Still, once you put a price upon a life, you find yourself more open to other equations in which you have that variable and then you start reducing the value of that variable. It's a slippery slope.
The decisions we make now will affect everyone, not just those who die.
My point is that we can't avoid the trade-offs. We cannot pretend that saving the lives of sick people does not affect other lives.
Our society is not having that discussion, but is focused on saving as many lives as possible. Not enough attention is being paid to the other side of that trade-off.
What is an economy, the generation and circulation of money. Then offset with humans and they reproduce and circulate.
However, whilst not all economic aspects are equal, human life is. Hence you will see essential aspects of the economy maintained and less essential will either ride it out, evolve or expire - including what may well be, older businesses as well as young ones.
let us not forget, some businesses are very dynamic and volatile at the best of times, restaurants being the classic example. Casualties of human life and economic are inevitable and with that, each country has a different plan, though mostly stimulus and loans.
However, fear has and will do more damage to the economy than this virus and if you do not have shutdowns, that fear will only rise - so yes it is a fine balance with much minutia.
Save the lives! Deal with the paperwork later.
Generally speaking: health insurers will prefer to pay for procedures for those who will get the most benefit from them.
Health insurers are hugely part of the problem in America and should not be looked up to, as an example for how to behave in a crisis.
Other countries have figured it out how to take care of each other as a decent society.
Ultimately, there is a trade-off to be made between how much we use to save a life vs improving the quality of everyone else's life.
The EPA puts the cost of a life at $10 million [0]. Juries put it at $2.2 million, apparently [0].
But, of course, not all lives are (statistically) as valuable. A 65 year old might have 20 years of life left. A newborn has 80+ years. An 80 year old has a 4% (and rapidly increasing) chance of dying per year. [1]
Should we spend more to save an infant than an old person? I'd say we should because we're saving more units of life-years.
So to save 1 million people, we should spend how much, exactly?
If we go by the EPA, $10 trillion. If we go by juries, $2.2 trillion.
US GDP is $21.44 trillion to give a sense of the magnitude of the cost. The EPA estimate would entail asking the US to spend the equivalent of half its output or 12.5% of the entire world's output.
If it's 1 million 65 year olds, and life expectancy is 80 years, how much should we spend? A 65-year old has lived 80% of their life. Should we spend only 20%, then?
That'd be $2 trillion under the EPA estimate.$444 billion if we go by juries.
I have no idea if we should provide that sort of discount, honestly, but it's definitely worth thinking about in an era of intense economic impact to (primarily, but not exclusively) save members of that demographic.
The stimulus packages the US government is considering are within striking distance of these discounted numbers at $1.5 trillion or so depending on what passes.
And that stimulus doesn't come close to covering the full impact, either.
The S&P 500 market cap, only a portion of the immediately measurable economic impact, has dropped by ~$2.2 trillion over the last month. [2]
That plus the stimulus is putting us at $3.7 trillion, well over the discounted value of saving a million 65 year olds.
We have other measurements to consult, and we're not even getting started.
The total US stock market cap is 109% of GDP. It was 158% a month ago. [3]
That's a $10 trillion drop. I think the market was overheated, but coronavirus is a huge portion of that drop.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-value-of-life/
[1] https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-19-26.pdf
[2] https://ycharts.com/indicators/sp_500_market_cap
[3] https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_total_market_capitalizatio...
This isn't about numbers for me.
Distinguish between wealth and paperwork. As Bucky Fuller pointed out, if all the paperwork disappeared overnight we would have a hellofa fight over who owns what, but no one would (necessarily) starve. If the wealth itself disappeared: the factories, the distribution networks, and so on, we would be screwed.
In the situation today the physical basis of wealth is not under attack, the "human capital" is.
Nevermind the Goddamned paperwork. Save the lives.
Economic downturns lead to deaths of despair - long-term unemployment causes spikes in suicides, drug overdoses, even domestic terrorism brought on by a potent mixture of sheer nihilism and depression. Just because it's more difficult to count those future lives (more likely to be young) against a current model - who are you to discount them?
Perhaps the solution is: Save as many people as you can today then, and when there is an economic downturn we should do a better job helping people get off drugs by talking to them and treating them, helping develop new markets, reaching out to young poor communities.
I feel like half of your problems listed are solved by hiring more therapists and psychiatrists. It sounds more like America has a lack of caring for it's people rather than anything else.
I think this is a really callous way of putting it, and it's only valid if you accede to the empathetic framing. The point of my original comment is to show that there is an econometric argument against the empathetic framing, even for one intended to allow empathy to dictate their opinion.
> I feel like half of your problems listed are solved by hiring more therapists and psychiatrists.
Part of any rational decision process asks about the costs of the different options. The cost of this economic recession will be high; the cost of improving mental health infrastructure would have been much lower.
> Perhaps the solution is: Save as many people as you can today then, and when there is an economic downturn we should do a better job helping people get off drugs by talking to them and treating them, helping develop new markets, reaching out to young poor communities.
Why decide to pay both costs when only one needed to be paid?
I had no idea they had audited the age of the bankers who caused that mess. Only one I'm aware of was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Leeson who brought down an entire bank at the age of 25.
As for your darwinistic-eugenics as an old person, sure I'm happy with that, but the question is - would you be happy with that when your older and somebody else's kids suggests the same thing. Not that easy to answer.
But whatever age people are, the penchant to begrudge the age groups above them to varying degrees and reasons tends to be strong, at least until they reach their 40's. At least that is what I have observed from many years of experience of many age ranges.
> In an ideal world we would not need to make choices like this, but the choice is real and we can't fumble it.
I suspect the film Logan's Run would be worth a watch if you have not seen it. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/
Oh I'd also add, we have not seen results of sterility post infection - that data might change your perspective if we end up finding out that the chances of becoming sterile due to infection of this are high. Which is still an unknown and not to be ruled out.