Government Policy and Budget Discussion Thread (no politics)

[847badgerfan]

I think having a place to discuss the current event of COVID19 is good.

That thread became a shitshow for sure, though.  I didn't lock it, I assumed it was you bf.

Nope, not me, but I'm glad it got locked. It gave me a chance to clean it up, and then open it again. Lots of good discourse there. We can still have that.

[utee94]

Smells like Lysol and bleach in there.  How'd you find it, stores are all sold out I thought?

[betarhoalphadelta]

When population is growing rapidly, the average age is fairly young.  When population growth slows or turns negative, the average age rises sharply.  Per a Stanford Study, when SS was established in 1935 life expectancy was just 61 (meaning that the few recipients were already past their life expectancy when they got their first checks).  

I do want to make a comment on this... And I'm sure you know the subtlety, but "life expectancy" is a concept that I think is woefully misunderstood.

Quoted life expectancy numbers are typically "life expectancy at birth". Which includes all possible causes of death.

But a lot of times I hear people looking it as if people who outlived that number have done something strange. I.e. in 1787 average white male life expectancy at birth was 38 years. So our brains naturally assume that living much past 38 was rare and people at that age are ready to kick the bucket... But that wasn't true. What it means is that there were all sorts of ways to die at a young age that brought the AVERAGE down, but if you avoided those horrible things and make it to 18 years old, it doesn't mean you should only expect to live 20 more years. And if you're 30 years old, it doesn't mean you shouldn't expect to live more than 8 more years.

A good example is this: https://www.annuityadvantage.com/resources/life-expectancy-tables/

• If you're born today in America your life expectancy as a male at birth is 76.04 years.
• If you're 18 years old in 2020, your life expectancy increases to 76.81 years.
• If you're 40 years old in 2020, your life expectancy increases to 78.59 years.
• If you're 65 years old in 2020, your life expectancy increases to 82.92 years. 

The more you avoid dying from horrible disease, accident, murder, war, etc, the more your own personal life expectancy extends beyond the average on the day you were born. 

So the distinction that most people don't understand is that in 1935, when average life expectancy at birth was 61 years, that most 65 year olds were on their deathbeds or anything like that. Most 65 year olds probably had an expectation of living >10 additional years or more at that time. But because the average was 61, the proportion of the population >65 years old was MUCH lower than it is today when the average is 76 years...

Again, Medina, I know you get the distinction here... But I wanted to post it because I think a lot of people don't look at "life expectancy" numbers properly. 

[847badgerfan]

Smells like Lysol and bleach in there.  How'd you find it, stores are all sold out I thought?

I broke into a storage locker downstairs. I only took one container. The old bag had about 100 in there.


I TP'd her sky blue Buick.

[medinabuckeye1]

I do want to make a comment on this... And I'm sure you know the subtlety, but "life expectancy" is a concept that I think is woefully misunderstood.

Quoted life expectancy numbers are typically "life expectancy at birth". Which includes all possible causes of death.

But a lot of times I hear people looking it as if people who outlived that number have done something strange. I.e. in 1787 average white male life expectancy at birth was 38 years. So our brains naturally assume that living much past 38 was rare and people at that age are ready to kick the bucket... But that wasn't true. What it means is that there were all sorts of ways to die at a young age that brought the AVERAGE down, but if you avoided those horrible things and make it to 18 years old, it doesn't mean you should only expect to live 20 more years. And if you're 30 years old, it doesn't mean you shouldn't expect to live more than 8 more years.

A good example is this: https://www.annuityadvantage.com/resources/life-expectancy-tables/

• If you're born today in America your life expectancy as a male at birth is 76.04 years.
• If you're 18 years old in 2020, your life expectancy increases to 76.81 years.
• If you're 40 years old in 2020, your life expectancy increases to 78.59 years.
• If you're 65 years old in 2020, your life expectancy increases to 82.92 years.

The more you avoid dying from horrible disease, accident, murder, war, etc, the more your own personal life expectancy extends beyond the average on the day you were born.

So the distinction that most people don't understand is that in 1935, when average life expectancy at birth was 61 years, that most 65 year olds were on their deathbeds or anything like that. Most 65 year olds probably had an expectation of living >10 additional years or more at that time. But because the average was 61, the proportion of the population >65 years old was MUCH lower than it is today when the average is 76 years...

Again, Medina, I know you get the distinction here... But I wanted to post it because I think a lot of people don't look at "life expectancy" numbers properly.

This is a great point.  

The first time I really noticed this was when I noticed reading history that a decent number of our founding fathers lived to nearly 80 or more.  Examples:

• Ben Franklin was 70 at the time of our Declaration of Independence, served as Ambassador to France from 1779-1785 when he was ~73-79, and died at the age of 84 in 1790.  
• Thomas Jefferson died at the age of 83 in 1826 and famously died on the same day as:
• John Adams died July 4, 1826 at the age of 90 (I'm fairly certain that Jefferson and Adams are the only two American Presidents to have died on the same day).  

What I found interesting is that, at the time, the life expectancy was ~40 and yet there were quite a few ~80 year olds.  Today the life expectancy is ~80 and there are no 160 year olds, why not?  

The reason is that, as you pointed out, the number cited is almost always "life expectancy at birth".  Back then it was dragged down a LOT by infant mortality and further by deaths from smallpox, scarlet fever, and the like in childhood.  A substantial percentage of live infants never made it to adulthood.  I would guess that life expectancy at 18 was somewhere around 60 or more.  

Even after childhood, a lot of adults died of random diseases that are no big deal to us today.  In my own family, my 3-great grandfather died in his 40's of Scarlet Fever prior to the Civil War.  His son (my 2-great grandfather) served in the OVI and lived at least to his late 80's.  His son (my great-grandfather) died in the 1970's at nearly 100 years old.  His daughter (my grandmother) died a few years ago at the age of 103.  

[OrangeAfroMan]

Yeah, visit any pre-Civil War cemetery.  There's the couple, there's 5-6 mini stones.

[betarhoalphadelta]

Exactly. It's one reason that when people spout off statistics about life expectancy numbers in other countries as evidence of why their health care systems are better than ours.

The issue is that frankly it's just more dangerous to live in America, for many reasons, than in most of those other countries. We seem to be a more violent society than most. Part of being affluent is that it has made us more obese with all the attendant health issues. We have lower population density and greater car ownership, so even traffic deaths are much higher than most of Western Europe. Heck, our suicide rate is up there compared to most of the OECD. 

And on top of that, a big factor is the way we count infant mortality. (As with anything, it's complicated, and it's not ONLY due to that.) But a small increase in infant mortality cases can drag down the average life expectancy at birth significantly. 

The US could improve our healthcare system, but pointing to average life expectancy at birth is a near-meaningless stat to criticize us on. 

[CWSooner]

First, even if we all stipulate that shrinking population is a good (or at least neutral) rather than bad thing, there is still a problem during the transition. 

Social Security was set up at a time when our population was growing rapidly.  US Population at decennial census from 1830-1940 (I hope this pastes right, if not, link):

1830	12,866,020	33.49%
1840	17,069,453	32.67%
1850	23,191,876	35.87%
1860	31,443,321	35.58%
1870	38,558,371	22.63%
1880	50,189,209	30.16%
1890	62,979,766	25.48%
1900	76,212,168	21.01%
1910	92,228,496	21.02%
1920	106,021,537	14.96%
1930	123,202,624	16.21%
1940	132,164,569	7.27%

When the program was set up in the 1930's the US had a population of between 123M (1930 census) and 132M (1940 census).  But there were substantially less older people because the people who were >60 had been born in a country of less than half of the then population.  The program was established in 1935 at that time:

• 105 year olds were near non-existant and to the extent that they did exist, they had been born in a country of 13M
• 95 year olds were also near non-existant and to the extent that they did exist, they had been born in a country of  17M
• 85 year olds had been born in a country of 23M
• 75 year olds had been born in a country of 31M
• 65 year olds had been born in a country of 39M

When population is growing rapidly, the average age is fairly young.  When population growth slows or turns negative, the average age rises sharply.  Per a Stanford Study, when SS was established in 1935 life expectancy was just 61 (meaning that the few recipients were already past their life expectancy when they got their first checks).  According to the Social Security Administration there were 6.7M Americans >65 in 1930.  That is just 5% of the then population of 123M.  By 2000 there were 34.9M Americans >65.  That is 12% of the then population of 281M.  And note that that was BEFORE the Baby Boomers started turning 65 at a rate of ~11k/day starting January 1, 2011. 

Since there isn't a magic trust fund the current benefits are paid by the current workers.  The fundamental problem for the system is that the number of workers per retiree is shrinking.  A shrinking population only makes the problem worse. 

Even if we stipulate that smaller population would be a good (or at least neutral) thing for other reasons, it is a fiscal catastrophe for the SSA. 

Second, fundamentally I agree with @OrangeAfroMan 's idea that a shrinking (or at least stable) population is a good thing.  Growing our population further increases urban sprawl and is bad for the environment and for the per capita amount of resources that our nation holds.  I assume, therefore, that @OrangeAfroMan supports political movements in favor of limiting population growth such as by limiting immigration? 

IMO, we need immigration and for most of our history we've more or less welcomed immigration.  For the most part it has been a good thing for us.  But there is such a thing as too much immigration, too high a rate of immigration, so that the immigrants tend not to assimilate but instead remain tied to the culture of the country from which they came.  We can see that in the SW USA now with non-assimilated immigrants from Mexico.  There is a fine Mexican-American scholar at OU whom I have been fortunate to work with for the last four summers.  He is proud of his Spanish/Mexican heritage, but he is 100% American.  (His father, who fought in the U.S. Army during WWII, was an immigrant from Mexico and could barely speak English at the time.)  And he firmly believes that we need to limit immigration to levels that can be assimilated.  He says, "We need to build a wall," qualifying that by saying the wall doesn't need to be a physical barrier.
Mexican immigration is a particular problem because Mexico is adjacent to us.  An Italian or Chinese or Nigerian immigrant is physically separated from his/her home country.  It's a case of succeed here in America or go home.  Mexican immigrants can move back and forth across the border, so it's much less necessary for them to become assimilated Americans.
We have a country rich in many natural resources and with a functional (decreasingly functional, unfortunately) legal and political system.  That country, our country, can either be populated by people who owe their allegiance to the United States of America or by other sorts of people, but it will be populated.
I'll also offer this thought from the late, great Milton Friedman.  Open borders and a generous welfare state cannot long coexist.

[CWSooner]

Oh he [Alex Jones] actually believes plenty of it, but yes he was quite successful at monetizing some fringe crazies.

And he made, and lost, that small fortune.  His divorce, and then various other lawsuits, pretty much wiped him out. 

Heh!  Silver linings everywhere you look!

[CWSooner]

I think more population creates more problems.

As I posted to Medina, we're going to have more population.  We're too rich a country with too many wide-open spaces for that not to happen.

The choice is whether it will be American or imported (or invading) population.

[MrNubbz]

What I found interesting is that, at the time, the life expectancy was ~40 and yet there were quite a few ~80 year olds.  Today the life expectancy is ~80 and there are no 160 year olds, why not? 

Monsanto,McDonald's and Women drivers

[CWSooner]

I like to say the average American is the comments section of a youtube video.

I disagree.  The average American doesn't spend his/her time making jackass comments on Youtube.  That is a small, self-selecting slice of the population.
But if you think that that's what the average American is, how can you stand to live here?
Seriously.  Don't you want to find a better country and move there?
Or is "I like to say" your way of putting an obnoxious idea out there while retaining plausible deniability?

[betarhoalphadelta]

IMO, we need immigration and for most of our history we've more or less welcomed immigration.  For the most part it has been a good thing for us.  But there is such a thing as too much immigration, too high a rate of immigration, so that the immigrants tend not to assimilate but instead remain tied to the culture of the country from which they came.  We can see that in the SW USA now with non-assimilated immigrants from Mexico.

To be honest, though, that charge has been leveled at every immigrant group that's come before. It generally takes 1-2 generations to "fully" assimilate. They said the same thing about the Irish and Italians in the old days.

Heck, you go back three generations and you have my great-grandparents, who all came over from Poland / Eastern Europe and settled on the south side of Chicago--with all the other Poles. Three generations later, when I think of my "cultural heritage" I consider it far more dominated by American history prior to my great-grandparents' arrival, which is frankly British--even though I very well may have more Neanderthal DNA than English in my heritage (according to 23andme). 

The charge of "lack of assimilation" is commonly leveled at any new groups of immigrants. And then a generation or two later, when they've assimilated, we forget that and apply it to the new group.

I also think that SW USA culture in particular might be as much of a "meld" as an "assimilation". Most of the SW USA was at one point much more Mexican than it was American--or more accurate is to say it WAS Mexico before the Mexican-American war. You can't erase that cultural impact out here. Heck, every 4th grader has to do a project on a Spanish Mission in California. Around here, Mexican food isn't "Mexican food", it's just food ;-) 

[Mdot21]

To be honest, though, that charge has been leveled at every immigrant group that's come before. It generally takes 1-2 generations to "fully" assimilate. They said the same thing about the Irish and Italians in the old days.

Yup. Takes time to assimilate. Immigrants hardly ever really become assimilated. But their children and grandchildren that are born here are American as you or me or any other American.

When my grandfathers parents came here from Sicily, my grandfather was the first of their children to be born in America. His parents never spoke English, and my grandfather didn’t speak English until he started going to elementary school. He grew up in the house speaking only Italian- Sicilian actually- until he was 5-6 years old.

He learned English in school and now he’s a very old man and he doesn’t speak hardly any Sicilian or Italian. He pretty much forgot it all. He can speak it, but not fluently and it takes him awhile. He really speaks only English, and that’s because his entire life from school to college to his professional life and personal life he only spoke English.