Even Small Gains in Healthy Longevity Bring Huge Economic Benefits
Even small changes in the trajectory of aging bring enormous economic gains, and here I'll point out an interview with one of the few economists to have modeled these gains, albeit for small increases in healthy life span after the Longevity Dividend view of slightly slowing the progression of aging via calorie restriction mimetic drugs and the like. Most expenditure on healthcare occurs due to aging, and increases greatly in the final stages of life. Care of those disabled by aging and the provision of largely palliative therapies for late stage age-related disease are both expensive undertakings, and because existing treatments don't target the causes of aging and age-related disease they are also unreliable and of only marginal benefit. This situation will change radically in the years ahead as the first therapies following the SENS vision for rejuvenation biotechnology arrive in the clinic, capable of repairing the cell and tissue damage that causes aging, with senescent cell clearance and transthyretin amyloid clearance first out of the gate. The deployment of the full spectrum of SENS treatments will do far more than add just a couple of years to life.
ResearchGate: What are the economic benefits of delayed aging?Dana Goldman: We need to think about benefits more broadly than just traditional measures like Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Now that people are living longer, we need to make decisions about a whole host of treatments for diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's that are much more prevalent post-retirement. Thus, economists have developed ways to think about - and measure - the benefits of a healthy, productive life using the concept of a quality-adjusted life year. Thus, the 'economic' benefits come from better functioning, improved cognition, and a life free of comorbidities as much as possible. The key benefit of delayed aging is not just to extend life, but to also reduce the amount of time we spend with disability and disease - all of which can be measured and valued.
RG: How do the projected benefits compare with the costs?
DG: Once we do a good job valuing the health gains - both in terms of life expectancy and quality of life - it is clear that the benefits likely outweigh the costs by a factor of ten or more. This does not mean that delayed aging will pay for itself in reduced health care spending - quite the contrary. However, it is a very different question to ask if the medical spending is less or more than to ask if the benefits outweigh the costs. That is because the benefits include all the value we place on healthier, longer life. For example, we find that if the promise of delayed aging is fully realized - based on the best animal models - we could increase life expectancy by an additional 2.2 years, most of which would be spent in good health. The economic value of would be about $7.1 trillion over fifty years - with little additional government costs if we index Medicare and Social Security to the life expectancy increases.
RG: Research has shown that delayed aging simultaneously lowers the risk of all fatal and disabling diseases. What changes to healthcare systems and related costs do you foresee?
DG: This makes delayed aging a lot like other important interventions we know about, like reduced smoking, more physical activity, or a better diet. All of those 'treatments' have benefits for a constellation of illnesses. The big change we need is to make sure the health care system is rewarded for keeping people free of disease, rather than getting paid only when people get sick.
Link: https://www.researchgate.net/blog/post/delayed-aging-to-bring-7-1-trillion-by-2060
Interesting you posted this. I was on reddit last night, and someone was talking about this, only to a much further extent (immortality, which I personally don't like the term) than the couple years mentioned here in this article. But they were arguing opposite. Here was their argument:
"Looking at recent breakthroughs I definitely believe something like this is mere decades away. We know how but we don't have the know-how, yet. However, even if this becomes a reality tomorrow I wouldn't expect to see it in practice for the general public for many decades to come, perhaps even centuries. There is so much preparation work that needs to be done before we can eliminate aging for the general public. It's not just something that can be allowed to happen overnight.
And the thing is, we can't just deal with the consequences of immortality because our society isn't built with people being immortal in mind. Our economic model doesn't support it because it's based around taxation of monetary compensation and it's capitalist in nature. In order to get money that can be taxed we need jobs and those are diminishing rapidly due to automation, increased efficiency, redundancy etc. Demand for any product will ALWAYS be higher than the workforce producing said product. This is especially true if our entire population suddenly becomes biologically immortal. There's simply not enough jobs because the demand to population ratio will diminish, not increase. The tax burden on the workforce will steadily increase until it's no longer sustainable and we no longer have enough tax income to run our most basic societal functions, much less to support an unemployed non-contributing population with both food and shelter. And it can't just be fixed by giving people random jobs because producing/offering excess product or services doesn't magically increase demand and therefor doesn't generate money that can be taxed in order to sustain the unemployed masses. It's unsustainable in our economic model whichever way you look at it.
To make immortality sustainable we need to introduce a non-monetary economy and that needs to happen globally so that we can take advantage of export/import. Are you ready to give up your luxuries? No more excess anything, no more ownership. You'll be rationed everything you need and you'll have no power to change your quality of life because you won't have purchasing power. This is the inevitable future we're going towards and it will happen eventually, immortality or not. But do you think we are ready now? Because if immortality is a thing tomorrow we need a non-monetary economy today. It doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen without sacrifice. And this is just one thing that needs to change dramatically. Now, shall we talk about controlled reproduction and how well that will go over with our population? Point is, we can't just become immortal. LOTS of preparation needed."
Just thought it was an interesting argument, but not once that I necessarily agree with (on a few levels) either. Its not like any of this would happen overnight anyway, as we are still quite some time away from seeing someone live to 150, for example.
I don't see anything that's interesting about mixing up the Tithonus Error with legitimate concerns about job loss due to automation.