Clydesdales/Athenas (200+ lb / 91+ kg) - The Food Police Are Coming!

I refer you back to the study that I linked to earlier in this thread. From a purely economic point of view, it costs more to maintain a healthy person over their lifetime than an obese person or a smoker. You cannot interject irrelevant issues of non-economic contributions or distributions into the argument.

The most common argument for legislating things like smoking, drinking, and overeating is that the healthy pay for the costs of maintaining these individuals, with the implication that it is unfair to the economic community as a whole to bear these costs. This study disputes those arguments and their associated assumptions. If you want to save money over the lifetime of an individual, let them become obese, smoke, or do whatever they want. They will die sooner and their costs will terminate with them.

Individual examples are irrelevant. Your arguments must be at the macro-economic level.

The situation is nowhere near as dire as that Mass Media release designed to sell papers suggests

As low as a 1.4% cut in current consumption or a 2 year raise in retirement age willl pretty much offset any effect of an aging population. The papers study also doesn't take into account any adjustment for immigration. The Macro level study needs to factor this in to the study as well, you realize.

The paper here that I linked takes into account both a closed and open system economy on the macro level.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/FEDS/2007/200701/200701pap.pdf

I refer you back to the study that I linked to earlier in this thread. From a purely economic point of view, it costs more to maintain a healthy person over their lifetime than an obese person or a smoker. You cannot interject irrelevant issues of non-economic contributions or distributions into the argument.

The most common argument for legislating things like smoking, drinking, and overeating is that the healthy pay for the costs of maintaining these individuals, with the implication that it is unfair to the economic community as a whole to bear these costs. This study disputes those arguments and their associated assumptions. If you want to save money over the lifetime of an individual, let them become obese, smoke, or do whatever they want. They will die sooner and their costs will terminate with them.

Individual examples are irrelevant. Your arguments must be at the macro-economic level.

The paper you cite is interesting, but it has its own limitations, which it freely admits. First of all, it assumed a steady-state economy, which we obviously don't have. Second, it omitted the effect of the rapid increase in health care costs; the very costs we're talking about. I didn't see any mention in the paper of immigration.

The raise in the labor force participation is taking place, although at a slower rate than the study would call optimal. Individuals born after 1938 have seen their retirement age raised gradually until those born in 1960 or later receive no benefits until age 67. This might sound like it is in-line with the study, but it isn't. In order to be in-line with the suggested immediate 2-year increase in retirement age, those born in 1942 would have their retirement ages set at 67. I don't think that politicians have the guts to even propose this change.

As interesting a read as that paper was, it still failed to discuss my original questions: Would we save money in the long run by letting people take responsibility for their own lives and eat, smoke, and drink themselves to death rather than legislating their health? Is the argument that we all have to pay the health care costs for the obese/smokers/whatever when those costs would be eliminated if we legislated their behavior representative of an actual cost savings over time, and therefore valid, or is it a red herring? I still maintain that, from a purely economic point of view at least, it is a red herring.

I will leave aside the abhorrence of legislating individual behavior in areas that are properly those of the individual.