But Social Security and Medicare are designed to protect people from things they have little control over — risk of illness, risk of macroeconomic change, risk of industrial obsolescence.
"We intend to use some of this funding as a cushion in case of macroeconomic changes," wrote Quora co-founder Adam D'Angelo in an answer to a question about what the company would do with the financing.
But what has actually happened since South Africa won that important vote of confidence is a lesson in the limitations of the macroeconomic changes championed by the government and a sobering sign of just how hard it will be for South Africa to achieve greater prosperity.
Fund staff have been accused of forcing through big macroeconomic changes in developing or ex-communist economies too brusquely.
Examples include the apparent decline in job quality over time 30 and macroeconomic changes such as the rise in the level of income inequality.
First, unexpected changes in either direction for DUP may occur over the life of this study (e.g. variation in healthcare access due to macroeconomic changes) that will imperil inferences from the sole use of a historical control to determine the impact of ED on DUP.
This is particularly critical as this model documents close links with macroeconomic changes, suggesting that downsizing, mergers and outsourcing result in increases of effort-reward imbalance [ 19] and, thus, may indirectly affect health.
It's perhaps too strong to suggest that positive thinking, alone, produced these large macroeconomic changes, but the staggering results in this most recent paper are consistent with more than a decade's worth of studies in Oettingen's lab.
Big macroeconomic changes happen slowly, sometimes they aren't clearly visible until years later.
Second, findings could inform the debate regarding whether, and to what extent, indicators of population health respond to macroeconomic change.
