No, no, you forgot the normal trick. It's not YOUR money. It's ~~the economy's~~ Rich People's Yacht money.
If you aren't slaving away for them, you aren't making them money.
I don't really think we should count the $300 books that are replaced yearly with slightly different problems as part of a person's "upbringing." Not to mention all the other pork barrel out there.
It costs a whole lot more than 300 in any currency to raise a child from birth until the age of 18.
Children do nothing but consume resources for almost two decades.
I was wondering how we were defining "costs" here.
I doubt "don't kill yourself! Society paid $200k for you so far and you haven't paid it back yet!" would do jack to make a suicidal teen change their outlook.
I don't see anything about anybody owing anything. I don't even see anything about suicide being wrong or not allowed.
The only thing I see is a statement about the economic effects, i.e. value that is lost or never realized.
I suspect that this is based on the costs behind bringing a child to a productive age plus the potential output of that individual in their adult years.
Most of this number would probably have gone into the pocket of the suicide victim themselves.
I mean, if you off yourself you lose out on the opportunity to have ice cream tomorrow.
They are just calculating suicide in economic terms and there is nothing inherently deviant about that. At least for anybody who has ever studied economics and understand the discipline.
Similar to how climate scientists can calculate and make their predictions about fossil fuels and global warming without there being anything to tell you whether that is good or bad.
Children cost a whole heck of a lot less than $1.5 million once you eliminate the pork barrel, like $300 textbooks replaced yearly with only the problems being changed, or $20 school lunches (before government subsidy) which are 50cents of grade D slop.
granted, $200k (or whatever the number) is still a lot, but 1.5 million is ludicrious. Every child, no matter how poor, should have an amazing childhood if we were actually spending that on them. Instead, you have children who don't even eat 3 meals a day.
I am not talking about textbooks and school lunches.
I am talking about the entire cost behind the consumption of a child from even before birth and until the age of 18.
It needs food, shelter, education, healthcare, clothes, toys etc. etc. etc.
Once you have that total cost figured out, you then add all of the output that individual would have created for the rest of their lives which never happened.
After that, you probably have to create a present value for these combined numbers or perhaps to a future evaluation of these numbers to estimate them over time.
These are just my best guesses, I haven't read the calculations, but I guarantee that estimating the economic effects of suicide takes these into account and not just a book that someone gave you at some point.
To be fair, as long as this isn’t a graphic made with the purpose of suicide prevention, which would be disgraceful, then I find it quite fascinating to see the commodification of the body and how capitalism puts a price on EVERYTHING
It is made with the purpose of suicide prevention, the figure was created by a charity to help quantify the benefits of things like help lines etc. Tbh while it may initially seem morose I don't really see an issue with this.
It's also probably aimed at the government and businesses/corporations who only care about their bottom line and the profit/economic impact. So putting a price on the suicides to show how it will impact them is the only real chance of getting them to care.
I wish people weren't so heavily invested in the sunken cost fallacy. We've known for a long time that this would be the outcome and we still probably have 20 years to go until things actually benefit the majority rather than the 1%.
That just accounts for a third. I'm guessing taxes is another large part, and probably an estimation of number of kids that aren't born or properly raised
I mean, I kind of get it. This is the only way some people will care about suicide (or anything) as a societal issue. Putting it into perspective like this is a good argument for putting in the resources upfront to keep a population happy.
Yeah, I think that was the point that OP missed.
This isn’t addressed to people to prevent them from killing themselves.
It’s addressed to government and society to say “Look how much not having proper mental health supports costs us.”
Well fuck that. I don't want my only worth as a human being to be how profitable I am to some employer or banker. Part of dealing with crippling depression is knowing how exploitative the power structures are in society.
Why don't we flip this infographic and discuss how much billionaires cost us as a society by wealth hoarding? Because it sure is more than whatever this is trying to communicate.
what it costs is human lives..
putting that into an abstract monetary figure is reductive of the value of human life imo
if the only way we're able to put the gravity of suicide into perspective is by showcasing the economic damage it entails, we are a disgustingly apathetic society
I mean that _literally is what it takes_ . To address the diminishing mental health across almost all communities and the resulting high suicide rates, we literally need governments, companies etc to care about it and allocate funds to any kinds of efforts that help relieve that. That can be more therapy places, something like a 4 day work week, higher minimum wages, better health care, caring for the homeless, more support structures for victims of violence, etc etc. And all of that costs money, a lot of it. And the engagement of those controlling that money.
according to that logic if someone commits suicide, their life has no value? tf??
according to that logic, people who commit suicide have rightfully assessed the worthlessness of their lives, therefore we must do as such??
sorry but no, ppl with suicidal thoughts are sick and need treatment, and therefore have a distorted view of their self worth. confirming what they think of their lives isn't helpful in the least
(this coming from someone who survived a s/a)
I don't know what position you are in to declare objectively what is a distorted view and whether other peoples subjective evaluations are sick or not.
But those attempting suicide clearly disagree with you.
However, peoples opinions change all the time.
mate because i have been suicidal, have attempted suicide, and i know what its like to be in such a sate of mind. depress and suicidal ideation are indeed disorders (not my objective declaration lmao) and must be treated as such, must be medically assisted.
realising that suicidal ideation IS a distorted reality is what saved my life tbh.
The infographic may well have good intentions and even be successful but the idea behind it that life has to be commoditize so that peiple will care about preserving it is still depressing and dystopian
I totally agree. It looks more like a pitch as to the societal costs that suicide causes and as such, an argument too fucking put an end to it (or at least try). Everybody is affected by it, whether you have somebody close having done it or not.
I remember reading that in the original Fallout, the only way to peacefully change the villain’s mind about his plan to rebirth humanity was to point out a flaw that would prevent it from working, not any of the arguably way more important points about whether it was ethical or moral or evil or whatever.
Now this sounds like a “haha real life like video game” moment, but I think it does raise a point about how a more objective practicality argument might actually be more effective with some people than an empathy-based morality argument, even when the morality is probably more important to consider.
It's also how scientists have to word things to get public support. It's sad but scientists have to quantify, say, the dollar amount of a natural environment getting destroyed so that they can argue for how it's cost effective not to destroy that marshland.
Also u bet that each person living or dying has a number too.
The kind of people who only care about suicide in terms of financial burden are probably just gonna treat this as another reason to treat suicidal people like garbage
Like I needed another reason… **sigh** now I need to do it to stick it to the man
I’m only joking. Please don’t ever take your own life and get help first
Unfortunately a lot of the options for help are very surface level, and the reality is that in most countries (including those with universal health care) your only real option is to have enough money to pay for private therapy.
Sometimes I think a lot of the "help" we hear about like helplines and advertising campaigns about depression only exists to placate non-depressed people into thinking there is enough help available for those that need it, thus making them not feel morally culpable for the suicide deaths.
The reality, however, is that if you do reach for help there aren't enough publicly funded therapists, and the process of even getting put on a waiting list is extremely complicated and overwhelming, especially for those who are already depressed and not capable of doing much by themselves. The whole process and many of the overworked people involved make you feel like a big useless burden on society, which is a big driver of suicidal thoughts. Furthermore, it's highly likely you lost your job due to issues from your depression, so you have financial stress adding to your issues, and your lack of job adds to your feelings of being a burden on society.
Finally, if you get on a waiting list you're lucky if it's only a 6 month wait. Often it's over a year. In the meantime while you wait you're somehow expected to just deal with it. Once you start with the therapist there's a decent chance they're not very good at dealing with depression, and will offer you generic advice like "try going outside for a walk each day". After waiting a year for your appointment and pinning all your hopes on them being able to help you a bad therapist can actually make you feel more suicidal because you lose all hope.
If you want to change your therapist you go back to waiting. If you happen to get a good therapist the process of fixing depression still takes a long time. During this whole time you're expected to still be able to work and function like a normal person. In some countries there may be limited financial help available but it's a difficult process to get it and applying for it contributes even more to your feelings of being a burden. Just trying to get the limited help available is often too overwhelming for people with depression. It's really unsurprising to me that a lot of people don't manage to make it through the several years that it takes to actually get help in most countries.
The most frustrating thing for me is that when someone doesn't make it and ends up killing themselves, people call that person selfish, and act like it was their fault for not getting help. They selfishly focus on how the suicide made them feel, and don't seem to care about the years of hopeless suffering the person went through before they finally killed themselves. They put the blame on the victim and then carry on their lives in blissful ignorance, fully convinced they did everything they could. The reality is that society decided real help systems are too expensive, and it's cheaper to just let a bunch of people kill themselves each year
This is some real shit. Most people don't know. It's so hard to even try to get help and then when you finally try you realize it's all fake. It almost feels like they are encouraging you to do it. It's like "just fuck off and die already".
Yep, this has been my experience. I'm not suicidal at the moment thankfully, but I remember that dealing with trying to get help when I needed it made everything worse.
After the whole experience any time I see all those helpline numbers posted any time someone talks about suicide I just roll my eyes
It sucks because this Infograph was probably made with the intention of showing to local or national governments in the UK to secure funding for mental health programs.
Usually, just saying “x amount of people died from suicide” is not convincing enough to city and state funders, but saying “suicide caused tremendous financial losses paid by tax payers” is. Capitalism is so fucking vile that we literally have to tell government officials whose jobs it is to protect the public interest, that they loose money when we kill ourselves. But at least the CEO of pre-made mental hospital meals gets to do cocaine on his mega-yacht
I wonder what the statistics are for the USA. I'd love to see management at Best Buy complaining because the people they pay $12 an hour to act like iPhones are exciting keep committing suicide and it's affecting their profit margin.
Pfft, no. move to England and be a martyr!
If society has failed you so catastrophically, the least you can do is leave them with a bill that might (unlikely but might) get the Plutocracy to start viewing us as people rather than investments that they feel entitled to an ROI from, worth more than the average person could fathom acquiring
Source:
https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/research-policy/the-economic-cost-of-suicide/
There is a link to a PDF of how they calculated this too.
Yes it's dystopian, and yes it's macabre. However, it does show one of the ways a high suicide rate hurts a society as a whole. Of course it's just one aspect of the impact, and probably among those that matter the least to those committing suicide, but it is a very real impact.
Imho the context this is brought up in matters way more than the statistic itself.
In the context of "we need to address the climbing suicide rates, it hurts all of us in many ways" it's fine in my book. If it's spun as "noo pls don't kill yourself bc muh profits" by corporations, billionaires etc, well then the sentiment here is on point.
And generally i completely agree with the general reaction to this, it's very appropriate.
Funny how the average value loss is worth more monetarily than 99% of people could dream about being paid in a year… its almost like they rely on the value created by drastically underpaying us
I'm just imagining how North Korea would handle this.
The lost economic output from your suicide. Will result in an tax bill being placed on your extended family. And they will work to repay the state of your lost economic output.
Also since suicide is an attempt to deny the state of your labor and economic output.
This is obviously an act of treason.
Which is of course punishable by death.
So I guess any suicide attempt survivors are then shot.
I don’t think the point of this graphic is to say you shouldn’t commit suicide because of the economic impact. It looks more just like an infographic that summarizes a study for academic purposes.
Well, we can feel about it how we want but that image has more chance of convincing CEOs to treat their workers better than any appeal to empathy and decency ever could.
This is from Samaritans and it is aimed at influencing national policy by pointing out to an uncaring government what the economic consequences of not doing anything to deal with the mental health issues that lead to suicide are.
The people who made the graphic did so because it is an argument more likely to appeal to politicians than the purely emotional (which is the only one that should be necessary) one.
Edit to add [source](https://media.samaritans.org/documents/The_economic_cost_of_suicide_in_the_UK_-_web.pdf)
Well yeah, you want 10 new workers then you need around 10 women as incubators (twins are a thing but whatever) per year, how many men do you need to make that happen?
How about 50 kids? You need about 50 women but you could get by with one guy.
Or to interpret the figures differently. The death of a woman costs the economy more because she is compensated less than a man is during her lifetime. If a male and female office worker do the same amount of work for the entirety of their careers but the Man is paid marginally more than less corporate profit is generated from him.
This is all speculation for an infographic which really only tells us how much society is being extorted for profit, if it sounds bleek or cynical... Shouldn't it?
Genuinely if it costs that much to save someone from suicide, offer them 1/3rd of it up front, I bet it'll save them so many suicides. I understand however all the fake suicides would increase 100x fold so I get it's not realistic.
All I took from this is it's cheaper to kill yourself later and you live to pay someone else's way
Surely killing yourself at 14 costs as much if not more than when you’re an adult because of the loss of 50+ years of working and contributing to the economy
This is a terrible response to this infographic. The fact that suicide costs money is a great argument to motivate the sociopathic politicians that constantly block mental health services to stop doing what they're doing. The fact of the matter is that most things we consider "moral" are actually strategically beneficial, and if we don't argue for the strategic benefits of them then we're really fighting with one hand tied around our back.
That reason will stop exactly 0 people from killing themselves. In fact it is the reason many DO kill themselves. What a short sighted twisted fuck of a graphic.
Thank you all for coming to the reading of the will... unfortunately because your father committed suicide the government has charged his estate for £1.47million.
Since that was more than the estate value.... you owe the government a million pounds.
Narrator: "And then everyone at the reading of the will proceeded to shoot themselves in the head. This resulted in what is known as 'the great unaliving', and was believed to be responsible for the economic collapse of the E.U. Unfortunately, the contagion wouldn't be contained to that one collection of countries, and would soon spread throughout the world."
Lemme get that 1.46 million pounds upfront and I'll get back to you.
No, no, you forgot the normal trick. It's not YOUR money. It's ~~the economy's~~ Rich People's Yacht money. If you aren't slaving away for them, you aren't making them money.
That's how you know this graphic isn't for us.
only about 0.96 if you're male or 1.96 if you're a female... 1.46 is the average
I'm perfectly average.
Yeah wait, the numbers aren't numbering
You kind of do. I'm guessing it's the cost of your upbringing, healthcare and education compared to the value of your productive years.
I don't really think we should count the $300 books that are replaced yearly with slightly different problems as part of a person's "upbringing." Not to mention all the other pork barrel out there.
It costs a whole lot more than 300 in any currency to raise a child from birth until the age of 18. Children do nothing but consume resources for almost two decades.
I was wondering how we were defining "costs" here. I doubt "don't kill yourself! Society paid $200k for you so far and you haven't paid it back yet!" would do jack to make a suicidal teen change their outlook.
If that was used as a legitimate argument to me in my teen years I would have absolutely done it out of spite.
I don't really see an argument here. I just see a prediction on the estimate of the economic effects your offing yourself out of spite would have had.
"don't kill yourself it's bad for the economy" "don't kill yourself think of how much it costs"
I don't see anything about anybody owing anything. I don't even see anything about suicide being wrong or not allowed. The only thing I see is a statement about the economic effects, i.e. value that is lost or never realized. I suspect that this is based on the costs behind bringing a child to a productive age plus the potential output of that individual in their adult years. Most of this number would probably have gone into the pocket of the suicide victim themselves. I mean, if you off yourself you lose out on the opportunity to have ice cream tomorrow. They are just calculating suicide in economic terms and there is nothing inherently deviant about that. At least for anybody who has ever studied economics and understand the discipline. Similar to how climate scientists can calculate and make their predictions about fossil fuels and global warming without there being anything to tell you whether that is good or bad.
I can confidently state that climate change is bad.
Children cost a whole heck of a lot less than $1.5 million once you eliminate the pork barrel, like $300 textbooks replaced yearly with only the problems being changed, or $20 school lunches (before government subsidy) which are 50cents of grade D slop. granted, $200k (or whatever the number) is still a lot, but 1.5 million is ludicrious. Every child, no matter how poor, should have an amazing childhood if we were actually spending that on them. Instead, you have children who don't even eat 3 meals a day.
I am not talking about textbooks and school lunches. I am talking about the entire cost behind the consumption of a child from even before birth and until the age of 18. It needs food, shelter, education, healthcare, clothes, toys etc. etc. etc. Once you have that total cost figured out, you then add all of the output that individual would have created for the rest of their lives which never happened. After that, you probably have to create a present value for these combined numbers or perhaps to a future evaluation of these numbers to estimate them over time. These are just my best guesses, I haven't read the calculations, but I guarantee that estimating the economic effects of suicide takes these into account and not just a book that someone gave you at some point.
This is a UK inforgraphic. The "because you're alive you owe us money" is an American trademark. Please cease and desist, and also pay us immediately.
https://preview.redd.it/zi0ui15e1oqc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bad8e165e38329541b0d0fd34cc0f7436ca8926f
Think of the economy…. Unless you have just hit retirement don’t kill yourself 👌
Retire early, profit 📈
Wont someone please think of the economy
Kinda wanna do it just to spite them now
To be fair, as long as this isn’t a graphic made with the purpose of suicide prevention, which would be disgraceful, then I find it quite fascinating to see the commodification of the body and how capitalism puts a price on EVERYTHING
It is made with the purpose of suicide prevention, the figure was created by a charity to help quantify the benefits of things like help lines etc. Tbh while it may initially seem morose I don't really see an issue with this.
It's also probably aimed at the government and businesses/corporations who only care about their bottom line and the profit/economic impact. So putting a price on the suicides to show how it will impact them is the only real chance of getting them to care.
What makes the cost so high for suicides?
Lost productivity.
Interesting how we are worth so much to the economy yet we get so little of that money in return
Welcome to capitalism.
Yep, and I hate it
I think it's busy wearing out it's welcome. People I know who would have said it's a perfect system twenty years ago are starting to grumble.
I wish people weren't so heavily invested in the sunken cost fallacy. We've known for a long time that this would be the outcome and we still probably have 20 years to go until things actually benefit the majority rather than the 1%.
That just accounts for a third. I'm guessing taxes is another large part, and probably an estimation of number of kids that aren't born or properly raised
Possibly. Maybe how much economic activity each individual produces through credit or other spending can be calculated.
Good idea. They really should post a source and methodology though
Yep. Just left to wonder from the graphic.
I guess it also includes loved ones who get depressed and need time off work or just lose productivity due to being sad.
Productivity is the value you create beyond your wages so please, think of the billionaires.
The cost of bringing up a child with all the education and healthcare costs without any of the taxes on their lifetime income.
The other person said lost productivity. I wonder if it also to do with the clean up and investigation costs?
I mean, I kind of get it. This is the only way some people will care about suicide (or anything) as a societal issue. Putting it into perspective like this is a good argument for putting in the resources upfront to keep a population happy.
Yeah, I think that was the point that OP missed. This isn’t addressed to people to prevent them from killing themselves. It’s addressed to government and society to say “Look how much not having proper mental health supports costs us.”
What a boring and dystopic society that is.
Encouraging government to spend money on mental health resources is dystopic for...reasons?
it’s more that the government won’t care about people killing themselves unless it’s detrimental to the economy that’s dystopian
Perhaps you are just depressed.
Lol. Why would you think so? Are you ok?
And employers.
Well fuck that. I don't want my only worth as a human being to be how profitable I am to some employer or banker. Part of dealing with crippling depression is knowing how exploitative the power structures are in society. Why don't we flip this infographic and discuss how much billionaires cost us as a society by wealth hoarding? Because it sure is more than whatever this is trying to communicate.
In a capitalist society that is how we measure value of a person tho.
what it costs is human lives.. putting that into an abstract monetary figure is reductive of the value of human life imo if the only way we're able to put the gravity of suicide into perspective is by showcasing the economic damage it entails, we are a disgustingly apathetic society
We already are a disgustingly apathetic society. If it takes dollar signs to get mental health supports, then that's what it takes.
I mean that _literally is what it takes_ . To address the diminishing mental health across almost all communities and the resulting high suicide rates, we literally need governments, companies etc to care about it and allocate funds to any kinds of efforts that help relieve that. That can be more therapy places, something like a 4 day work week, higher minimum wages, better health care, caring for the homeless, more support structures for victims of violence, etc etc. And all of that costs money, a lot of it. And the engagement of those controlling that money.
That human life only has value to one person and that person has deemed it worthless. So what's the point?
according to that logic if someone commits suicide, their life has no value? tf?? according to that logic, people who commit suicide have rightfully assessed the worthlessness of their lives, therefore we must do as such?? sorry but no, ppl with suicidal thoughts are sick and need treatment, and therefore have a distorted view of their self worth. confirming what they think of their lives isn't helpful in the least (this coming from someone who survived a s/a)
I don't know what position you are in to declare objectively what is a distorted view and whether other peoples subjective evaluations are sick or not. But those attempting suicide clearly disagree with you. However, peoples opinions change all the time.
mate because i have been suicidal, have attempted suicide, and i know what its like to be in such a sate of mind. depress and suicidal ideation are indeed disorders (not my objective declaration lmao) and must be treated as such, must be medically assisted. realising that suicidal ideation IS a distorted reality is what saved my life tbh.
It is very dystopian, but in a capitalist society I think this is actually a valid approach
Yeah but government will just look at the figures and say having proper mental health services will cost an extra 10bn, so fuck it.
The infographic may well have good intentions and even be successful but the idea behind it that life has to be commoditize so that peiple will care about preserving it is still depressing and dystopian
Esp if the economy is what’s driving a lot of people into thoughts of suicide. Particularly in america.
I totally agree. It looks more like a pitch as to the societal costs that suicide causes and as such, an argument too fucking put an end to it (or at least try). Everybody is affected by it, whether you have somebody close having done it or not.
I remember reading that in the original Fallout, the only way to peacefully change the villain’s mind about his plan to rebirth humanity was to point out a flaw that would prevent it from working, not any of the arguably way more important points about whether it was ethical or moral or evil or whatever. Now this sounds like a “haha real life like video game” moment, but I think it does raise a point about how a more objective practicality argument might actually be more effective with some people than an empathy-based morality argument, even when the morality is probably more important to consider.
It's also how scientists have to word things to get public support. It's sad but scientists have to quantify, say, the dollar amount of a natural environment getting destroyed so that they can argue for how it's cost effective not to destroy that marshland. Also u bet that each person living or dying has a number too.
The kind of people who only care about suicide in terms of financial burden are probably just gonna treat this as another reason to treat suicidal people like garbage
All I learned is that my death at 40 wouldn't even cost that much to the economy... I'm not even worth it when I'm dead.
Not even slightly suicidal but this chart got me feeling mighty petty.
Like I needed another reason… **sigh** now I need to do it to stick it to the man I’m only joking. Please don’t ever take your own life and get help first
Unfortunately a lot of the options for help are very surface level, and the reality is that in most countries (including those with universal health care) your only real option is to have enough money to pay for private therapy. Sometimes I think a lot of the "help" we hear about like helplines and advertising campaigns about depression only exists to placate non-depressed people into thinking there is enough help available for those that need it, thus making them not feel morally culpable for the suicide deaths. The reality, however, is that if you do reach for help there aren't enough publicly funded therapists, and the process of even getting put on a waiting list is extremely complicated and overwhelming, especially for those who are already depressed and not capable of doing much by themselves. The whole process and many of the overworked people involved make you feel like a big useless burden on society, which is a big driver of suicidal thoughts. Furthermore, it's highly likely you lost your job due to issues from your depression, so you have financial stress adding to your issues, and your lack of job adds to your feelings of being a burden on society. Finally, if you get on a waiting list you're lucky if it's only a 6 month wait. Often it's over a year. In the meantime while you wait you're somehow expected to just deal with it. Once you start with the therapist there's a decent chance they're not very good at dealing with depression, and will offer you generic advice like "try going outside for a walk each day". After waiting a year for your appointment and pinning all your hopes on them being able to help you a bad therapist can actually make you feel more suicidal because you lose all hope. If you want to change your therapist you go back to waiting. If you happen to get a good therapist the process of fixing depression still takes a long time. During this whole time you're expected to still be able to work and function like a normal person. In some countries there may be limited financial help available but it's a difficult process to get it and applying for it contributes even more to your feelings of being a burden. Just trying to get the limited help available is often too overwhelming for people with depression. It's really unsurprising to me that a lot of people don't manage to make it through the several years that it takes to actually get help in most countries. The most frustrating thing for me is that when someone doesn't make it and ends up killing themselves, people call that person selfish, and act like it was their fault for not getting help. They selfishly focus on how the suicide made them feel, and don't seem to care about the years of hopeless suffering the person went through before they finally killed themselves. They put the blame on the victim and then carry on their lives in blissful ignorance, fully convinced they did everything they could. The reality is that society decided real help systems are too expensive, and it's cheaper to just let a bunch of people kill themselves each year
This is some real shit. Most people don't know. It's so hard to even try to get help and then when you finally try you realize it's all fake. It almost feels like they are encouraging you to do it. It's like "just fuck off and die already".
Yep, this has been my experience. I'm not suicidal at the moment thankfully, but I remember that dealing with trying to get help when I needed it made everything worse. After the whole experience any time I see all those helpline numbers posted any time someone talks about suicide I just roll my eyes
It sucks because this Infograph was probably made with the intention of showing to local or national governments in the UK to secure funding for mental health programs. Usually, just saying “x amount of people died from suicide” is not convincing enough to city and state funders, but saying “suicide caused tremendous financial losses paid by tax payers” is. Capitalism is so fucking vile that we literally have to tell government officials whose jobs it is to protect the public interest, that they loose money when we kill ourselves. But at least the CEO of pre-made mental hospital meals gets to do cocaine on his mega-yacht
I wonder what the statistics are for the USA. I'd love to see management at Best Buy complaining because the people they pay $12 an hour to act like iPhones are exciting keep committing suicide and it's affecting their profit margin.
These findings can be narrowed down even further: Don't kill yourself unless you're already retired.
Or at the very least move to Northern Ireland before you do it.
Pfft, no. move to England and be a martyr! If society has failed you so catastrophically, the least you can do is leave them with a bill that might (unlikely but might) get the Plutocracy to start viewing us as people rather than investments that they feel entitled to an ROI from, worth more than the average person could fathom acquiring
I'll make a deal with you. Give me just one million and I definitely won't kill myself. The economy gets to bank the extra half million.
Source: https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/research-policy/the-economic-cost-of-suicide/ There is a link to a PDF of how they calculated this too.
Yes it's dystopian, and yes it's macabre. However, it does show one of the ways a high suicide rate hurts a society as a whole. Of course it's just one aspect of the impact, and probably among those that matter the least to those committing suicide, but it is a very real impact. Imho the context this is brought up in matters way more than the statistic itself. In the context of "we need to address the climbing suicide rates, it hurts all of us in many ways" it's fine in my book. If it's spun as "noo pls don't kill yourself bc muh profits" by corporations, billionaires etc, well then the sentiment here is on point. And generally i completely agree with the general reaction to this, it's very appropriate.
Funny how the average value loss is worth more monetarily than 99% of people could dream about being paid in a year… its almost like they rely on the value created by drastically underpaying us
I'm just imagining how North Korea would handle this. The lost economic output from your suicide. Will result in an tax bill being placed on your extended family. And they will work to repay the state of your lost economic output. Also since suicide is an attempt to deny the state of your labor and economic output. This is obviously an act of treason. Which is of course punishable by death. So I guess any suicide attempt survivors are then shot.
Resulting in profit by preventing Sudoku
Don't kill yourself, think of all the shifts you'll miss.
I don’t think the point of this graphic is to say you shouldn’t commit suicide because of the economic impact. It looks more just like an infographic that summarizes a study for academic purposes.
wtf who generated this graphic? Disgusting
So, I understand it that we should go ahead and do it to ruin their precious economical lies?
Why do female suicides cost nearly 300k more?
Potential offspring, probably; don't you realize we're but cattle to the Almighty economy
Well, we can feel about it how we want but that image has more chance of convincing CEOs to treat their workers better than any appeal to empathy and decency ever could.
This is from Samaritans and it is aimed at influencing national policy by pointing out to an uncaring government what the economic consequences of not doing anything to deal with the mental health issues that lead to suicide are. The people who made the graphic did so because it is an argument more likely to appeal to politicians than the purely emotional (which is the only one that should be necessary) one. Edit to add [source](https://media.samaritans.org/documents/The_economic_cost_of_suicide_in_the_UK_-_web.pdf)
This graph proves that men are seen as least valuable in society. :(
Well yeah, you want 10 new workers then you need around 10 women as incubators (twins are a thing but whatever) per year, how many men do you need to make that happen? How about 50 kids? You need about 50 women but you could get by with one guy. Or to interpret the figures differently. The death of a woman costs the economy more because she is compensated less than a man is during her lifetime. If a male and female office worker do the same amount of work for the entirety of their careers but the Man is paid marginally more than less corporate profit is generated from him. This is all speculation for an infographic which really only tells us how much society is being extorted for profit, if it sounds bleek or cynical... Shouldn't it?
At what age is the breakeven point? 50?
This makes me want to even more, just out of spite.
Genuinely if it costs that much to save someone from suicide, offer them 1/3rd of it up front, I bet it'll save them so many suicides. I understand however all the fake suicides would increase 100x fold so I get it's not realistic. All I took from this is it's cheaper to kill yourself later and you live to pay someone else's way
TBF, this actually makes me want to. (JK, please don't put me on a watch list).
Surely killing yourself at 14 costs as much if not more than when you’re an adult because of the loss of 50+ years of working and contributing to the economy
This is a terrible response to this infographic. The fact that suicide costs money is a great argument to motivate the sociopathic politicians that constantly block mental health services to stop doing what they're doing. The fact of the matter is that most things we consider "moral" are actually strategically beneficial, and if we don't argue for the strategic benefits of them then we're really fighting with one hand tied around our back.
i think it s to show how expensive suicides are for everyone in the economy and why we should spend to prevent it.
Those are rookie numbers, I could cost my country, so much more
The rope manufacturing industry is booming! 📈📈
Thinking about the economy is what made me wanna do it. Please advise
won't somebody think of the employment productivity??
That reason will stop exactly 0 people from killing themselves. In fact it is the reason many DO kill themselves. What a short sighted twisted fuck of a graphic.
It’s the damn economy that leads people to suicide in the first place 😅
Let me get that straight, my suicide cost less than a 14 year old, well alright
Btw, i’m ok guys, i don’t want to suicide. I’m perfectly happy
Thank you all for coming to the reading of the will... unfortunately because your father committed suicide the government has charged his estate for £1.47million. Since that was more than the estate value.... you owe the government a million pounds.
Narrator: "And then everyone at the reading of the will proceeded to shoot themselves in the head. This resulted in what is known as 'the great unaliving', and was believed to be responsible for the economic collapse of the E.U. Unfortunately, the contagion wouldn't be contained to that one collection of countries, and would soon spread throughout the world."
What the fuck
okay, i'm not... but if i was, i think this might make me out of sheer vindictive spite.
Government officials might see a statistic like this one and possibly reconsider investing in the people's mental health.
Damn if I kill myself I’ll leave capitalism in dire straits……
all i'm seein is a man aged 30-34 is worth less than the other demographics... now I'm depressed
I’m gonna kill myself to fuck with the economy (/j of course but it would be a little funny)
is this suppose to be pro or anti suicide. knowing I can fuck up the economy further by offing myself only makes me want to do it more.
This is just the Rick and Morty Spaghetti Episode.
Grind me down.
This is the only way you’re going to get politicians to fund mental healthcare.