The longevity gap

http://aeon.co/magazine/being-human/will-new-drugs-mean-the-rich-live-to-120-and-the-poor-die-at-60/

by prostoalex • 12 years ago

48 62 12 years ago

kfk• 12 years ago

If you speak Italian head over noisefromamerika and search “modello superfisso”, there you can see why this reasoning is flawed. Prices of stuff are not fixed, they are a function of demand and offer. The true problem here is how you innovate enough to make the offer high enough that prices will drop. Instead, the writer is focusing on the myth of the 10% owning the 90% and he gets lost in yet another useless complain about spreading the wealth. Go look at why health services are so expensive in US, hints: monopolies, artificially low number of doctors, lobbies, patents…

By the way, about 44% of my gross salary is managed by the State (tax and social contribution). How much more does the writer want to tax people in order to “help” the poor?

thewarrior• 12 years ago

But I bet that these drugs would be patented and would be selling at very high prices for decades. Countries like India wouldnt want to encourage generic production of these drugs as that would make the existing population problem worse.

lukasm2• 12 years ago

Writer does not want to tax people. Writer wants more page views so a bit of controversy helps.

Is it really 44%? What about sales tax/VAT, Social Security, Property Tax, Quantitative easing. In perfect world gov would take 5% of my income. I'm not against helping people - far from that - but the State is very bad at allocating resources.

capisce4• 12 years ago

Why is labor income taxed so much more than capital gains? Effectively those with large fortunes are paying a way lower effective tax rate than most salaried employees.

paganel• 12 years ago

Why is labor income taxed so much more than capital gains?

Like most of the regressive taxes, I think it's because of power imbalances. The vast majority of people paying 40% on labor taxes do not have the same power influence as those with far greater fortunes who benefit from capital gains.

The same thing held true in "Ancien Régime" France in the 18th century and even in my small East-European country, where, according to a book which I'm just reading, the local rulers used to "absolve" rich people from paying taxes because they "had been helpful" to said rulers in the past (mostly they had lent money in times of distress to those rulers), while most of the taxation felt on the poor people.

As for a solution to all this, I honestly don't know which one might be best. Right now democracy and universal suffrage seems like the best we can do, but IMHO we're always just a couple of steps away from reverting to other solutions which we tried in the past, the ones that involved people like the Jacobins or those that started the October Revolution. Time will tell.

dkyc• 12 years ago

Because the capital that you invest has been taxed before, when it was earned. Kind of harsh to tax 40% on your income, and when you save it, tax again the same amount on your returns.

pcrh3• 12 years ago

The theory is that taxes should not distort the operation of a free market.

Since most people are tied to their jobs and the country they live in, taxing income in progressive manner does not normally deter people from seeking to earn more, unless they are at the lowest end of the income bracket and subsist mostly on social security payments.

Capital, on the other hand, is very mobile and will seek higher returns as soon as they are available elsewhere. Higher taxes on capital therefore quickly distort the operation of a free market and causes a fairly quick dis-investment from jurisdictions with higher taxes, with a subsequent loss of jobs.

hikarudo• 12 years ago

People often assume that higher tax rates result in higher tax revenues. But in fact often the opposite happens, because people respond to (dis)incentives.

For instance, when the federal tax rate on capital gains was lowered from 28 percent to 20 percent in 1997, the revenues rose from $54 billion in 1996 to $372 billion over the next four years, way above the projected $209 billion before the tax rate cut. [0]

[0] Basic economics, Thomas Sowell, Chapter 14.

harryh3• 12 years ago

Because of the Chamley Judd result.

prostoalex• 12 years ago

It's a predictable way to raise revenues.

Capital gains tax is more or less voluntary - if the tax decreases my ROI too much I simply won't sell.

casualobserver• 12 years ago

Kind of misleading title after clicking through:

Costly new longevity drugs could help the wealthy live 120 years or more – but will everyone else die young?

Drug research is costly, but it's not wealthy benefactors of the clinical application that pay for it. Some research is privately funded, much is government funded but it's also costly to fail to pay for it.

The age gap due to wealth discussed in the article is not related to the cost to the individual of drug research and development.

Once the research is done, most drugs become inexpensive to produce and if they prevent the burden of ageing on healthcare and society. Reason to fund gerontology research if it decreases healthcare expenditure.

The then minor cost could be subsidised and there would be little argument in limiting its availability beyond that of aspirin and clean drinking water.

The current longevity gap due to poverty/environment discussed isn't a reason to discount increases in healthspan/lifespan that might benefit the rich more immediately.

Gerontology/drug research is not mutually exclusive of improving access to education, mental health and reducing pollution etc.

pawelkomarnicki• 12 years ago

I dont' want to live 120 years, do you?

GotAnyMegadeth• 12 years ago

I'd be happy to live as long as the Sun, longer if we start colonising new planets. As long as I can die before the heat death of the Universe.

FranOntanaya• 12 years ago

No way! Give me then a few mirrors and I'll start trapping far-red photons to restart the Universe again.

ownagefool2• 12 years ago

Yeah. Why wouldn't you?

philbarr• 12 years ago

Because I don't want to live so long that I spend a large portion of my life in ever increasing pain and feeling my mind slip away from me. Just give me a short sharp shock around 80, if you can please.

Of course, that's what I think now at 36. Maybe by the time I'm 80 I'll be thinking, "reckon I can handle a few more years...."

lukasm2• 12 years ago

I don't want to be immortal. Constant conscious state . It would be so boring.

jp555• 12 years ago

boring... compared to what? Being dead?

lalwanivikas• 12 years ago

I do. But it depends how long you can remain young.

capisce4• 12 years ago

Absolutely, ideally way longer than that too.

JoshTriplett• 12 years ago

No, that's far too short.

Confusion• 12 years ago

I'd say that assuming good health, which is kind of the point of the article, any fixed number of years is too short. Every human should be able to die by suicide at the moment of their choice.

acheron• 12 years ago

"Now the population doubles every ten years --"

VJ-23X interrupted. "We can thank immortality for that."

"Very well. Immortality exists and we have to take it into account. I admit it has its seamy side, this immortality. The Galactic AC has solved many problems for us, but in solving the problems of preventing old age and death, it has undone all its other solutions."

"Yet you wouldn't want to abandon life, I suppose."

"Not at all," snapped MQ-17J, softening it at once to, "Not yet. I'm by no means old enough. How old are you?"

"Two hundred twenty-three. And you?"

"I'm still under two hundred."

From Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question", http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

pcrh3• 12 years ago

Disease and ill health are not the only causes of death. It has been calculated that if disease and ill health were abolished, then the average lifespan would be ~1,000 years.

tzs• 12 years ago

I want to live until I decide that I no longer wish to.

netrus• 12 years ago

Nota bene the high cost of such meds won't be the meds themselves, but cost for the social system. Will those super old people work until they are 100 years old? If not, it has to remain the luxury of a small minority.

adwn• 12 years ago

I don't see a single argument why the life spans of the less wealthy should shorten further, even though this is claimed several times in the article. Did they just take two data points and extrapolate from there?

Tycho• 12 years ago

It's the politics of envy at its worst. Better that the rich die earlier to make things more fair, than everyone live unevenly longer.

rayiner4• 12 years ago

I think that's unnecessarily dismissive. More even societies are higher trust, more orderly, and by most accounts more pleasant. The U.S. is much richer than Finland, but I doubt the majority of Finns would rather be Americans.

Filligree2• 12 years ago

While thinking about these things is important, it would be good not to lose track of the greater picture. I couldn't possibly say it as well as Nick Bostrom, so I won't try: Death is bad; it needs to go.

This seems like an apropos time to re-read http://www.nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon.html

Turukawa• 12 years ago

I think the idea of revolution as a result of age-disparity is a tad overstated. At the point most people would become sufficiently aware of any age-gap, and angry-enough to want to riot about it, you'd probably be suffering age-related effects and want a nap.

Also, drugs eventually fall out of patent and become available at far lower prices to everyone. The poor have far larger problems than whether they get to live an extra 10 years or so once they get to 70.

jorleif• 12 years ago

College-educated white men can expect to live to age 80, while counterparts without a high-school diploma die by age 67.

I wonder if reality is as bad as it sounds here. Factors that cause early death might very well correlate with bad education outcomes. Any kind of lacking self-control could result both in bad education outcomes as well as early death.

Sambdala• 12 years ago

might very well correlate with bad education outcomes

So would dying at age 16.

It's definitely possible (probable?) they've taken the appropriate figures here, but there's definitely a chance for bad statistics here.

dorfsmay• 12 years ago

What about A. de Gray's theory that states with universal healthcare will pay for this tpe of treatment, as it will be cheaper than treating diabetes, cancer, etc...?

The longevity gap

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