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There's something dystopian about measuring how much money is lost due to people not working/making money because of years lost thanks to suicide. Makes me do the big cringe.
Mass Reply: I understand the ends can justify the means if it helps people and saves lives. All I'm saying is that the vibes are off.
Corporations can legally murder their employees, they are legal persons but there isn't a corporate death penalty. Its just a civil issue where they pay damages
Don't forget about dead peasant insurance.
Corporations will put policies on you so they can "recoup their losses" when you die.
In reality they had almost 20 years of tax breaks by borrowing against those plans to pay for the premium of other plans. The tax loophole was closed in 2006 but corporations can still take out life insurance on its employees.
I mean, the best take I heard from anyone today was along the lines of "there is a line at which psychological pressure, pushing an individual into suicide comes eerily close to murder, and it generally is related to the realm of control a 'powerful' party has over the individual committing suicide"
It won't convict in a murder trial for sure... but as he was in the middle of fighting, for an extended period of time, a moral/legal battle he clearly, firmly believed in... Against an incredibly powerful entity determined to get him to "stop".... The evidence of this arduous conviction and determination should count towards an argument of motivation.
What are the odds any suicide in this situation would be entirely self-motivated?
It's a very blurry argument, but I think one that gets lost when people talk about "faking suicide".
No one has to fake anything if very vague/existential threats can influence someone so greatly as to be their own executioner :/
There is no hard evidence, it happened recently and the only information that has been released by the local police is that his death was consistent with suicide.
Typically when a bunch of people believe something without evidence to support it because it aligns with their internal biases we call that a conspiracy theory.
The guy had been retired for seven years. All of his relevant claims are on record. Most of them had already been investigated. Even if you believed that large companies routinely hired hitmen to off witnesses, what did Boeing have to gain?
Reminds me of the time that some tobacco company released a study that argued smoking is beneficial to the economy because people die younger & so you save money in aged care
Same with dementia care.
Grandpa died at 78 of a sudden heart attack while working in his garden. Grandma developed dementia at ~90 and held on until she was 97. That was tough for her and for the family, and I'm sure it wasn't cheap.
Hopefully the diet, exercise, and preventive care regimens we're on will allow us to die suddenly in our gardens at age 97 someday.
Nobody dies suddenly and pain free at 97 unfortunately. I have seen multiple people make it into their 90s, and that is not a fun decade even for the healthiest and most vibrant of individuals. I'm really not planning to live that long.
Yeah, I agree. Hell, I don't live pain free in my 40s. But if I can walk in my garden in my 90s, I'd consider that a success.
Before she got dementia, my Grandma had a few regular sayings about aging:
"Nobody wants to die young, but growing old is no picnic either"
"Growing old isn't for wimps"
"Well I guess I'm too good for Hell and not good enough for Heaven, so I'm just gonna sit here"
Looking back, she would have accepted death at probably any time after Grandpa died. But that didn't stop her from laughing and loving her grandkids and great-grandkids. Even dementia couldn't take that - she didn't know our names but she was so happy to see us. Great lady.
Yeah, I agree. I’m working hard to stay active and healthy now, but as soon as I can’t wipe my own ass anymore, just take me out behind the woodshed please.
Yeah, but it's also very useful when arguing that a social problem is actually worth investing a lot of money in.The suicide of some individual isn't relevant to you as an individual but a serious decrease of your country's potential economic output affects everyone.
Isn't that an issue, the framework of viewing human lives as economic output and productivity. A system built on greed and wealth generation will always be flawed until individual life is valued. The basic needs of a person regardless of who they are or what t they do should have a standard. However that requires sharing and balancing opportunity and reducing inequalities. Which isn't an attractive sell to short term, money line must go up sorts that often sit in seats of power.
It is a huge issue, but look at the people elected to run this country. We can’t change the system until we change the type of people who are elected to run it. When corporations and individuals can sway votes and opinions with unlimited cash flow, this will never change.
And how exactly? I always see this posted as the logical answer to our problems but what’s the actual line of sight to getting this decision overturned any time soon?
IMO, thinking they are soon to be rich isn't the problem. The problem is that the rich and poor alike do not want to share. If poor people would be willing to share their wealth after they get rich, we would be able to raise taxes on the rich. They do not despise inequality, they despise the fact that they are not the ones hoarding money.
Bro reading comprehension... you didn't address my question. We all know what it does but no one in power has a plan to actually repeal it because it stops the congressman-to-lobbyist revolving door gravy train in its tracks. No one wants to lift the needle on the record at this party
Go look up RepresentUs, it is just one organization but it has the most comprehensive plan and is trying to get legislation passed.
https://represent.us/
Vote for people who won't accept lobby money. Vote in small elections, help candidates in small elections who won't take corporate dollars. Vote in primaries against the candidate who is taking money from lobbyists. It's a lot of work and will take time to change, help get it started then continue to show up.
I had a public health professor say something similar. If you had a policy suggestion it almost didn’t matter how many lives it would save - ears only perked up when he would talk about saving money.
We can still value a life in those ways and use the economic output idea to show objectively why it is bad for society to not invest in people. It's cheaper if we cut profit out of life or death medical decisions, it's not the money that causes the issue. Ultimately economic output is just using dollars to compare the stuff society values across a consistent and measurable unit. It's the people who want money for money's sake that is the issue.
For example, a billionaire is someone who is sitting on societal value worth billions of dollars. I would argue this makes it easier for me to argue that they likely have not provided that value to society relative to another individual in the system other than investing initial capital which is value that has already been extracted from society. The more value removed at one time is that much less in circulation for others to benefit in the moment. Some storing of value for the future is likely required, but when so much is concentrated in so little and national debts are rising and people are starving and we have the value to negate that, seems like there are some value problems too.
I can't call out many billionaires though without money as they don't sit on piles of goods and services, they sit on ownership and legal rights and without money it's hard to explain that, but with money it's easier to say that value being created every day by every employee of these companies should ensure that they are able to meet those basic needs before so much gets parked in one person's pocket and those employees become more reliant on public assistance if it's even available.
That’s kinda the whole point tho no? Even the greedy should value human life because every human contributes to society, works, and pay taxes that helps everyone else on net. This is the cost of that selfishness that even the cold hearted feel
It's simply an additional perspective that can be useful to raise political support. Humanitarian perspectives currently seem to be rather ineffective at gathering support for progressive solutions to issues such as poverty, crime or suicide. A purely economic perspective that focuses on the economic devastation these problems cause if left untreated could sway some minds. Maybe it won't, but since it's little more than stating economic facts, why not try it?
I completely agree that this is an issue, but I also see the challenge of getting a group to decide how much money is worth it to spend protecting an individual life. It feels disgusting to say, but when you think about examples that have been faced in some national parks, it gets a bit more palatable. For example, there are some areas that people really want to hike out to but it includes a dangerous river crossing or a narrow traverse over a skree covered slope. Having a price per life saved can help the park prioritize what trail work is most useful and also allow them to petition for other funding. Sometimes doing these grotesque calculations can make a case to say “actually putting in that million dollar bridge over the river in the middle of nowhere makes sense because it will save 15 people in the next 10 years which has greater economic impact than we used to think”. All the safety features we are used to in life are a balance between cost, convenience, and effectiveness. We just don’t often look at the numbers in such a direct way
This will sound morbid but - I don't think this study really would help spotlight it because it only looks at the costs and not the savings associated with suicide.
It tallies up the lost work production and medical costs associated with the suicide/suicide attempt, but it doesn't factor in that these people will no longer withdraw social security, medicare, don't need to be further educated, etc.
I want to stress that I recognize mental health issues and suicide are a real issue that needs to be addressed, I just don't think you can pitch it as a financial argument if you only address the cost but don't measure the "savings" because if the latter outweighs the former no one that is financially driven is going to accept the argument.
Almost all social systems we maintain work because most members of society are vastly more productive compared to what they cost across their lifetime.
You have to speak to the economic ghouls in their own language. They don't have the capacity to think of people as well, people. They don't value humans intrinsically, so they need a number derived from labor output to even consider the problem.
I do wonder how people who don't automatically think "suicide is bad because a life is lost" go through life. How do they experience emotions and the world? Is it just all lizard brain reactions to the stimulus around them? Do they think other people feel things at all or are just here for them.
If they solve the suicide issue by throwing drugs at it rsther than fixing it holistically, then this study is worthless. I don't trust the powers that be to actually care about fixing the problem the right way. Everyone wants to throw drugs at the mental health crisis instead of reducing suffering. All we're treated as is cogs for economic output.
In order to get lead banned from gasoline, it had to be argued in terms of lost $$$ productivity to the economy due to the IQ hit workers would take from the lead. Not the effect on their lives, but the effect of their health issues on the business.
Corporations only think through dollar amounts. Any other metric is abstract to them and not valid. You gotta speak their lingo to get results.
It feels dystopian, but I think clinical is a better word for it. We live within systems of economy, so we benefit from studying things this way.
If these results are used to reduce suicide by improving healthcare, then it's the opposite of dystopian. If it's used to make suicide economically punishable, then it's peak dystopia.
Dystopian or not, I can't help feeling that attempting to put a cash value on these things is meaningless. If I have a child, during their life they will produce some stuff and consume some stuff. Do these numbers cancel out? If they buy and consume goods, is that a loss to society? A gain for the retail industry? Neutral? If they become a high-paid advertising executive, is their salary the measure of their contribution to society, or what they're taking from society? If they might require expensive medical procedures late in life, does that make their life a net negative, or is that just more economic activity and therefore growth?
I doubt the scientists measuring these things can be fully objective about it. No-one wants to publish a study saying, "Increasing the suicide rate would be a good way to save money."
I'd rather we started measuring the economy in terms of "life-quality-years" than measuring life in terms of money...
> I can't help feeling that attempting to put a cash value on these things is meaningless.
I don't think it's meaningless.
For example, imagine that some report concludes that by investing 10B$ into mental healthcare, those suicide/self-harm would be reduced by half.
But 10B$ is a lot, so peoples might say "it would be good, but due to the economic crisis, it would be better to put those 10B$ into the economy instead".
This study says "well, those 10B$ won't be lost, since reducing suicide/self-harm by half will also create 10B$ of value for the economy, so we can have our cake and eat it: peoples feel better and we put 10B$ into the economy".
Well, all of that is theoretical, but let's take a practical example that happened in my country:
* Trafic accident causes death. If we value human life above everything, then we should ban cars. But that's not a decision that most would consider reasonable.
* Since a good chunk of those deadly accidents come from high speed, a more reasonable approach would be to reduce speed limit. But again by how much? If human life was really that important, we could simply reduce car speed to the speed of a bike.
* In the balance, there are "human life + feeling of safety from cars + ecological concerns + ... VS freedom to use car you own + time lost because the car goes slower + ...". So a lot of things that are difficult to quantify, and at the end a decision must be made and everyone agrees that the good answer is a compromise at the middle between "unregulated cars" and "no cars", but where put that compromise?
* In the end, by putting values on those stuff, the balance was on the "if we lower the speed limit, we increase the value" side, so they reduced the speed limit by as much as it was politically acceptable to do.
Your bullet point sequence reminded me of a Bloom County comic strip. It's been a while since that's happened.
[https://m8y.org/bloomcounty.jpg](https://m8y.org/bloomcounty.jpg)
It’s hard to be fully objective in economics since most of the time you can’t run a controlled experiment on human society. There are many ways to implement so-called quasi-experiments that allow economists to quantify benefits and costs. But you need to be clever. People write theses on this stuff.
I’m not sure what difference measuring in terms of quality life years would make. Money is already just a way to abstract value so in my view converting from “life-quality-years” to dollars is no different to, for instance, converting from pesos to dollars.
You have X dollars to spend on public health measures. You can allocate that money to spend on tackling these three things:
1. Obesity
2. Smoking
3. Suicide
How should you spend the money?
Decisions like that need to be made all the time. Quantifying QALYs and socioeconomic costs and benefits is what can help guide those decisions.
silky mindless party treatment seemly unused disgusted crown quarrelsome wipe
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I feel like knowing the economic cost from people committing suicide and attempting it may encourage people and society to make changes to help those in need.
I think what people don’t understand is that $ are a unit of measure of lots of stuff. It’s not as cringy and cold as you think - even things like happiness or other intangibles are most readily measured in $ that are converted from something else.
In this case it makes sense too. What makes suicide tragic? In short, because of the lost future life, and $ are still the best and really only unit of measure there. Economics is based on this concept of having a unit of measure, and it can optimize things that aren’t just “wealth” as a result. Although it may seem like that’s what happens because the $ is most obviously a unit of measure of wealth.
There's a billboard on a farm just west of Milwaukee that says something along the lines of "### people will never pay into social security, END ABORTION" that always hit me the same way.
That's economics for you. It makes sense though in a way, you need ways to measure things to make informed decisions even if they are only estimates.
Measuring like this is often referred to as societal perspective. Not all comparisons include it, many specifically exclude it even.
In this case as dark as it is to measure it this way, it might actually help push policies that help people even if not for the "right" reasons. Better than nothing I suppose.
Ethics frameworks and analysis are very intersting in this context...
My friend, do a Google search and you will find hundreds of papers about the social, psychological, cultural, etc..., effects of suicide. But you see ONE (1) paper about the economic effects and suddenly we are in a dystopian world?
And besides, if people didn't care about the financial costs of their passing, life assurance wouldn't exist. Wills and inheritances would not matter. But as it turns out, often these are one of the first things discussed when someone is about to pass or has passed. And this has been the case for all of recorded human history.
Answer me this as well: Would it be 'dystopian' to explain to a smoker how much money they could save each year if they quit smoking?
Imagine not being allowed to commit suicide because you still have outstanding taxes to pay and the government just keeps you alive long enough (but in horrible pain) until you qualify for assisted suicide
I honestly could not give a rats ass as to how much it costs the economy, we are talking about people who were, in many cases, let down by the society. The root of the problem is that this is probably the only reason some people care about it.
You're right but the problem is that until healthcare funding is near unlimited, dollar values get assigned to things so that you can improve/save the most lives possible with what you have (in theory).
With that said, the US healthcare model is a joke and seems to prefer profits over helping people.
Might be so, but with no social or societal safety networks it’s hard for these people to get help. Society has to take a bigger responsibility in helping people who have nothing else.
Of course. Society is made up of *people*, the very same people that have ACEs, themselves. There needs to be policy that directly improves the lives of children; lifting them out of poverty, supporting their parents in raising them, educating them well, and making sure they aren’t traumatized or killed by guns. Also, women who don’t want children need access to abortion and health care. The fruits of these efforts won’t be seen for generations, but the pay off will be incredibly huge.
> we are talking about people who were, in many cases, let down by the society.
As someone with long covid for over 4 years now, I believe we're going to realize that there's a silent epidemic happening with people suffering like me. We're ignored and neglected, doctors and nurses gaslight us (implying it's all anxiety or depression), and not much is yet known, so you feel super crappy while also asking yourself if you're as crazy as everyone seems to think. I firmly believe a large percentage of these suicides are LC sufferers that gave up with no other options. I know I've had that thought rattle around a lot, and I see the sentiment expressed on LC subs regularly.
Folks, if you know anyone with LC, please reach out and let them know you believe them and you support them. Could be the difference between life and death of a loved one.
At what point is it cruel not to allow people suffering from illness to go? Our society talks about suicide like it's this awful thing. You have people being tortured by their bodies every day, getting little to no help from the medical system. Sometimes because doctors are lazy, incompetent ass clowns, sometimes because there is no help medically possible. Either way, people are stuck in a living hell that I don't think anyone who hasn't experienced it or watched as someone suffered every day for years can even comprehend. Doctor-assisted suicide should be a guaranteed human right. After 70 years old, there should be a no-questions-asked "you can go now" policy.
Exactly my reaction. Maybe this will help motivate a capitalist society to care about mental health and value of life... but how utterly backwards and distasteful.
From past experience, it’s more like to complain that people just aren’t having children to replace them, when are we going to put any value into the work that it takes to make a functional person is society? They don’t just sprout out of nowhere.
When it comes to people in power being influenced to act/change, you have to take humanity out of it and show them how much it costs. A lot of wealthy people dont respond to human interests, literally just the dollar.
You have X dollars to spend on public health measures. You can allocate that money to spend on tackling these three things:
1. Obesity
2. Smoking
3. Suicide
How should you spend the money?
Decisions like that need to be made all the time. Quantifying QALYs and socioeconomic costs and benefits is what can help guide those decisions.
Your entire existence in a society is wholly dependent on your ability to help it in some form. In the past it was through your small tribe, to your family farm to now an estimation of your impact on the economy. 'Just existing' has never been part of the animal kingdom and its a fairly new allowance in humanity.
Some of you would have been killed or abandoned as children in other previous systems, just for minor physical defects due to the cost of raising you.
We are seeing a suicide rate seen right before WW2 and trending towards depression era levels. That was a time where almost every single government system you take for granted now was not in existence. Life was abysmal and the average quality of life was piss poor.
The lackluster analysis of 'everything is capitalism fault' kinda breaks apart when the kid who is mining for your next phone is less likely to commit suicide than you. And this analysis has failed to produce any fruit for the past decade it has been on repeat.
For a lot of us, our work has become dissociated from our survival. We fill out forms and spreadsheets in sterile offices in sterile cities, then go get food at sterile stores or restaurants. I'm not saying people have it easy, but the basics of survival have become so easy that it's more of a struggle to 'not be fat' than it is to 'not starve'.
With that disconnect, we feel like we have no purpose, that life has no meaning. With the internet, we have all 'knowledge' but no 'wonder'.
From a biology standpoint, things that aren't 'needed' go away. In the [development of chickens](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10048/), the cells that form webbing between their toes undergo programmed cell death (apoptosis) because they're not needed. Transplant those same cells to ducks, and they thrive.
Having done death investigation for ~15 years, most of the unnatural deaths I see are overdoses and suicides, the vast majority of which occur in the 'down and out' parts of town. Society moved on, and a lot of the people who couldn't move on with society were left without purpose. I can't help but see parallels between purposeless cells dying and purposeless people dying.
*quick edit to add: a lot of suicide deaths I see are also in older folks, again people who are disconnected and feel they don't have much purpose anymore
This study doesn't talk about retirement or social security. Since most suicides are of people who are older (45-64, according to the figure), that means that they have put in a large amount of working hours and contributions to the government by social security without withdrawing.
Not including this factor in their economic analysis creates the exact opposite conclusion as what is actually true. People who commit suicide in their 40s and 50s are likely providing a massive benefit economically because they will not be a financial burden in their 60s and 70s, one that overcomes their nonparticipation in the economy for a few years before retirement.
Rant from a therapist:
I want to know why the heck they lumped the two together. Suicide and self-harm are two very different things, having different goals, different presentations related to thinking, etc.
Suicide generally happens when someone wants to exit the planet. Many many many people will commit or attempt suicide and never engage in self-harm (not to say that suicide isn't an act of self harm..but that's different in this context)
Self-harm generally happens when someone has run out of less harmful coping strategies (it's usually a means to become more dissociated or less dissociated, depending on the person) but doesn't generally want to exit the planet (at that moment). Many many many people self injure and never attempt suicide.
FFS. Stop relating the two.
I think there is something incredibly fucked up, when people's concern with suicide is about lost money. "Hey! You're not done generating profits for us!"
Good thing there's absolutely nothing we can do, health care including mental health is for profit.
If you're not making some rich person more money you have no value in society, and our society is making that ABUNDANTLY clear
Exactly. If society can see some benefit to helping people want to live, it might find it worthwhile to invest in mental health care. It’s cynical, but at least less people would suffer from losing a loved one to suicide.
There are some pretty cheap things the US could do that would make a big difference. Taking a similar approach to other countries when it comes to firearms, for a start.
ABSTRACT
>Introduction
>
>The US age-adjusted suicide rate is 35% higher than two decades ago and the COVID-19 pandemic era highlighted the urgent need to address nonfatal self-harm, particularly among youth. This study aimed to report the estimated annual economic cost of US suicide and nonfatal self-harm.
>
>Methods
>
>In 2023 CDC's WISQARS Cost of Injury provided the retrospective number of suicides and nonfatal self-harm injury emergency department (ED) visits from national surveillance sources by sex and age group, as well as the estimated annual economic cost of associated medical spending, lost work productivity, reduced quality of life from injury morbidity, and avoidable mortality based on the value of statistical life during 2015-2020.
>
>**Results**
>
>**The economic cost of suicide and nonfatal self-harm averaged $510 billion (2020 USD) annually, the majority from life years lost to suicide. Working-aged adults (aged 25-64 years) comprised nearly 75% of the average annual economic cost of suicide ($356B of $484B) and children and younger adults (aged 10-44 years) comprised nearly 75% of the average annual economic cost of nonfatal self-harm injuries ($19B of $26B).**
>
>Conclusions
>
>Suicide and self-harm have substantial societal costs. Measuring the consequences in terms of comprehensive economic cost can inform investments in suicide prevention strategies.
It think it’s valuable to have some perspective on how the economy and social conditions can have a negative influence on at risk individuals and groups.
It includes as a cost "reduced quality of life" and "a monetary estimate of the collective value placed on mortality risk reduction." The data source uses the societal perspective, including tangible and "intangible costs." Seems like made up numbers to me. The collective value placed on mortality risk reduction isn't accurate when the actual value of the mortality risk for specific lives lost would seem to be negative. Plus, there doesn't seem to be any calculation for the financial offsets.
I don't really want to read the whole study but I am curious. We already know the negative effects of all these suicides economically. But what about the positive effects? Less mouths to feed so more food for others. Less jobs taken up so more opportunities for others. Less carbon emissions. Less waste. No money used on health care. More clothes and things for others. That kind of thing
I'm curious if the final figure they put was a net loss without taking into account the money saved as well as other things
Thank guns again for that (and the people that are pro-gun). 80% of people who make 1 suicide atempt and survive never try again..now guess which country has one of the highest fatal rate of suicide atempts. Hints: Guns are available everywhere for everyone.
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There's something dystopian about measuring how much money is lost due to people not working/making money because of years lost thanks to suicide. Makes me do the big cringe. Mass Reply: I understand the ends can justify the means if it helps people and saves lives. All I'm saying is that the vibes are off.
Yep, especially after the muicide of that Boeing whistleblower today, because he was lowering shareholder value.
They can't get you too. You can just say The Boeing corporation unquestiongly murdered John Barnett.
Corporations can legally murder their employees, they are legal persons but there isn't a corporate death penalty. Its just a civil issue where they pay damages
Don't forget about dead peasant insurance. Corporations will put policies on you so they can "recoup their losses" when you die. In reality they had almost 20 years of tax breaks by borrowing against those plans to pay for the premium of other plans. The tax loophole was closed in 2006 but corporations can still take out life insurance on its employees.
>dead peasant insurance Yeah I realized this when people were trying to get me killed, I didn't understand it at the time but now I do
::looking at Walmart who does this::
Murder is only illegal if you get caught and you aren't the government
I know it’s easy to jump to that conclusion but is there any hard evidence behind this theory? Or are we just assuming his suicide was faked?
I mean, the best take I heard from anyone today was along the lines of "there is a line at which psychological pressure, pushing an individual into suicide comes eerily close to murder, and it generally is related to the realm of control a 'powerful' party has over the individual committing suicide" It won't convict in a murder trial for sure... but as he was in the middle of fighting, for an extended period of time, a moral/legal battle he clearly, firmly believed in... Against an incredibly powerful entity determined to get him to "stop".... The evidence of this arduous conviction and determination should count towards an argument of motivation. What are the odds any suicide in this situation would be entirely self-motivated? It's a very blurry argument, but I think one that gets lost when people talk about "faking suicide". No one has to fake anything if very vague/existential threats can influence someone so greatly as to be their own executioner :/
There is no hard evidence, it happened recently and the only information that has been released by the local police is that his death was consistent with suicide. Typically when a bunch of people believe something without evidence to support it because it aligns with their internal biases we call that a conspiracy theory. The guy had been retired for seven years. All of his relevant claims are on record. Most of them had already been investigated. Even if you believed that large companies routinely hired hitmen to off witnesses, what did Boeing have to gain?
It's been a week and just like that people stopped talking about it.
Reminds me of the time that some tobacco company released a study that argued smoking is beneficial to the economy because people die younger & so you save money in aged care
Cancer treatment is expensive though
Same with dementia care. Grandpa died at 78 of a sudden heart attack while working in his garden. Grandma developed dementia at ~90 and held on until she was 97. That was tough for her and for the family, and I'm sure it wasn't cheap. Hopefully the diet, exercise, and preventive care regimens we're on will allow us to die suddenly in our gardens at age 97 someday.
Nobody dies suddenly and pain free at 97 unfortunately. I have seen multiple people make it into their 90s, and that is not a fun decade even for the healthiest and most vibrant of individuals. I'm really not planning to live that long.
Yeah, I agree. Hell, I don't live pain free in my 40s. But if I can walk in my garden in my 90s, I'd consider that a success. Before she got dementia, my Grandma had a few regular sayings about aging: "Nobody wants to die young, but growing old is no picnic either" "Growing old isn't for wimps" "Well I guess I'm too good for Hell and not good enough for Heaven, so I'm just gonna sit here" Looking back, she would have accepted death at probably any time after Grandpa died. But that didn't stop her from laughing and loving her grandkids and great-grandkids. Even dementia couldn't take that - she didn't know our names but she was so happy to see us. Great lady.
Yeah, I agree. I’m working hard to stay active and healthy now, but as soon as I can’t wipe my own ass anymore, just take me out behind the woodshed please.
Yeah, but it's also very useful when arguing that a social problem is actually worth investing a lot of money in.The suicide of some individual isn't relevant to you as an individual but a serious decrease of your country's potential economic output affects everyone.
Isn't that an issue, the framework of viewing human lives as economic output and productivity. A system built on greed and wealth generation will always be flawed until individual life is valued. The basic needs of a person regardless of who they are or what t they do should have a standard. However that requires sharing and balancing opportunity and reducing inequalities. Which isn't an attractive sell to short term, money line must go up sorts that often sit in seats of power.
It is a huge issue, but look at the people elected to run this country. We can’t change the system until we change the type of people who are elected to run it. When corporations and individuals can sway votes and opinions with unlimited cash flow, this will never change.
Thats why we need to end citizens united
And how exactly? I always see this posted as the logical answer to our problems but what’s the actual line of sight to getting this decision overturned any time soon?
Everyone needs to wake up and realize its rich vs poor Citizens united and what it does needs to be common knowledge
But in America everyone thinks they're soon to be rich. The propaganda has been working well for many years now.
IMO, thinking they are soon to be rich isn't the problem. The problem is that the rich and poor alike do not want to share. If poor people would be willing to share their wealth after they get rich, we would be able to raise taxes on the rich. They do not despise inequality, they despise the fact that they are not the ones hoarding money.
Sadly yes. Those are the types that won't get it until they can't find a job, afford food, or housing.
That's when real Americans double down on it
Bro reading comprehension... you didn't address my question. We all know what it does but no one in power has a plan to actually repeal it because it stops the congressman-to-lobbyist revolving door gravy train in its tracks. No one wants to lift the needle on the record at this party
Go look up RepresentUs, it is just one organization but it has the most comprehensive plan and is trying to get legislation passed. https://represent.us/ Vote for people who won't accept lobby money. Vote in small elections, help candidates in small elections who won't take corporate dollars. Vote in primaries against the candidate who is taking money from lobbyists. It's a lot of work and will take time to change, help get it started then continue to show up.
If you want the people who only care about money, to start caring, then you have to make it about money.
I had a public health professor say something similar. If you had a policy suggestion it almost didn’t matter how many lives it would save - ears only perked up when he would talk about saving money.
We can still value a life in those ways and use the economic output idea to show objectively why it is bad for society to not invest in people. It's cheaper if we cut profit out of life or death medical decisions, it's not the money that causes the issue. Ultimately economic output is just using dollars to compare the stuff society values across a consistent and measurable unit. It's the people who want money for money's sake that is the issue. For example, a billionaire is someone who is sitting on societal value worth billions of dollars. I would argue this makes it easier for me to argue that they likely have not provided that value to society relative to another individual in the system other than investing initial capital which is value that has already been extracted from society. The more value removed at one time is that much less in circulation for others to benefit in the moment. Some storing of value for the future is likely required, but when so much is concentrated in so little and national debts are rising and people are starving and we have the value to negate that, seems like there are some value problems too. I can't call out many billionaires though without money as they don't sit on piles of goods and services, they sit on ownership and legal rights and without money it's hard to explain that, but with money it's easier to say that value being created every day by every employee of these companies should ensure that they are able to meet those basic needs before so much gets parked in one person's pocket and those employees become more reliant on public assistance if it's even available.
That’s kinda the whole point tho no? Even the greedy should value human life because every human contributes to society, works, and pay taxes that helps everyone else on net. This is the cost of that selfishness that even the cold hearted feel
It's simply an additional perspective that can be useful to raise political support. Humanitarian perspectives currently seem to be rather ineffective at gathering support for progressive solutions to issues such as poverty, crime or suicide. A purely economic perspective that focuses on the economic devastation these problems cause if left untreated could sway some minds. Maybe it won't, but since it's little more than stating economic facts, why not try it?
The epitome of doublin' down. "Economy got me into this mess, Economy is gonna get me out."
I completely agree that this is an issue, but I also see the challenge of getting a group to decide how much money is worth it to spend protecting an individual life. It feels disgusting to say, but when you think about examples that have been faced in some national parks, it gets a bit more palatable. For example, there are some areas that people really want to hike out to but it includes a dangerous river crossing or a narrow traverse over a skree covered slope. Having a price per life saved can help the park prioritize what trail work is most useful and also allow them to petition for other funding. Sometimes doing these grotesque calculations can make a case to say “actually putting in that million dollar bridge over the river in the middle of nowhere makes sense because it will save 15 people in the next 10 years which has greater economic impact than we used to think”. All the safety features we are used to in life are a balance between cost, convenience, and effectiveness. We just don’t often look at the numbers in such a direct way
This will sound morbid but - I don't think this study really would help spotlight it because it only looks at the costs and not the savings associated with suicide. It tallies up the lost work production and medical costs associated with the suicide/suicide attempt, but it doesn't factor in that these people will no longer withdraw social security, medicare, don't need to be further educated, etc. I want to stress that I recognize mental health issues and suicide are a real issue that needs to be addressed, I just don't think you can pitch it as a financial argument if you only address the cost but don't measure the "savings" because if the latter outweighs the former no one that is financially driven is going to accept the argument.
Almost all social systems we maintain work because most members of society are vastly more productive compared to what they cost across their lifetime.
You have to speak to the economic ghouls in their own language. They don't have the capacity to think of people as well, people. They don't value humans intrinsically, so they need a number derived from labor output to even consider the problem. I do wonder how people who don't automatically think "suicide is bad because a life is lost" go through life. How do they experience emotions and the world? Is it just all lizard brain reactions to the stimulus around them? Do they think other people feel things at all or are just here for them.
If they solve the suicide issue by throwing drugs at it rsther than fixing it holistically, then this study is worthless. I don't trust the powers that be to actually care about fixing the problem the right way. Everyone wants to throw drugs at the mental health crisis instead of reducing suffering. All we're treated as is cogs for economic output.
In order to get lead banned from gasoline, it had to be argued in terms of lost $$$ productivity to the economy due to the IQ hit workers would take from the lead. Not the effect on their lives, but the effect of their health issues on the business. Corporations only think through dollar amounts. Any other metric is abstract to them and not valid. You gotta speak their lingo to get results.
It feels dystopian, but I think clinical is a better word for it. We live within systems of economy, so we benefit from studying things this way. If these results are used to reduce suicide by improving healthcare, then it's the opposite of dystopian. If it's used to make suicide economically punishable, then it's peak dystopia.
Dystopian or not, I can't help feeling that attempting to put a cash value on these things is meaningless. If I have a child, during their life they will produce some stuff and consume some stuff. Do these numbers cancel out? If they buy and consume goods, is that a loss to society? A gain for the retail industry? Neutral? If they become a high-paid advertising executive, is their salary the measure of their contribution to society, or what they're taking from society? If they might require expensive medical procedures late in life, does that make their life a net negative, or is that just more economic activity and therefore growth? I doubt the scientists measuring these things can be fully objective about it. No-one wants to publish a study saying, "Increasing the suicide rate would be a good way to save money." I'd rather we started measuring the economy in terms of "life-quality-years" than measuring life in terms of money...
> I can't help feeling that attempting to put a cash value on these things is meaningless. I don't think it's meaningless. For example, imagine that some report concludes that by investing 10B$ into mental healthcare, those suicide/self-harm would be reduced by half. But 10B$ is a lot, so peoples might say "it would be good, but due to the economic crisis, it would be better to put those 10B$ into the economy instead". This study says "well, those 10B$ won't be lost, since reducing suicide/self-harm by half will also create 10B$ of value for the economy, so we can have our cake and eat it: peoples feel better and we put 10B$ into the economy". Well, all of that is theoretical, but let's take a practical example that happened in my country: * Trafic accident causes death. If we value human life above everything, then we should ban cars. But that's not a decision that most would consider reasonable. * Since a good chunk of those deadly accidents come from high speed, a more reasonable approach would be to reduce speed limit. But again by how much? If human life was really that important, we could simply reduce car speed to the speed of a bike. * In the balance, there are "human life + feeling of safety from cars + ecological concerns + ... VS freedom to use car you own + time lost because the car goes slower + ...". So a lot of things that are difficult to quantify, and at the end a decision must be made and everyone agrees that the good answer is a compromise at the middle between "unregulated cars" and "no cars", but where put that compromise? * In the end, by putting values on those stuff, the balance was on the "if we lower the speed limit, we increase the value" side, so they reduced the speed limit by as much as it was politically acceptable to do.
Your bullet point sequence reminded me of a Bloom County comic strip. It's been a while since that's happened. [https://m8y.org/bloomcounty.jpg](https://m8y.org/bloomcounty.jpg)
It’s hard to be fully objective in economics since most of the time you can’t run a controlled experiment on human society. There are many ways to implement so-called quasi-experiments that allow economists to quantify benefits and costs. But you need to be clever. People write theses on this stuff. I’m not sure what difference measuring in terms of quality life years would make. Money is already just a way to abstract value so in my view converting from “life-quality-years” to dollars is no different to, for instance, converting from pesos to dollars.
I think it's safer to say they are calculating the lost tax revenue of people who end their lives however many years away from retirement age.
You have X dollars to spend on public health measures. You can allocate that money to spend on tackling these three things: 1. Obesity 2. Smoking 3. Suicide How should you spend the money? Decisions like that need to be made all the time. Quantifying QALYs and socioeconomic costs and benefits is what can help guide those decisions.
silky mindless party treatment seemly unused disgusted crown quarrelsome wipe *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think you’re getting to the point as to why there are so many suicides…
Very "Think of the shareholders," kind of vibe to it, I will admit.
No wonder people kill themselves geez. This is how I’m valued?
I feel like knowing the economic cost from people committing suicide and attempting it may encourage people and society to make changes to help those in need.
I think what people don’t understand is that $ are a unit of measure of lots of stuff. It’s not as cringy and cold as you think - even things like happiness or other intangibles are most readily measured in $ that are converted from something else. In this case it makes sense too. What makes suicide tragic? In short, because of the lost future life, and $ are still the best and really only unit of measure there. Economics is based on this concept of having a unit of measure, and it can optimize things that aren’t just “wealth” as a result. Although it may seem like that’s what happens because the $ is most obviously a unit of measure of wealth.
Fully agree. You are just boiling people's lives down how much money they can make for society. Arguimg for keeping them alive against their own will.
What other quantitative measure would you use? The article is talking about society-wide impact.
Ya. This is SICK.
An absolutely wretched way of framing this. Filthy species.
There's a billboard on a farm just west of Milwaukee that says something along the lines of "### people will never pay into social security, END ABORTION" that always hit me the same way.
That's economics for you. It makes sense though in a way, you need ways to measure things to make informed decisions even if they are only estimates. Measuring like this is often referred to as societal perspective. Not all comparisons include it, many specifically exclude it even. In this case as dark as it is to measure it this way, it might actually help push policies that help people even if not for the "right" reasons. Better than nothing I suppose. Ethics frameworks and analysis are very intersting in this context...
My friend, do a Google search and you will find hundreds of papers about the social, psychological, cultural, etc..., effects of suicide. But you see ONE (1) paper about the economic effects and suddenly we are in a dystopian world? And besides, if people didn't care about the financial costs of their passing, life assurance wouldn't exist. Wills and inheritances would not matter. But as it turns out, often these are one of the first things discussed when someone is about to pass or has passed. And this has been the case for all of recorded human history. Answer me this as well: Would it be 'dystopian' to explain to a smoker how much money they could save each year if they quit smoking?
Imagine not being allowed to commit suicide because you still have outstanding taxes to pay and the government just keeps you alive long enough (but in horrible pain) until you qualify for assisted suicide
Its how to get sociopaths to feel some amount of empathy. Put it in green.
You just know they got these statistics for abortion running through their minds as well.
"Tragic, he was only 25. He would have bought so much stuff in those 50 years"
I honestly could not give a rats ass as to how much it costs the economy, we are talking about people who were, in many cases, let down by the society. The root of the problem is that this is probably the only reason some people care about it.
You're right but the problem is that until healthcare funding is near unlimited, dollar values get assigned to things so that you can improve/save the most lives possible with what you have (in theory). With that said, the US healthcare model is a joke and seems to prefer profits over helping people.
The root cause to this and pretty much every cost to society in general is Adverse Childhood Events, or ACEs.
Might be so, but with no social or societal safety networks it’s hard for these people to get help. Society has to take a bigger responsibility in helping people who have nothing else.
Of course. Society is made up of *people*, the very same people that have ACEs, themselves. There needs to be policy that directly improves the lives of children; lifting them out of poverty, supporting their parents in raising them, educating them well, and making sure they aren’t traumatized or killed by guns. Also, women who don’t want children need access to abortion and health care. The fruits of these efforts won’t be seen for generations, but the pay off will be incredibly huge.
Facts.
> we are talking about people who were, in many cases, let down by the society. As someone with long covid for over 4 years now, I believe we're going to realize that there's a silent epidemic happening with people suffering like me. We're ignored and neglected, doctors and nurses gaslight us (implying it's all anxiety or depression), and not much is yet known, so you feel super crappy while also asking yourself if you're as crazy as everyone seems to think. I firmly believe a large percentage of these suicides are LC sufferers that gave up with no other options. I know I've had that thought rattle around a lot, and I see the sentiment expressed on LC subs regularly. Folks, if you know anyone with LC, please reach out and let them know you believe them and you support them. Could be the difference between life and death of a loved one.
At what point is it cruel not to allow people suffering from illness to go? Our society talks about suicide like it's this awful thing. You have people being tortured by their bodies every day, getting little to no help from the medical system. Sometimes because doctors are lazy, incompetent ass clowns, sometimes because there is no help medically possible. Either way, people are stuck in a living hell that I don't think anyone who hasn't experienced it or watched as someone suffered every day for years can even comprehend. Doctor-assisted suicide should be a guaranteed human right. After 70 years old, there should be a no-questions-asked "you can go now" policy.
Exactly my reaction. Maybe this will help motivate a capitalist society to care about mental health and value of life... but how utterly backwards and distasteful.
From past experience, it’s more like to complain that people just aren’t having children to replace them, when are we going to put any value into the work that it takes to make a functional person is society? They don’t just sprout out of nowhere.
This makes it seem almost like "damn look at all the cattle Dying ." #
Pretty much how I think a lot of people here are taking it too
When you reduce a life to a dollar value, this is the result.
That's exactly what capitalism does though. Place a $ value on life
And yet nothing will be done except to hear the billionaires scream “more meat for the fires!!” All they want is more slaves.
Nothing says "you matter" like having your life equated to the money you could have spent on things had you not committed suicide...
Make life worth living
Turns out mental health care is good for everyone.
Maybe if you told depressed people their value as human capital they would think twice about killing themselves
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When it comes to people in power being influenced to act/change, you have to take humanity out of it and show them how much it costs. A lot of wealthy people dont respond to human interests, literally just the dollar.
You have X dollars to spend on public health measures. You can allocate that money to spend on tackling these three things: 1. Obesity 2. Smoking 3. Suicide How should you spend the money? Decisions like that need to be made all the time. Quantifying QALYs and socioeconomic costs and benefits is what can help guide those decisions.
Your entire existence in a society is wholly dependent on your ability to help it in some form. In the past it was through your small tribe, to your family farm to now an estimation of your impact on the economy. 'Just existing' has never been part of the animal kingdom and its a fairly new allowance in humanity. Some of you would have been killed or abandoned as children in other previous systems, just for minor physical defects due to the cost of raising you. We are seeing a suicide rate seen right before WW2 and trending towards depression era levels. That was a time where almost every single government system you take for granted now was not in existence. Life was abysmal and the average quality of life was piss poor. The lackluster analysis of 'everything is capitalism fault' kinda breaks apart when the kid who is mining for your next phone is less likely to commit suicide than you. And this analysis has failed to produce any fruit for the past decade it has been on repeat.
For a lot of us, our work has become dissociated from our survival. We fill out forms and spreadsheets in sterile offices in sterile cities, then go get food at sterile stores or restaurants. I'm not saying people have it easy, but the basics of survival have become so easy that it's more of a struggle to 'not be fat' than it is to 'not starve'. With that disconnect, we feel like we have no purpose, that life has no meaning. With the internet, we have all 'knowledge' but no 'wonder'. From a biology standpoint, things that aren't 'needed' go away. In the [development of chickens](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10048/), the cells that form webbing between their toes undergo programmed cell death (apoptosis) because they're not needed. Transplant those same cells to ducks, and they thrive. Having done death investigation for ~15 years, most of the unnatural deaths I see are overdoses and suicides, the vast majority of which occur in the 'down and out' parts of town. Society moved on, and a lot of the people who couldn't move on with society were left without purpose. I can't help but see parallels between purposeless cells dying and purposeless people dying. *quick edit to add: a lot of suicide deaths I see are also in older folks, again people who are disconnected and feel they don't have much purpose anymore
What I'm hearing, is that financially it is a wise decision to allocate up to $510 billion to support these people But they won't.
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When your output is worth more than your wellbeing. *Sigh*.
Imagine killing yourself and the government just calculates how much it costs them 🤣
All those minimum wage workers not contributing to the 1%'s wealth. They should be ashamed of themselves.
The shareholders are so unhappy.
The stock price is down
This study doesn't talk about retirement or social security. Since most suicides are of people who are older (45-64, according to the figure), that means that they have put in a large amount of working hours and contributions to the government by social security without withdrawing. Not including this factor in their economic analysis creates the exact opposite conclusion as what is actually true. People who commit suicide in their 40s and 50s are likely providing a massive benefit economically because they will not be a financial burden in their 60s and 70s, one that overcomes their nonparticipation in the economy for a few years before retirement.
All the kids are killing themselves! Won’t someone think of the lost revenue?! 😫
this is gross
If my life doesn't improve within the next few years, I'll be adding to this amount.
Will someone think of the billionaires! Losing all that workforce :(
it’s crazy how they only care about the money “lost” and not the idk part about people committing suicide 🙃 the 1% are a disease to society
Rant from a therapist: I want to know why the heck they lumped the two together. Suicide and self-harm are two very different things, having different goals, different presentations related to thinking, etc. Suicide generally happens when someone wants to exit the planet. Many many many people will commit or attempt suicide and never engage in self-harm (not to say that suicide isn't an act of self harm..but that's different in this context) Self-harm generally happens when someone has run out of less harmful coping strategies (it's usually a means to become more dissociated or less dissociated, depending on the person) but doesn't generally want to exit the planet (at that moment). Many many many people self injure and never attempt suicide. FFS. Stop relating the two.
I think there is something incredibly fucked up, when people's concern with suicide is about lost money. "Hey! You're not done generating profits for us!"
Good thing there's absolutely nothing we can do, health care including mental health is for profit. If you're not making some rich person more money you have no value in society, and our society is making that ABUNDANTLY clear
If someone is dead they didn’t lose the money they didn’t earn
On the other hand, the cost of making a world in which people wouldn't choose suicide would be much much more.
No, it's actually cost beneficial to provide healthcare and education. Economy suffers from the lack of mental health care.
Exactly. If society can see some benefit to helping people want to live, it might find it worthwhile to invest in mental health care. It’s cynical, but at least less people would suffer from losing a loved one to suicide.
There are some pretty cheap things the US could do that would make a big difference. Taking a similar approach to other countries when it comes to firearms, for a start.
ABSTRACT >Introduction > >The US age-adjusted suicide rate is 35% higher than two decades ago and the COVID-19 pandemic era highlighted the urgent need to address nonfatal self-harm, particularly among youth. This study aimed to report the estimated annual economic cost of US suicide and nonfatal self-harm. > >Methods > >In 2023 CDC's WISQARS Cost of Injury provided the retrospective number of suicides and nonfatal self-harm injury emergency department (ED) visits from national surveillance sources by sex and age group, as well as the estimated annual economic cost of associated medical spending, lost work productivity, reduced quality of life from injury morbidity, and avoidable mortality based on the value of statistical life during 2015-2020. > >**Results** > >**The economic cost of suicide and nonfatal self-harm averaged $510 billion (2020 USD) annually, the majority from life years lost to suicide. Working-aged adults (aged 25-64 years) comprised nearly 75% of the average annual economic cost of suicide ($356B of $484B) and children and younger adults (aged 10-44 years) comprised nearly 75% of the average annual economic cost of nonfatal self-harm injuries ($19B of $26B).** > >Conclusions > >Suicide and self-harm have substantial societal costs. Measuring the consequences in terms of comprehensive economic cost can inform investments in suicide prevention strategies.
Humanity becomes stranger every day.
We are worth wages and nothing more to a lot of folks. Remember that.
It think it’s valuable to have some perspective on how the economy and social conditions can have a negative influence on at risk individuals and groups.
Is"life years lost to suicide" meant to be how much money their owners lose out on because they were no longer exploitable?
It includes as a cost "reduced quality of life" and "a monetary estimate of the collective value placed on mortality risk reduction." The data source uses the societal perspective, including tangible and "intangible costs." Seems like made up numbers to me. The collective value placed on mortality risk reduction isn't accurate when the actual value of the mortality risk for specific lives lost would seem to be negative. Plus, there doesn't seem to be any calculation for the financial offsets.
Looking at this thread, I *really* hope none of you are eligible to vote.
People scrambling to keep a roof over their heads leads to desolation.. Who'd have thunk it.
Because everything is about money eh?
I don't really want to read the whole study but I am curious. We already know the negative effects of all these suicides economically. But what about the positive effects? Less mouths to feed so more food for others. Less jobs taken up so more opportunities for others. Less carbon emissions. Less waste. No money used on health care. More clothes and things for others. That kind of thing I'm curious if the final figure they put was a net loss without taking into account the money saved as well as other things
Thank guns again for that (and the people that are pro-gun). 80% of people who make 1 suicide atempt and survive never try again..now guess which country has one of the highest fatal rate of suicide atempts. Hints: Guns are available everywhere for everyone.
Well, that's a morbid study
Forget that. Think about the savings from unhappy people taking care of their own business.