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"the WTP at birth for the initial 1-year increase in remaining LE from 78.9 to 79.9 years via rectangularization is US$118,100, the WTP at age 60 for the first 1-year increase in remaining LE from 21.7 to 22.7 years through lifespan improvement is US$257,700." Who the fuck did they get to determine willingness? Most people don't have the money to spend. If it takes you years of extra work to pay for a one year life e…
The average age of university presidents and members of Congress in the USA is in the 70s. At the risk of sounding callous can we fix our gerontoctratic system and then fix aging?
I picked this up from Ageless by Andrew Steele, a highly recommended and very current overview of the field of aging research.
"the WTP at birth for the initial 1-year increase in remaining LE from 78.9 to 79.9 years via rectangularization is US$118,100, the WTP at age 60 for the first 1-year increase in remaining LE from 21.7 to 22.7 years through lifespan improvement is US$257,700." Who the fuck did they get to determine willingness? Most people don't have the money to spend. If it takes you years of extra work to pay for a one year life e…
At a guess, old people have a house or something they can sell for that much.
The average age of university presidents and members of Congress in the USA is in the 70s. At the risk of sounding callous can we fix our gerontoctratic system and then fix aging?
Honestly why is that a problem? Wouldn't one thing that we'd want the people with the most experience in higher level management positions. I don't think the problem with Congress is that members are in their 70s. The problem is that ideally they would have real jobs till their 60s THEN run for government. Instead they bum around various government roles till they get elected in their 30s and once they are there dig…
Also: "...like tic[-tac-toe]
It’s obvious that healthy people that live shorter are better for the ‘economy’ but clearly humanity doesn’t live to optimize for the economy. If we did, we would be fighting obesity with 10x the seriousness of how we fight COVID.
Luckily human life is more than just economy (as expressed in GDP) optimization.
A few years back, there seemed to be a desire to justify cigarette taxes with a "it costs the state money when you get cancer" rationale. Some of the analysis seemed to indicate opposite results. Lung cancer, for example, tends to kill more quickly than age related diseases, saving on nursing home costs and palliative care. Everyone dies of something after all, and death is expensive as is aging.
Either way, it seems kind of strange to place economic values on life itself. I mean isn't economic utility premised on life?
In any case, it seems trivially true that economic measures will always correlate with either population size working age population size, depending on the model.
I feel like these kinds of papers only exist to be cited in support of cheap rhetoric.
"the WTP at birth for the initial 1-year increase in remaining LE from 78.9 to 79.9 years via rectangularization is US$118,100, the WTP at age 60 for the first 1-year increase in remaining LE from 21.7 to 22.7 years through lifespan improvement is US$257,700." Who the fuck did they get to determine willingness? Most people don't have the money to spend. If it takes you years of extra work to pay for a one year life e…