The longevity gap | Hacker News Reader

The longevity gap

aeon.co

48 pointsprostoalex62 comments

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?

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

So is Sales tax which regressively Hits the poor the hardestas they spend 100% of income. This is a non argument. Tax what least inhibits growth or like alcohol and cigarette taxes things that you would like to be used less.

If savers eventually consume whatever they saved, they too will be hit by the sales tax. Their tax rate will be 1-(1-Income tax)(1-savings tax)(1-sales tax), compared to the consumer who will pay only 1-(1-Income tax)(1-sales tax).

If they never consume what they saved, they have effectively given it to society anyway.

The idea that a sales tax is regressive (w.r.t income) is simply an artifact of your measurement period. It's strictly speaking a flat tax over the long term, but it becomes regressive for a single individual if you break his lifetime up into year-long chunks and if his income or consumption isn't stable.

tl;dr; do the math, the "sales tax is regressive" meme is silly. Any true regressivity is solely an artifact of progressive income taxes and vanishes when you measure progressivity w.r.t. after-tax income.

You don't pay sales tax on services. Weathly people spend more of there income on ex maids than poor people. At the extreme a bum might pay sales tax on all of there income.

Also of note 'charitable' giving is just another form of spending and avoids both sales and income taxes. Feel like Promoting Scientology to dogs? Feel free to avoid paying taxes.

I agree that taxing different forms of consumption at different rates may have a non-zero effect. That's orthogonal to the point I was making and applies to taxes on saving and production as well.

You don't pay sales tax on services. Weathly people spend more of there income on ex maids than poor people.

Poor people spend a larger fraction of their income on doctors than rich people. If you have numbers present them, but singling out a single stereotypically rich category of spending is silly.

Depends on what you mean by poor and rich. Plenty of people avoid seeking medical attention because they really can't afford it.

Statistically, those in the bottom 20% of income earners spend significantly more of there income on sales tax than the top 50% or top 1% or top 0.1%.

In terms of what the phrase "regressive tax" colloquially means it is clear that sales tax is a regressive tax. The percent of wealth poor person pays in sales tax is greater than the percent of wealth a rich person pays in sales tax. Of course if the poor person wins a billion dollar lottery the next day then for that person it is no longer true. Thus, this is why when talking about this issue it generally is the case that we are talking about the here and now and don't factor in lifetime earnings and whatnot.

Colloquially, "progressive" usually means "w.r.t. income". I.e., dMarginalTaxRate/dIncome is positive.

By definition, a sales tax is not regressive w.r.t wealth - dMarginalSalesTaxRate/dWealth = 0. The fact that consumption / wealth goes down up as money is shifted from savings to consumption is simply a mathematical identity and not very interesting. I.e.:

    (consumption + 1) / (wealth - 1) > consumption / wealth

The percent of income (let's include capital gains for the year since this is where really rich people derive the increase in their 'money') paid in sales tax by a rich person is far less than that of a poor person for a given year. Thus, in the minds of the general populace, sales tax is considered regressive. This is what people mean when they say this. The effect of a sales tax on food for a poor person is far more detrimental to them than a sales tax on food for a rich person. Thus many people find this to be regressive.

As I said, the idea that a sales tax is regressive is simply an artifact of your measurement period. The "rich person" you describe is simply a saver - at some future point he will become a consumer.

Literally the only reason the tax appears regressive in year A is because the act of saving has shifted the taxes to year B > A. This is an artifact of your measurement period and vanishes in the long term.

the idea that a sales tax is regressive is simply an artifact of your measurement period

But people have finite lifespans. When all is said and done, who do you think will have paid more sales tax (and VAT) as a proportion of their total income:

A) Bill Gates

B) Me

Before you answer, please also imagine an alternate world in which Bill Gates isn't so generous, and in which there are no estate taxes.

There are two possibilities. One is that Bill Gates and his descendents spend everything. In that case, the sales tax paid is the same.

The other possibility is that some of Bill Gates' money is never consumed. In this case it's effectively a tax of 100% - Gates produced wealth for the world and was never compensated for it.

If the rich escape sales taxes, it's only because they provide benefits to the world without being compensated for it. Complaining about that is pretty silly, as is focusing on sales taxes while ignoring this.

Yes, but now you're bringing Bill's descendants into the discussion. I agree with your extension of the term regressive to include an arbitrarily long time frame, but I don't buy the inclusion of an abitrarily long line of descendants.

On your other point, I'm not complaining. I was just stating the fact that I will pay more sales tax (as a proportion of my lifetime income) than a richer person like Bill Gates. So, by the common definition of 'regressive tax', sales tax is a regressive tax.

I'm not saying this is good or bad or neutral. Just that it is so, by definition. (BTW I don't like the term regressive tax, because the term 'regressive' sounds intuitively negative.)

All money is taxed ad infinitum so to speak. Reagan believed the tax on capital should be more than the tax on labor. On this I think he was right. That wealthy people pay a smaller effective tax rate that someone making $50,000 a year is quite unfair to many people.

How so? The $100 you invest that turns into $120 isn't taxed again. Only the gain of $20 is taxed.

You might enjoy:

http://www.thebigquestions.com/2010/01/27/a-quick-economics-...

I remember doing that calculation in my tax class, and obviously the logic there is sound given the implicit premise that over a long enough time interval, all saving is just deferred consumption. My nit is: if that's what we're going to do, we might as well just have a consumption tax. The U.S. income tax isn't designed to be a consumption tax, it's designed to be a tax on gains in wealth.

I'm not convinced that the US income tax is really designed at all. I think it mostly just grew out of what was politically feasible.

Taxing income as opposed to something else was the result of political feasibility, and of course most of the additions to the basic framework don't really have a good rationale. But there is a framework there that has some internal logic to it: https://archive.org/stream/cu31924020062935#page/n7/mode/2up.

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.

So in a way you could say the economy is held hostage by capital? We have to play by capital's rules or suffer the consequences.

You can tax people saying "Hello" at $1000 each, minor edit but they could just stop saying it. So in a way you could say the economy is held hostage by people who can change their speech.

For the record, I'd generally be happy with the trade of killing the corporate income tax and then taxing capital gains and income taxes the same as wages.

Well, I much prefer a democracy to a capitalocracy (the rule of capital). Maybe that's hard to achieve on a local level though, without making some sacrifices in order to become self-reliant. Only globally could we deal with the threat of capital fleeing when faced with unfavorable policy.

Any system that has a property of "people could run away from it, so let's expand it so they can't escape" is very suspicious to me.

There are endless efforts by various nations to harmonize taxes on corporations and profits, so that there would no benefit in moving from one jurisdiction to another. The EU is successful in this to some extent, but only on member states.

On the other hand there are also endless efforts by individual countries, states, counties or cities to attract business by offering the inducement of lower taxes, causing businesses to shop around for the lowest tax jurisdiction.

What one prefers is one thing, how to achieve it is another..

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.

Because of the Chamley Judd result.

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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...?

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

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.

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

You're going to have to construct your mirrors from far-red photons, that's sort of the problem. Without stable matter you're not going to be doing much of anything (or even be much of anything).

And I'm happy to worry about this problem for as many trillions of years as it takes.

Yeah. Why wouldn't you?

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...."

Generally when people are talking about extending human lifespan, they're talking about extending the active, healthy lifespan. Obviously, what we did until now with medical advances is prolong old age and delay the inevitable. If it's possible to slow aging, then being 80 doesn't mean anything per se, it's just a number if you're biologically like a 20 year old today.

I think the idea of the anti-aging drugs from the article is you're supposed to remain youthful well into your elderly age.

I think most people would prefer a scenario where they live to the age of 80 at the kind of physical peak they attained in their 20s to one where they live to 120 in a state of ever increasing decrepitude.

Put another way, the dream is to give you 5 decades of being 25, not 5 decades of being 85.

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

boring... compared to what? Being dead?

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

Absolutely, ideally way longer than that too.

No, that's far too short.

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.

"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

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.

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

Reply on news.ycombinator.com