Posts by Sacha
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Redbaiter would never have anything to do with those socialist scum.
Thus the brilliance of his disguise. No beard necessary.
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Wasn't someone asking about this term recently - great turn o phrase by Mr Litterick:
**PoMo**, a world without moral absolutes where nobody listens to priests any more
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Totally agree, Danielle - we need to encompass the wide range of ways that people contribute, and have always done so (not that you'd know from most economists). I'm sure that can be stretched to include the economic contribution of bon-bon consumption. :)
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Danielle, the idea is to up everyone's productivity so that you can put less hours in really soon, but keep going longer. More of that mythical work-life balance.
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What Matthew just said.
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As for rationing of healthcare on the basis of lifetime benefit to the patient, this already happens, people don't usually like to be to explicit about it. Pharmac and other government agencies use the concept of 'Quality Adjusted Life Years' to deal with it.
And then there's the nasty concept of DALYs, where disability is confused with being sick for a long time, and a disabled person's life is always worth less. Not particularly original, and appallingly poor policy in this day and age.
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Oh, and our concept of "retirement" needs to adjust. Older people will work longer, in a mixture of part time and voluntary work, rather than suddenly stopping full time work. They've always played a major role supporting the capacity of their whanau, and I'm not sure how that will change. However, their own health and support needs are undoubtedly higher as they get older.
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...the diminished economic output of the victim during recovery.
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So by all means let's encourage healthy habits, but can we try not to look at it in terms of being a good investment or a smart use or money?
Using the word investment can sound a bit business-like. And at one level it is - the return is years of income and wealth-generating capacity to pay back the considerable public investment in education, health, etc. That can be permanently reduced, not just during a period of recovery.
It used to be that we covered the next generation's supporting expenditure as well as ours, but there has been some major cost-shifting by boomers over the last couple of decades so that both their parents and children's generations now pay for more of their own expenses (education fees, for instance).
At a more personal level, the payoff is quality of life, which is somewhat harder to quantify.
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Rugby fan: Yes this Saturday, No the one before that.
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Kia ora, Islander. It is indeed an elephant.
Well, in theory it doesn't need to apply to illness because our health system is already socialised.
Matthew, to clarify, I'm talking about long-term disability support services, not short-term health ones. Some conditions like cancer are a bit blurry, but we're mainly talking about support workers and equipment that meet people's daily needs so they can get on with life.
ACC currently provides better support, largely because its insurance-based nature means steadily increasing future demand is handled automatically. Non-ACC funded services require the goodwill of politicians for regular increases, and they're usually several years too late and nowhere near enough to provide comparable service.
As the boomers all go grey over the next 20 years and refuse to die young, it's non-accidental disability that's going to increase astronomically. Arthritis, loss of vision and hearing and similar age-related conditions will be more common. The lack of properly funded supports will prevent those folks contributing to family, community and economy just when we need older workers and volunteers. Those opportunity costs make the investment look small for any smart politician.
I believe we can manage that investment over time starting right now by applying the same actuarial approach, leaving that billion for other tasty items.
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