[logicallee]

Sure, blame the victim. How is old age not literally every single person's problem who hasn't committed to suicide by a certain age?

It would be completely justified to spend 1% of world GDP on aging research - that is something like $700 billion per year, $7 trillion by 2025.

It's free money, too, as if you increase life expency from 70 to 90 I'm sure the people choosing to keep working from 65 or 70 up from 56 or 60 would more than account for a 1% increase in GDP. It's just free cash for the economy.

[bmelton]

Until we can get more people's retirement plans solvent enough that they can live until 120 and be reliably not poor, I disagree with your assertion that it's free money.

[logicallee]

we're not doing the analysis similarly, I don't mean research to make someone old and decrepit for an extra 30 years, I mean to keep people younger, longer. Just as a 60 year old rich venture capitalist might still be at the prime of their career today, maybe after 20 years of research the same will be true at 70. Those ten years, maybe 20% of their career after education, are free money. They would otherwise be unfit for or not interested in work.

[bmelton]

Fair enough, but that introduces the idea to me that you've just eliminated retirement.

Even if I'm fit and healthy age the age of 90, I can't imagine wanting to, y'know, do things beyond care for my grandkids and such.

[venus]

> Even if I'm fit and healthy age the age of 90, I can't imagine wanting to, y'know, do things beyond care for my grandkids and such.

So let me get this straight. If you had the exact same physical and mental ability as you do now when you are 90, you'd still want to do nothing except care for your grandkids? Nothing else at all? You wouldn't want to travel, work on interesting things, maybe try a new career? Why on earth not?

[bmelton]

Well sure, maybe I would want to travel, and/or try new things, and/or work on interesting things. Those things don't require employment, or profit-seeking as a way of life.

> you'd still want to do nothing except care for your grandkids?

And such. Y'know, the 'and such' part being the things that old people tend to do. Golfing, fishing, travel, vacation, that sort of thing.

Would I want to try a new career? Likely not. The career I have is a means to an end, and while I enjoy my work, and the company I work for, I don't want to be doing this when I'm 60. As a result, I cram every dollar I can into my 401k, and save aggressively, along with working on personally fulfilling side projects that maybe will one day become an alternative income stream.

In short, I'm preparing for retirement, and doing what I can to expedite its arrival, so that I can focus on more fulfilling things that aren't necessitated by rather unfulfilling things like "earning money for the mortgage".

If I have grandchildren, yeah, I'd like to spend a lot of time with them. No, that's not the only thing I'd like to do, exclusively, and I believe you misinterpreted my post to infer that I did.

[logicallee]

but if you're fit and healthy at age of 90, will you still choose to work for a few years at 70? Especially the most productive members of society. I didn't look into it, you can investigate, but there was a factoid floating around that the top 1% support 40% of all taxes. So if the top 1% - who might spend a lot of their time in education - work an extra 10 years at their option, this might create 25% extra value, or increase the take in terms of taxes by 10% (40 percent of 25%). So if you increase everyone's lifespan enough to increase the tax take by 10%, spending 1% of GDP to do so might be well worth it.

Also, as the richest spend a lot of their early lives in education, and afterward can experience certain network effects of experience, knowledge, networking, etc, perhaps those are ten of their most productive years. Think of Warren Buffett at 35 and 65.

This is a rather hasty, and incomplete analysis, and I haven't had the time to look at all the facts, but yes my line of reasoning is that as a practical matter that money can be "free".