within the exact same country.

Higher salaries aren't always better, especially when you're almost willfully ignoring more important things like purchasing power and quality of life.

Senior SWE salaries I'm finding in a quick google search in Spain are 80k eur. According to levels.fyi [1] Google (and presumably the other clouds) are paying 170k eur. The comparison isn't even "is 4x the salary better in the US?" it's "is 2x the salary better in the same place?" which is obviously yes.

[1] https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en...

The figures I provided are for 2024. You would need to compare USD/CAD ratios for 2024 versus 2025. Annual GDP figures for 2026 are not yet available as 2026 has not yet come to pass, so usage of 2026 data is not accurate in this context. To compare, I would consider USD/CAD on December 31, 2024 which was 1.386 [.72] and USD/CAD on December 31, 2025 which was 1.4359 [.69] which are both less favorable than the .73 given.

As stated above, the usage of more accurate figures would render Ontario with a lower GDP than more states.

The dollar strengthened against the CAD in 2025 compared to the figures I used. It really only weakened against the EUR and RMB.

And in France alone 7.5 million home have lead pipes [1].

[1] https://www.zerowaterfilter.com/blogs/zerowater-knowledge-ce...

Ontario alone has a larger GDP than 45 of the 50 US states, and a bigger GDP than New Hampshire, Hawaii, West Virginia, Delaware, Maine, Rhode Island, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming and Vermont put together.

This is not correct as of 2024. In 2024, Ontario had a GDP of CAD 1.17B. [1] In USD, this is (at .73 exchange rate, which is favorable for these calculations) this comes to US 854B.

In 2024, the following US states had greater GDPs [2]: California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, and tied with Washington. GDP growth in 2025 was worse for Ontario than these states, and it would be expected Ontarios' position to continue to decline.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/248023/us-gross-domestic...

You are thinking about this in terms of today. To put it in perspective, the same question polled 17% in the 55+ age group. Canada has serious generational problems, and as the boomers die the number of Canadians who vote that way naturally declines.

Also - There aren't many more things that are more toxic in Canada politics than Trump and Annexation. He single handedly handed the Federal election to the Liberals - it was the Conservatives who were going to win until he but his thumb on the scale.

Watching these discussions from the outside are statistics like four in ten (43%) Canadians age 18-34 would vote to be American if citizenship and conversion of assets to USD guaranteed [1]. I don't think the political similarities or differences between the American right and the Canadian right are what can result in one or more Canadian provinces joining the US; I think it's economic discontent.

[1] https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/43-percent-canadians-would-vote-...