Nothing quite like ending with “smart move morons” to reinforce how one’s perspective is a thoughtful critical analysis, and not reactionary culture war buffoonery at all.
Personal anecdote but I started with the couch to 5k app, wasn't working for me. I ended up switching to the Nike Run Club app and initially used their Guided Runs to help get started (They have a massive amount). The host of the run talking really took me out of the run and made it easier.
Also, going super slow at the start to warm up, picking up speed gradually. I look as the distance as the goal and not the time. After about 10 months I recently hit a 27:30 PR at 35 (quit smoking 2 years ago). There's hope out there.
It might be better for your joints to walk on the incline (treadmill) until you are lighter. Might be worth building a program with a personal trainer and mixing in some weight training. Apologies in advance if you've already done all of the above
Barefoot running (or extremely minimalist shoes) helped me. Build it up slowly! Your muscles will likely be degraded from a lifetime of low mobility footwear.
Consider: how could humanity have survived millennia walking and running around before Nike and orthotics?
I read Born to Run which I think may go a bit over the top in advising running barefoot, but there a big overlap between what this does for you and some of the other best advice in this thread. Taking your shoes off forces you to slow down and pay attention to what your feet and legs are doing.
I find monetary alarmism so lazy and yet I always feel compelled to comment.
I’ve never heard a compelling argument to explain just how a monetary system in which all monetized debt becomes privately held wealth, can be framed as debt being a “scary, unsustainable thing” as if it’s household debt. At least this article frames it as a relationship with investors, but it still doesn’t cut to the meat of the issue, to me at least.
Writing debt in an out of existence seems way more conceptually scary than it is dangerous in reality, at least for an economy where households spend on average about 5,000 dollars a month.
It seems a much more important topic is monetary hegemony, than some certain debt to GDP ratio, but I never seem to see those concepts mentioned.
To me, it seems there are two sides to your point, one about trust, and the other about dollar value in context to growing federal debt. As for the trust, I think part of where things go beyond trust comes from a sort of self-reinforcing economic strength.
When the average monthly expenses for an American household add up to about $5,500, certain industries (like transportation (16.8 percent of those expenses), or food (12.8 percent) will always view the American economy as a leading market to operate in. At a macro level, it would seem that many businesses making this similar judgement call would create a dynamic that goes beyond trust.
Regarding the buying power of pensions point, I believe there are cost of living adjustment laws for buying power which require Army or Social Security pensions to react to USD's changing buying power over time.
The existence of a rule doesn't mean the thing will happen.
(There's no reason for government policy to eschew abundance, so I'm not particularly worried for the future, but that is because of the dynamics of the situation, not the laws that are in place)
It's interesting to me how visceral of a reaction the ideas that underpin this article create in so many different individuals' comments I've read in threads like this, despite economics and monetary policy typically being so boring.
One of the fascinating threads to pull within it is the origin of debt and credit creation. It raises some fun questions (some of which are just more random offshoots related to my interests than monetary policy or economic theory):
1) Did all private wealth held in USD originate as monetized federal debt at one point?
2) If banking systems didn't have access to fraction reserve systems, would they be effective tools for debt/wealth creation?
3) Is debt creation the same was wealth creation? How can labor and commodities even be effectively monetized without fluid systems of debt creation?
4) If the lowly game of poker was once used as way to build ad-hoc credit and wealth, before more sophisticated financial systems were more commonplace, how rigidly should we look at debt creation at all, federal or otherwise? Perhaps more gamified and ad-hoc systems would create a higher baseline of wealth globally? [1]
