thaicurious

I think the term "insurance" is more in line with this: The social insurance system in the US: Policies to protect workers and families (brookings.edu) "The social insurance system in the United States, implemented by federal, state, and local government agencies, provides protection against what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called the vicissitudes of life: disability, the loss of earnings in old age, being laid off, and other setbacks." So not a Ponzi scheme, not even a pyramid scheme but a social insurance funded in part by employee and employer contributions, part by investments, part by future worker/employer contributions & yes part by those who also rolled the dice in simply living in the modern world as we all did but wound up not collecting, all of which essentially spreads the risk to lessen hardships of surviving individuals as insurance is meant to do.

lol yeah i got a couple of good ones near me too. In fact that was my intro to Thai culture decades ago. The food delicious and the people there lovely. Maybe I was thinking readily available street food or at least not priced so as to pay for American strip mall overhead. Also in being kept from my Thai dream by caring for aging parents & then staying safe myself from covid, I've taught myself to cook Thai cuisine (some of their flavor combinations are genius), but I'm not counting that either.

US is a bit more complex than just a 25% reduction for early retirement For one thing, Early or Late Retirement (ssa.gov) "A worker can choose to retire as early as age 62, but doing so may result in a reduction of as much as 30 percent.. In the case of early retirement, a benefit is reduced 5/9 of one percent for each month before normal retirement age, up to 36 months. If the number of months exceeds 36, then the benefit is further reduced 5/12 of one percent per month." For another, What Social Security Could Look Like in 2035 (yahoo.com) "If you plan to rely on the program in 2035, keep in mind there's a chance you could receive less in Social Security benefits than you might have expected. If no changes are made to deal with the trust fund shortfall, benefits will have to be reduced by 24.9%, according to the 2022 annual report from the board of trustees." So if the avg benefit now is $1,782/month. minus up to 30% for drawing early = $1,247 minus another future cut in year 2035 = $936.80, and that after 12 years of inflation of which social security will only partly keep up with. Burdening that further is the loss of Medicare you might be eligible for (depending on work history) benefits of which do not transfer overseas. The best bet then might be paying into Medicare instead of private insurance & living in Mexico, not Thailand, to benefit from reduced cost of living while remaining accessible to American healthcare, or simply moving to, yikes, Mississippi. Never been but gonna guess not a lot of Thai food there.