[CardinalSagehen]

Based on the analysis I presented in this thread: https://thecardboard.org/board/showthread.php?tid=19758, the one week delay in implementing shelter in place orders cost 36,000 lives, which if you assign a value of a statistical life of $10 million, then the one week delay in putting shelter in place orders cost $360 billion dollars.
BC

Does the advanced average age of COVID-19 victims reduce the overall cost?  In this paper, the VSL for 60 year olds is pegged at $2.5 mms. to $3 mms., which would put the one-week delay at $90 billion to $108 billion.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w10199

The Bush administration tried to apply an age discount to the VSL in the early 2000's, but the move was met with fierce blowback and the administration backtracked.  So, as far as the government is concerned, all lives are valued equally.

That's not a comment on how it should be calculated, mind you.

BC

Even this NBER working paper stops its analysis at age 62, conveniently.  Nobody wants to talk about the economic value of, say, a 94 year-old in a nursing home. On average, that person doesn't work, consumes minimal goods and services (outside of healthcare), drains Medicare and doesn't pay much in taxes. (Granted, that person probably contributed to the system his/her whole life and might have helped save the world from tyranny.)

I hate that these thoughts even occur to me, but if we're talking solely about economic value going forward, it seems inaccurate not to place a negative value on some lives.  

This is not a statement on which policies I would support at all.  My parents are in their late seventies, and their lives are priceless to me.  To be clear, I do not want to live in a society that fails to take care of its elderly to a very significant degree.  I might call this "societal value" but not economic.  

Maybe the economic term I'm really looking for isn't "value" but "contribution".  Our legislators make hard trade-offs every day - lives are saved and destroyed all the time as a consequence of policy decisions.  If we (and by "we" I don't mean CardBoarders but public health officials and policymakers) need to talk about economic contribution to help make the most rational decisions and trade-offs, we can't go pussyfooting around the issue.  We should have a number that accurately represents the true economic contribution of lives saved, and then debate whether societal value ought to trump economic contribution and to what degree.  

This is a disease that tends to kill people with very low or even negative contribution to the economy. We should still spend trillions to save them, imho. But on the surface, just intuitively and perhaps ignorantly, I'm skeptical of an analysis suggesting that the economic effect of SIP is net positive. I agree with policies aimed at saving the most lives, but the fact remains that we are holding back the economic activity of young, productive people in order to save the lives of people that have relatively few years remaining.

[CardinalSagehen]

Based on the analysis I presented in this thread: https://thecardboard.org/board/showthread.php?tid=19758, the one week delay in implementing shelter in place orders cost 36,000 lives, which if you assign a value of a statistical life of $10 million, then the one week delay in putting shelter in place orders cost $360 billion dollars.
BC

Does the advanced average age of COVID-19 victims reduce the overall cost?  In this paper, the VSL for 60 year olds is pegged at $2.5 mms. to $3 mms., which would put the one-week delay at $90 billion to $108 billion.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w10199

The Bush administration tried to apply an age discount to the VSL in the early 2000's, but the move was met with fierce blowback and the administration backtracked.  So, as far as the government is concerned, all lives are valued equally.

That's not a comment on how it should be calculated, mind you.

BC

Even this NBER working paper stops its analysis at age 62, conveniently.  Nobody wants to talk about the economic value of, say, a 94 year-old in a nursing home. On average, that person doesn't work, consumes minimal goods and services (outside of healthcare), drains Medicare and doesn't pay much in taxes. (Granted, that person probably contributed to the system his/her whole life and might have helped save the world from tyranny.)

I hate that these thoughts even occur to me, but if we're talking solely about economic value going forward, it seems inaccurate not to place a negative value on some lives.  

This is not a statement on which policies I would support at all.  My parents are in their late seventies, and their lives are priceless to me.  To be clear, I do not want to live in a society that fails to take care of its elderly to a very significant degree.  I might call this "societal value" but not economic.  

Maybe the economic term I'm really looking for isn't "value" but "contribution".  Our legislators make hard trade-offs every day - lives are saved and destroyed all the time as a consequence of policy decisions.  If we (and by "we" I don't mean CardBoarders but public health officials and policymakers) need to talk about economic contribution to help make the most rational decisions and trade-offs, we can't go pussyfooting around the issue.  We should have a number that accurately represents the true economic contribution of lives saved, and then debate whether societal value ought to trump economic contribution and to what degree.  

This is a disease that tends to kill people with very low or even negative contribution to the economy. We should still spend trillions to save them, imho. But on the surface, just intuitively and perhaps ignorantly, I'm skeptical of an analysis suggesting that the economic effect of SIP is net positive. I agree with policies aimed at saving the most lives, but the fact remains that we are holding back the economic activity of young, productive people in order to save the lives of people that have relatively few years remaining.