(continue from yesterday)
Where are we getting at ?
Here, here. A responsible government should promote public programs for the prevention of premature deaths (for example, vaccination for children). However, it should not waste effort to prolong blindly the life span of its population (as long as the median span is above the age of retirement).
In fact, from the government point of view, it seems more desirable to have a population who remains healthy throughout the working age (so that people would pay the tax) but would die shortly after they retired. Ideally, there should be a tasteless chronic toxin so that the government could add into the drinking water and do the deed.
Short of this poison, tobacco is, maybe to your surprise, the second best: It is heavily taxed (in fact, it is doubly taxed – by the customers to support prohibition of smoking, and by the company for its exceptional earning), and it causes chronic lung disease, heart disease, and cancer, mostly in their late sixties and early seventies.
Unfortunately, the trick of Philip Morris and similar companies is too obvious and do not work very well now. What’s next? Yes, let’s promote tasty, fatty, salty, and sweet food. They are not fast food – they kill you rather slowly (at least after you paid thirty or forty years of tax).
PS. You may argue although a healthy diet and other similar measures would increase the number of our elderly population, it should not be the (sole) objective of a society to conserve productivity and collect tax, while leaving the care of the old people aside. Yes, you are probably right. But, in that case, please be slightly less aggressive when you ask for more resources to support the university education, unemployment subsides, and so forth; more importantly, do not use the argument a healthy elderly population would save money – it never does.
2 comments:
If people can stay healthy longer, it also means that they may retire later or even after retirement, they can still help caring their grandchildren, volunteering for community, contributing to our economy by traveling, dining out ....
During our human life span, from infant to about 20, we are taker, we take resources from the society, and then from 20 to about 60, we are giver, we contribute to our society and finally, from 60 to our death, we become taker again.
However, healthy life style may be able to increase our giver period to 70 instead of 60. Therefore each people will have an extra 10 years to contribute to our society. From this perspective, having a healthy population does help increase our production and save money for our society.
From what I saw during my stint in the capital, it was almost like smoking was actively encouraged so to REDUCE public health expenditure.
In places where human lives are in abundance, your existance is simply not needed.
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