"Smart" and "Stupid" Questions - Feel Free To Ask

[SteveMDFP]

. . .
 And if I want to know what the general level of happiness (i.e. wellbeing) in a particular country is, the first and most important and most reliable measure is GDP.

I don't think that's necessarily true.  If one chooses to use economic data as a first approximation measure of happiness, I think income inequality might be a more meaningful measure.  I think there are data to support this, but it's not my field of expertise.

If one is choosing "hard" data to try to measure and compare human happiness and well-being, I think combining some objective measures could provide a kind of formula.  Wealth inequality, income inequality, and GDP would be reasonable to combine.  I think personal income over a certain level correlates very poorly with personal happiness.   So something like a square root of per capita GDP times inverse of inequality might be correlated with "soft" indicators of happiness.

One might include in that formula some measures of crime rates, incarceration rates, education attainment, financial security, and probably a number of other measurables.

This is all a tangent off the topic of the impact of global warming on humanity, but hey, this is the "stupid" questions thread.

[ivica]

Just an idea to consider or not, i watched almost none of it:


"It is widely recognized that GDP alone is an inadequate measure of a nation’s progress. Human capital, well-being, innovation, resilience and agility alongside GDP are critical measures of economic and social progress. What can government, business and civil society leaders do to better capture the less-tangible factors of inclusive growth?"

https://www.youtube.com/user/WorldEconomicForum/search?query=happiness
https://www.youtube.com/user/GovSummit/search?query=happiness

https://www.youtube.com/user/WorldEconomicForum/search?query=GDP
https://www.youtube.com/user/GovSummit/search?query=GDP

[Archimid]

I fail to see how the creation of goods and services equals happiness. Sure there is a vague correlation between the creation of goods and services and well being. But in the context of climate change, the kind of GDP created by destruction and reconstruction is exactly one of the reasons one shouldn't use the GDP to measure well being.

 Bintho is using possible GDP growth from disasters as a reason for "no evidence of collapse", just like eminent scientists and world leaders. I see their reasons for non collapse as exactly the evidence for collapse.

[ivica]

Adding mark to the video in my prev post: "Happiness is the highest purpose for the government, wellbeing is the platform, is the ecosystem to achieve that." here .
Edit: Listen that woman from UAE.

[blumenkraft]

Well found, dnem

+1 !!

A pity that most of the powers that presume to govern us prefer Binntho's view.

Or is it, they are good in maintaining this view in Binntho's head?

[Glen Koehler]

Edited quotes

I see that you have all been having a lot of fun debunking my claims. And perhaps they needed debunking, who knows.
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So global warming. Yes, it's a disaster. No, we are not going to stop it. So how much of a disaster is it going to be?
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The only true threat to global civlisation would be a large and consistent disruption in food production. And I'm not seeing anybody predicting such an outcome (although it does seem to me to be at least a possibility).
-----------
Another of the papers he links to makes some properly dystopian claims, e.g. that CO2 "... is rapidly heading towards levels last seen some 50 million years ago — in the Eocene — when temperatures were up to 14 °C higher than they were in pre-industrial times."
------------
Yes I know that end-of-world prophecies are exciting and lot's of people seem to wish for some sort of apocalypse. I don't

binntho - Disagreement is not opprobrium or personal attack.  You are well known in this forum for providing thoughtful opinion and insight.  If some nut job jumped onto the forum and wrote that disrupting the planetary climate would have minor effect on well being, people would just dismiss it and not bother to respond with forceful argument.  It is exactly because you do seem intelligent, informed, and curious that folks weigh in to redirect what I (and I presume others too) see as a colleague who is engaging in delusional thinking.  We argue with you because we care and trust that you have the ability to change your mind.  That requires the same of us.  I submit that the facts do not support your position. 

RE: "No, we are not going to stop it." 
     It is not a yes/no situation.  Significant damage has already been done.  Dorian/Great Barrier Reef/2003 Eur. heat wave, etc etc ad nauseum.  I personally don't see how there is ANY chance of not breeching 1.5 C, so I wish IPCC would stop paying it lip service.  But we still have the ability to halt the destruction, pain, and loss caused at 2C or 3C vs. 4C.  By numerous analyses by people who dedicate their professional lives to understand this stuff, getting to 4C could result in a runaway situation where human action is overwhelmed by natural reinforcing feedback mechanisms.

RE My #3 citation quoting Lenton et al. Nov. 2019 article in Nature --
     The list of authors for that piece includes many widely recognized top-tier experts (published in the 1st or 2nd most respected peer-reviewed journal).  "Trust the experts" has fallen out of favor now that with the internet anybody can "publish" any thought that bubbles up through their brain (self included). 

     But facts and expertise still matter.  I still trust the experts when I have a toothache or when the relevant experts tell me that the global ecosystem on which I and my children are utterly and entirely dependent is being irrevocably altered.  You misunderstand and misrepresent their statement about potential for a runaway temperature increase.  They did not say that human emissions alone would drive CO2 to 2500ppm.  But there are powerful feedbacks that can and have done exactly that.  That scenario is not merely hypothetical, it has happened before and can happen again.  It is an engineering analysis of physical properties, not a prophecy based on philosophy.  To ignore factual warnings by experts is self-destructive.

     Heeding warnings of impending destruction and attempting to avert it by spreading the alarm is not wishing for it.  The scale of response needed to reinvent and replace our energy system on a global scale is daunting and difficult.  To succeed will require unprecedented concerted action across political, ethnic, economic and other boundaries.  Humanity faces a sink or swim crisis. 

RE:  Not finding scientific evidence for climate change impact on agriculture
     All I can say is look again. It's there.  Lots of it.  Reduced crop yields as cropping areas exceed tolerances for plants already near their thermal maximum.  A CO2 fertilization effect that only allows crop plants more vegetative growth if water, temperature stability and other needs that are threatened by climate change are controlled.  And even if that vegetative growth does occur, it largely acts to dilute food nutrient density instead of increasing it.  As for, "we'll just move cropping areas north with the shifting isotherm", it isn't that simple.  The solar radiation supply required for photosynthesis is not moving north, nor are the soil resources farther north the same as current ag production zones.  Add in altered, and more likely more erratic, precipitation patterns and the prospects for simply shifting north become even more challenging.  As for that CO2 fertilization effect, here is some more bad news -- weeds are better adapted to benefit from it than crops.  Weeds already outpace insect and disease pests for crop production losses.

     There may be localized benefits for a few cool ag production areas where water supply is not reduced.  I happen to live and work in one such area.  But even here the cost-benefit ratio is not necessarily positive.  For the planet overall, the studies show net negative impacts that increase with additional warming.  The result  is stalled or reversed productivity when we need the opposite to feed a larger population.  = Supply-Demand Train wreck.

     Any "ism" taken to an extreme becomes destructive.  Capitalism run amok becomes Nazi fascism.  Socialism run amok becomes Animal Farm Big Brother 1984 totalitarian communism.   Religious isms run amok become the Crusades,the Jonestown massacre, or ISIS.  Maybe Humanism run amok becomes a sterile, isolated, solopsistic, empty narcissism, where the feelings and dignity of other creatures has zero value.  Utlimately that could include other people.  I wonder if the shrinking circle of that logic ends up as Meism.  That seems like the definition of hell.  I prefer a world of other beings that can delight, surprise, and teach me expressly because they are different from me, yet we share a common existence.

     Enough of my self-published internet philosophizing.  To bring it all all back to GDP, we could have a glorious world and a massive economic boon by taking the actions needed to prevent climate catastrophe.   I wish the big business interests would pull their heads out of their asses long enough to see that opportunity.   The money we spend on military budgets would probably be enough to pull it off.

[be cause]

thank God I'm not a humanist .. b.c.

[nanning]

Thanks Glen, very good and interesting.

My contribution:

GDP growth has a very close correlation with increased food bank use.

edit: rephrased last sentence for clarity

[philopek]

....measure of happiness,

just adding:

- happiness cannot be measured IMO

- as long as i see the consternation in everyones (mostly) face if they ask me "how are you" and my answer is the truth along the line "could be better" or "horrible" that is rarely the case but not never, I shall never believe in any polls, comparison, tables etc. about the level of happiness of the public in specific places.

Most people outright lie because they don't want to admit or don't want to apparently be the only ones who are not "happy" (happiness are just moments, long term I'd say contentnes or satisfied)

however the fact that too many people play feeling great or only the good is shown ( artists, actors and other celebrities) it's now wonder that most people thrive to collect more and more material goods to overshadow their inner discontent (unhappiness)

true happiness or however we want to call it comes strictly from the inside, it's a thinking pattern and depends a lot on the level of rivalry, comparison and competition while having those at a minimum level while still understanding/looking through facts of life etc. is providing a good starting platform to get as close as possible to true satisfaction without feeling to having made too many compromises and diverting too much from the original goals because there is the imminent danger of "giving up" which is not the same and that of indifference that's even worse.

[blumenkraft]

thank God I'm not a humanist .. b.c.

I find this hard to believe.

[nanning]

<snip>
(happiness are just moments, long term I'd say contentnes or satisfied)

That is not how I interpret happiness.
Wikipedia mentions life satisfaction amongst other interprettions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness

[El Cid]

If I want to know which countries are the happiest/best to live in I do not need to look at GDp or any other data, just one:

Where do people emigrate to and where do they emigrate from?

They leave places they don't like and go to places they like. That's it.

Not many emigrate to Russia or India, but many Russians an Indians emigrate to Europe and the US...wonder why

[crandles]

If I want to know which countries are the happiest/best to live in I do not need to look at GDp or any other data, just one:

Where do people emigrate to and where do they emigrate from?

So if people hate living there, but the money is good, this is a sign of happiness?
(Middle East may well be better example of this. However it suggests you need more than one piece of data.)

[dnem]

If I want to know which countries are the happiest/best to live in I do not need to look at GDp or any other data, just one:

Where do people emigrate to and where do they emigrate from?

They leave places they don't like and go to places they like. That's it.

Not many emigrate to Russia or India, but many Russians an Indians emigrate to Europe and the US...wonder why

People generally emigrate to escape desperate circumstances, economic or otherwise.  They go to places that they believe they can get to, that will accept them, and where they will be safe and able to pursue a decent life.  Certainly the GDP per capita of most of the countries people flee is lower than the ones they flee to.  No one disputes that when people are in desperate straits, are not safe and cannot meet their basic needs, they would be better off with a higher per capita GDP.  But that says essentially nothing about the utility of managing almost all of our social and economic policy toward achieving ever higher GDP. It's pretty simple: Managing for GDP growth will NEVER acknowledge that enough might be enough when it comes to material consumption.

[wili]

"Where do people emigrate to and where do they emigrate from? "

(When people migrate into a country, they immigrate not emigrate)

And as others have pointed out, there are many other factors involved in these decisions in many/most cases.

[Rob Dekker]

All this talk about GDP and happiness, versus the argument that problem is not so bad, seems so irrelevant.

After all, if we keep on emitting more CO2, the problem will continue to get worse, so it does not really matter where you draw the line when it is called 'catastrophic' for you personally.

So, in my humble opinion, the real issue is very simple :

   We either, at some point in time, stop burning fossil fuel, or we will cook this planet.

Whichever comes first.

The only (stupid) question remaining is : If we don't stop now, then WHEN ?

[dnem]

All this talk about GDP and happiness, versus the argument that problem is not so bad, seems so irrelevant.

Only it's not irrelevant.  GDP is perhaps the most important single metric for how countries track their "progress". The most important decisions across the planet for how we should manage our societies are very often based on the impact on GDP.  Many sustainability practitioners think that developing and adopting truer measures of human wellbeing is one of the most important projects in the fight against environmental destruction.

[nanning]

I agree with Rob on this. Human wellbeing is of less importance in our current planet-wide emergency of existential proportions.

For some perspective:
At times of war, people are willing to do with much less because there's an powerful enemy to fight of.
Our climate- and biosphere emergency is about facing a much much bigger enemy.

I see this situation as the final standof with on one side civilisation/hightech with their crazy supremacy ideas over nature, and on the other side stands reality, or nature.

[dnem]

I think you are missing the point, nanning. Right now, governments across the globe are using GDP as the primary metric for policy: if it leads to "growth" it is good.  That is what is destroying the climate and the biosphere.  For the foreseeable future, governments will still be making major decisions about how to organize society.  These decisions should be made taking into consideration what makes humans truly thrive, which are things like connections to each other and to functioning nature.  Governments need a new way of thinking about and measuring progress that results in true human welfare, not more material growth. That is what underlies the movement to replace GDP with new metrics that policy makers can use to make decisions. GDP is a terrible metric yet is still incredibly important across the planet.  If you could retire GDP tomorrow and have public policy decisions made considering what truly matters, you would make a massive, massive impact on our trajectory.

[binntho]

GDP is the only realistic measure, and the only one that can be predicted.

The only realistic solution is working within the current structures of society and government. The only acceptable goal is the highest wellbeing of the most people. The only workable path is through human ingenuity, not one-party fascism and mass murder which seems to be the only other alternative put forward. A Pol Pot solution if there ever was, a pure example of how pure evil can grow even when watered by good intentions. Stacking up on the plastic bags, anyone?

[nanning]

dnem, do you think that when, for instance, your country is at war and under attack, that the GDP metric will have any importance?
Of course not. Everything will be put on hold because there has to be an immediate and radical response. Anything other is insane.
Remember the Montreal Protocol? Immediate and radical response from the whole planet.

binntho, the only acceptable goal should be: he survival of the human race and society (from civilisation's viewpoint).

[dnem]

Right, that's EXACTLY what I'm saying!!  GDP never should have any importance.  It does not measure anything that matters, yet it is how most large scale decisions are being made.  It is moronic.  It needs to be replaced.  That's what I've been saying.  We need to manage for meaningful outcomes, not "economic growth"!

[oren]

governments across the globe are using GDP as the primary metric for policy

This happens exactly because of GDP's flawed definition. It does NOT measure happiness nor prosperity nor wealth. But it DOES measure transactions (If I sell you my car and you sell me back the same car, GDP has grown though nothing happened in real life). And transactions are the government's tax base. So higher GDP means more taxes for the government, more spending, and more power to the people at the top. Economists are happy to help the government use this flawed metric because it is (at least partially and theoretically) measurable, making the profession more scientific though not quite useful.
So yeah, the government is happy with broken windows because then money moves around to fix them, and that money can be taxed. But society as a whole just lost the resources that could build more windows, or solar panels, or what have you, and gained nothing in return.

[KiwiGriff]

GDP is the only realistic measure, and the only one that can be predicted.

Really ?
Do show us all those economics papers predicting the reason and extent of the GFC.
The predictions of future climate change costs rely on a discount rate that is not based on evidence
Discount rates used  is a wild guess nothing more. Small differences in the applied discount rate end up with large changes in the result.

This is an economists thinking.
10K would be fine we will just move inside
Never mind if we lose the tropics ability  to support any mammalian life and the oceans become an anaerobic dead zone .

  https://mronline.org/2019/07/18/an-extraordinary-twitter-exchange-with-richard-tol/

Ken Rice
@theresphysics
 · Jun 18, 2019
Replying to @RichardTol and 6 others
Can I just clarify.  Are you actually suggesting that a 10K rise in global average surface temperature would be manageable?


Richard Tol
✔
@RichardTol
We'd move indoors, much like the Saudis have.

1
6:16 AM - Jun 18, 2019 · Lewes, England

 

 

[Archimid]

because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to be as necessarily true

Irony everywhere. This guy is honestly clueless.

GDP is the only realistic measure, and the only one that can be predicted.

The only real measure of what? Be specific. I bet you do not know that answer.

[gerontocrat]

Some economists believe that the risks of large economic impacts from environmental change are sorely underestimated. i.e. GDP could be clobbered. Even the 1% could be clobbered.

It does not matter what measure is used. Any rational risk assessment says action is required now, and in much greater measure than that is now underway. And it looks like COP-25 should be renamed to COP-OUT.

http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/publication/the-missing-economic-risks-in-assessments-of-climate-change-impacts/
The missing economic risks in assessments of climate change impacts

In order to make well-informed decisions on climate change action, leaders need to understand clearly the nature and magnitude of the risks to lives and livelihoods that are being created by climate change. Unfortunately, much of the technical advice and recommendations about these risks incorporate assessments of the economic implications that omit or underplay the largest potential impacts of climate change.

Summary points
-Economic assessments of the potential future risks of climate change have been omitting or grossly underestimating many of the most serious consequences for lives and livelihoods because these risks are difficult to quantify precisely and lie outside of human experience.
- Political and business leaders need to understand the scale of these ‘missing risks’ because they could have drastic and potentially catastrophic impacts on citizens, communities and companies.
- Scientists are growing in confidence about the evidence for the largest potential impacts of climate change and the rising probability that major thresholds in the Earth’s climate system will be breached as global mean surface temperature rises, particularly if warming exceeds 2°C above the pre-industrial level. These impacts include:
  -Destabilisation of ice sheets and glaciers and consequent sea level rise
  -Stronger tropical cyclones
  -Extreme heat impacts
  -More frequent and intense floods and droughts
  -Disruptions to oceanic and atmospheric circulation
  -Destruction of biodiversity and collapse of ecosystems
- Many of these impacts will grow and occur concurrently across the world as global temperature climbs.
- Some of these impacts involve thresholds in the climate system beyond which major impacts accelerate, or become irreversible and unstoppable.
- When a threshold is breached, it might cause one or more other thresholds to be exceeded as well, leading to a cascade of impacts.
- Many of these impacts could exceed the capacity of human populations to adapt, and would significantly affect and disrupt the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people worldwide.
- These impacts would also undermine economic growth and development, exacerbate poverty and destabilise communities.
- Economic assessments fail to take account of the potential for large concurrent impacts across the world that would cause mass migration, displacement and conflict, with huge loss of life.
- Economic assessments that are expressed solely in terms of effects on output (e.g. gross domestic product), or that only extrapolate from past experience, or that use inappropriate discounting, do not provide a clear indication of the potential risks to lives and livelihoods.
- It is likely that there are additional risks that we are not yet anticipating simply because scientists have not yet detected their possibility, as we have entered a period of climate change that is unprecedented in human history.
- Some advances are being made in improving economic assessments of climate change impacts but much more progress is required if assessments are to offer reliable guidance for political and business leaders on the biggest risks

The lack of firm quantifications is not a reason to ignore these risks, and when the missing risks are taken into account, the case for strong and urgent action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions becomes even more compelling..

[Archimid]

Disaster grows GDP as long as there is some form of insurance to pay for the damage. For decades goods and services are created. Disaster happens. Some form of insurance money flows in and goods that were accumulated over decades and lost instantly are replaced over months or years. That's GDP growth.

[gerontocrat]

Disaster grows GDP as long as there is some form of insurance to pay for the damage. For decades goods and services are created. Disaster happens. Some form of insurance money flows in and goods that were accumulated over decades and lost instantly are replaced over months or years. That's GDP growth.

Disaster grows GDP as long as there is some form of insurance to pay for the damage.

And the premiums grow until people can't afford them,
And also the insurance companies refuse to offer policies at any price.

It is happening to some degree already.

[Archimid]

To that argument, well-read economists and world leaders will say that it doesn't matter if insurance goes under because governments can move in and pick up the slack through debt. And since money can be infinitely printed by all countries there will always be money to move that GDP up.

 Win win, if one thinks about it in the comfort of one's hole in the sand.

[KiwiGriff]

the premiums grow until people can't afford them,
And also the insurance companies refuse to offer policies at any price.

That has been the result in NZ after our earthquakes. Being a return on insurance also  makes the money flowing in expensive as paying more to reinsurance company's is not as cheap as just borrowing in the long term due to the fiscal drag of insurance industry overheads.
Spending on rebuilding also results in a lost opportunity cost.
The effort could have been spent on increasing productivity  elsewhere in the economy and costs  increased though out the country as much of the work force was focused on the rebuild .

[gerontocrat]

Absolutely the last post about GDP.. Generating shed-loads of GDP is not much use if the outcome is not so good.

To be able to pursue happiness, one has to be alive. So how well does a rich country like the USA perform that objective ?

The USA spends on healthcare far more per capita than any other country and probably more as a % of GDP.

And the result? the USA is ranked country number 47 for life expectancy, one place higher than Cuba.

GDP in this case seems more a measure of wasted effort than a measure of well-being.

And here is an extract from an article by a UK journalist who has been in New York for a year.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boris-johnson-general-election-result-victory-british-us-future-a9246266.html

Over the last year, I have become intimately involved with America’s dystopian healthcare system. While TV commercials pushing cancer drugs, painkillers and steroids wash over my American colleagues, I still find them jarring. There are many, many ads about what to do if you can’t afford to take your sick child to hospital, or to refill his asthma prescription. If you think a picture of a child lying on the floor of a hospital in Leeds is bad, consider how many equally ill children stay in the back of their parents’ cars in the car parks outside American hospitals while their parents try to work out how they could afford to pay to take them in. Those are the parents with insurance. The ones without won’t even get as far as the car park.

It’s worth bearing in mind that the US spends more on healthcare per citizen than any other country in the world. It could have had an NHS. But once you open the Pandora’s box of privatisation, prices tend to skyrocket through greed and manipulation perpetuated by a dense thicket of overpaid insurance companies, middle-men, and pharmaceutical companies.

Living in a country like America where socialism is a dirty word changes you psychologically. You stop prioritising your own health; you don’t see a doctor for a concerning symptom because you have other bills to pay, and it’ll probably go away. You watch people line up in your local corner shop with food stamps and you see it as normal. Those people have jobs — it’s a requirement. They probably don’t have health insurance. You hold the hand of a friend who’s worried she’s pregnant and crying about the fact that she’d never be able to afford the $8,000 out-of-pocket expenses to give birth, never mind the $600 per month to get the baby access to healthcare as well.

You stop drinking milk, because the dairy is pumped full of antibiotics and hormones so factory farmers can sell, sell, sell beyond the biological capacities of the animals involved, despite the antibiotic apocalypse and what it means for humanity. You avoid meat and fish because their animal welfare legislation is basically nonexistent. You worry about what might be in the water because people across the country are being poisoned with lead and no one wants to put in the money to sort it out. You live in housing conditions which you’ve previously only seen in developing countries.

You see companies shrug their shoulders and shirk their responsibilities to the climate in the name of profit.

[Tom_Mazanec]

Do countries like Cuba and America calculate life expectancy the same way? If the US makes heroic efforts to save a “misborn” baby who lives for a few days and Cuba just lets them die and considers them miscarriages, for example, that could shift life expectancy.

[blumenkraft]

Tom, you are calculating with the wrong numbers.

When health care is free of charge at service, fewer people will delay the needed visit at the doc which makes them more healthy. Also, you have a higher percentage of coverage in Cuba, which is 100% there - as it is supposed to be.

[mabarnes]

Do countries like Cuba and America calculate life expectancy the same way? If the US makes heroic efforts to save a “misborn” baby who lives for a few days and Cuba just lets them die and considers them miscarriages, for example, that could shift life expectancy.

Good intuition!  Yes, different countries calculate Life Expectancy in different ways, infant deaths having particularly disparate methodologies.  This makes "macro" variables like Infant Mortality and Life Expectancy "problematic" when comparing countries.  That said, there's also demographic factors that cloud the stats - Americans drive more, and die more on the road, for example.  Take out Violent Deaths (accidents, suicides, murders) and the USA has the 2nd highest Life Expectancy on Earth, just behind Japan.

When comparing Health Systems, economists (when not trying to "prove" a point) look at OUTCOMES - a slightly dated example (about a decade old) on Prostate Cancer - 5 year post-diagnosis Mortality:  If you found out on January 1, 2010, that 200 ASIF lurkers JUST found out they had Prostate Cancer, 100 in the UK, 100 in the USA, by January 1, 2015 you could expect to hear of 27 funerals due to the cancer in the UK ... versus 3 in the USA.

The cost ... ahhh the cost.  Truly out of control in the USA ... BUT ... health insurance is the culprit, primarily, and its purchase PRE-TAXATION is a big part of it.  Austrian-style analysis serves well here (just as it did during past and current Housing Bubbles):  Prices equilibrate to the "leverage" provided by income tax rates just as they do to interest rates - prices are set "on the margin." 

If one were to make, say, automobiles fully tax-deductible, one would expect prices to rise commensurately, and one would not be disappointed when they did - other than to shake one's head yet again on how government policies distort markets and create Deadweight Losses.  Most healthcare is PALLIATIVE, not critical, life-saving stuff.  Not to be "uncaring," but to an economist, a hip replacement and a new BMW are both simply purchases that improve quality of life. 

The whole thing's a mess.  Imagine "we" had health-style insurance on an even greater necessity than healthcare - FOOD.  All your groceries and meals, tax deductible.  Think it would shift the quality mix and quantity (in dollars) of food purchases?  Of course it would.  Imagine paying 20% "copay" on steak dinners - $200 at Ruth's Chris, but only $40 to me.  Hell yes I'll have the creamed spinach, and bring us another bottle of wine.

Of course, if we did this today, overnight, the line at RC would be around the block the next day.  Supply wouldn't match demand until ... prices were hiked.  And that, in a nutshell, is the story of the United States' high health spending.  Good or bad, that's normative and not in the economist's purview, strictly speaking.  Imagine yourself in need of emergency surgery, tho ... where do you want to be:  New York or Havana...?  2 cents worth, over and out....

[KiwiGriff]

Imagine yourself in need of emergency surgery, tho ... where do you want to be:  New York or Havana.

This is called  false dilemma a type of informal fallacy in which something is falsely claimed to be an "either/or" situation, when in fact there is at least one additional option.

 I would want to be in a first world country with fully funded health care.
Because I am not well off.
In the USA those who can afford too get really good health care .
Those who don't die.

Most of the west spends about 9% of GDP on health care the USA 17%.

[blumenkraft]

I don't know if you are aware, so i somehow feel the need to tell you: People are not cars.

[KiwiGriff]

Yes blumenkraft which goes right  around again to the original question.
If 100 poor people die  because of climate change it has less effect on GDP than one rich person dying.
Are those 100 poor people really worth less?
A simple mud hut costs a few bucks and a McMansion hundreds of thousands.
Is 1,000 Bangladeshis home less worth less than  one Floridian homeless?
In economics yes.
As a human NO .
The reason AGW gets mixed up with sustainability and equality "socialism" is because the worlds poor will pay far more of the future costs of our rich life styles than we will.

[gerontocrat]

Do countries like Cuba and America calculate life expectancy the same way? If the US makes heroic efforts to save a “misborn” baby who lives for a few days and Cuba just lets them die and considers them miscarriages, for example, that could shift life expectancy.

Standard methodology as set down by the World Health Organisation.

You can run but not hide from that healthcare in the US is an expensive mess.

[SteveMDFP]

When comparing Health Systems, economists (when not trying to "prove" a point) look at OUTCOMES - a slightly dated example (about a decade old) on Prostate Cancer - 5 year post-diagnosis Mortality:  If you found out on January 1, 2010, that 200 ASIF lurkers JUST found out they had Prostate Cancer, 100 in the UK, 100 in the USA, by January 1, 2015 you could expect to hear of 27 funerals due to the cancer in the UK ... versus 3 in the USA.

This is one of the least relevant statistics.  Prostate Ca mostly strikes men over 70, who have a short life expectancy and high risk of dying from other causes.  It's also among the slowest-developing forms of cancer. 
Try using comparisons like infant mortality, maternal mortality, or death from drugs and alcohol among young adults. 

The cost ... ahhh the cost.  Truly out of control in the USA ... BUT ... health insurance is the culprit, primarily, and its purchase PRE-TAXATION is a big part of it.  Austrian-style analysis serves well here (just as it did during past and current Housing Bubbles):  Prices equilibrate to the "leverage" provided by income tax rates just as they do to interest rates - prices are set "on the margin." 

In a "free market" for health *insurance* there's some technical truth to these bare facts.  But only the US comes anywhere close to having a "free market" for insurance for modest segments of the population.

Health *insurance* isn't necessarily related to health care.  Not for individuals, not for nations.  The US system spends far more per capita on "care," while achieving rather poorer outcomes.  This matter is quite distinct from the costs of insurance, either for individuals or for the public coffers.

A single-payer or all-payer system gives monopoly power to the insurance purchaser(s). That is, if law and regulation permit use of that power to control costs while monitoring quality.  Medicare, for example, is forbidden from using its monopoly power to control medication costs.

The reality is that most societies demand universal coverage, so that nobody has to choose between food/housing/bankruptcy and essential medical care.  Most societies are  fine with modest limitations on high-tech/high-profit care in exchange for no-worry coverage.

Would we limit law enforcement or fire services to the highest bidder?  We expect these to be universally available to everyone who needs them.  Why should health care be run differently?

[Iknownot]

Okay, really stupid question. I keep reading that the earth's rotation is slowing down. If that's true, wouldn't that change how or oceans flow, everything from speed to where they flow to heat exchange? And what change does the slowing have on gravitational pull on the ice?

[kassy]

Atomic clocks show that a modern-day is longer by about 1.7 milliseconds than a century ago, slowly increasing the rate at which UTC is adjusted by leap seconds

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_rotation

The change is really small so there is no effect.

[Tor Bejnar]

As a geologist, I'm frequently interested in the long view.  A quote from that Wikipedia article:

However, if the giant-impact hypothesis for the origin of the Moon is correct, this primordial rotation rate would have been reset by the Theia impact 4.5 billion years ago. Regardless of the speed and tilt of Earth's rotation before the impact, it would have experienced a day some five hours long after the impact.[53] Tidal effects would then have slowed this rate to its modern value.

My calculation (from this data) shows the Earth has slowed an average of about 1.5 milliseconds/year over these 4.5 billion years.  The modern-day 1.7 milliseconds/year is remarkably close to this!  (Or else it was 5.8 hours longer back then or the impact was only 3.8 billion years, or a combination of things.  I'll agree that extrapolating one year's data over several billion years is not likely to have any relevancy to anything at all.)

[Tom_Mazanec]

TB:
It’s 1.7 msec per century now, not per year.
But the rate varies inversely as the sixth power of the separation, so was much faster in the Hadrian Era.

[gerontocrat]

TB:
It’s 1.7 msec per century now, not per year.
But the rate varies inversely as the sixth power of the separation, so was much faster in the Hadrian Era.

My arithmetic says
- The day is 1/7 msec longer than a century ago.
- So a year is 365 x 1.7 = 620.5 msec longer than it was a century ago.

& where does "the rate varies inversely as the sixth power of the separation" come from? (but do I want to know?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_rotation
Analysis of historical astronomical records shows a slowing trend of about 2.3 milliseconds per century since the 8th century BCE.

That would mean at Zero A.D. the year would be about 17 seconds longer.

[Tom_Mazanec]

The year is longer, IIRC, but not by nearly that much.
There are (slightly) fewer days in a year than there were before.
The sixth power, depending on how you calculate it, is either a squared cube or a cubed square.

[kassy]

No the days were shorter because the planet turned faster.

Bonus question did years exist before calendars?

[gerontocrat]

No the days were shorter because the planet turned faster.

Bonus question did years exist before calendars?

Stonehenge is a calendar.

[binntho]

The sixth power, depending on how you calculate it, is either a squared cube or a cubed square.

And what on earth is "a cube squared" and what has it to do with anything?

[binntho]

No the days were shorter because the planet turned faster.

Bonus question did years exist before calendars?

Stonehenge is a calendar.

Is it? Well as a minimum it shows that they had celendars back then. But I prefer to see Stonehenge as an early silicon based computer running at 1 Hz / annum.

[Tom_Mazanec]

The sixth power, depending on how you calculate it, is either a squared cube or a cubed square.

And what on earth is "a cube squared" and what has it to do with anything?

The height a tidal bulge rises goes up as an inverse cube of the distance to the tide raising body. So, if you had the Moon at half its present distance 4 billion years ago, the tidal bulge it would lift would be 2X2X2 times higher, or eight times as high.
The rate at which a tidal effect slows the rotation of the planet scales as the square of the height of the tidal bulge. So 4 billion years ago the slowdown rate may have been 8X8 or 64 times its present value.
Four and a half eons ago the Moon would have been something like one tenth its present day distance, so it was slowing the Earth's rotation something like a million times faster.