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What Happens When the Average Lifespan is 150 Years?
First time accepted submitter Macgrrl writes "It was reported today in The Age newspaper that scientists believe they will have a drug within the next 5-10 years that will extend the average human lifespan to 150 years. Given the retirement age is 65, that would give you an extra 85 years, meaning you would probably have to extend the average working life to 100 or 120 years to prevent the economy becoming totally unbalanced and pensions running out. That assumes that the life extension is all 'good years', and not a prolonged period of dementia and physical decline. Would you want to live to 150? What do you see as being the most likely issues and what do you think you would do with all the extra years?"
I'd spend all my time hitting those 80 year old cheerleaders!
I think I would spend the next 165 years practising addition
When the average age is 150 the average speed limit will be 15mph.
The weather channel will become a 3D channel on cable and out perform the major networks.
Dick Clark will be hosting New Year shows still.
Starbucks will be sold to a bingo-chain.
No one will ever be able to walk on anyone elses lawn ever again.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The wear and tear on the body is such that even if you can increase the lifespan to a theoretical 150 years you wouldnt be very healthy for the last 90 or so years. You also need something that adresses the wear on the body. Our hearts arent made for 150 years of use and we build up various plaques and toxins in our bodies as time goes by. Even if we all lived under controlled and ideal circumstances the last seven decades would be pretty much seven decades of being eighty.
Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infra-red, How I hate the night.
While life expectancy has been consistently increasing in the modern era from 30 to almost 70 now, maximum life span has really not changed at all and stays at about 120 years. This true both for humans and laboratory rats, scientist are having difficulty increasing the maximum life span.
We are going to need a medical break-through in order to push 150 years, but it is a good thought experiment, I just don't see it changing dramatically this century.
What about lack of upward mobility? All my life I've been told I'm being held back because of the huge cohort of baby boomers who will eventually retire and then my generation gets to shine. Its finally starting to happen, slowly. What happens socially when the retirement age goes from 60 to 120, meaning I/we have to sit thru another 60 excruciatingly boring years?
Another problem is if you thought income inequality was bad, wait until you see balance sheet inequality. So a college degree used to mean an extra average of $25/yr income (used to, now it just means unemployment plus student loans instead of just unemployment, and the receptionist and your realtor are now required to have English degrees or MBAs). Over 40 working years that delta adds up to lets say a million bucks. Over 100 years, it adds up to 2.5 million bucks. So I'd expect the education bubble to explode upwards even more.
Another problem is no nation has more criminals than the USA. Do they get treatment? Should a 20 year old murder who got life meaning a 60 year sentence be released at 80, or not medicated so he dies at 80, or held until he's 120 or ? Another problem is the goal of the prison industrial complex is to make, say, 3% of the population felons per decade. If people only live as adults for maybe 50 years, that means 15% of the population dies after being imprisoned and they never work inside the legit economy again. What happens when people live to 150, that means 45% of the population gets felonized.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I would do my best to stay healthy and hope for medicine and robotics to improve so any organ that fails can be replaced.
Then 100 years from now, in the year 2111 someone will come up with a way to get our lifespan up to 250.
Why die at all when we can continue to live in a robot-body that for all practical purposes is indistinguishable from our current body ?
European Linux user, living in Antwerp
But what would those people be doing?
We already have a problem in the US where older workers aren't retiring because the economy is so bad. This means fewer jobs being opened up for young workers fresh out of college. And given that the unemployment rate is high and the labor force participation rate has declined, I think we're looking at a future with fewer jobs per capita than we have now. Combine the effects of increased productivity gains, advances in automation, and the offshoring of both industrial and knowledge jobs, and you have a recipe for massive unemployment. Extend the human lifespan by several decades and you've made the problem worse, not better. We're talking about a massive oversupply of labor, which will drive wages down, harm living standards, and take a labor market that's already cutthroat competitive and make it even worse.
It's not that extending human lifespans is a bad goal--it could be a great thing, and for me it could mean that I still have 80% of my lifespan left! It's certainly staggering to think about. But without any kind of long-term plan to repair our economic situation, I don't see this being a boon to anyone except the wealthy who can both afford the treatment and have the financial resources to live comfortably for that long. So the average lifespan will increase dramatically but it will be distorted by those who can afford the longevity treatments. Life expectancy among the poor has remained stagnant for decades and even decreased among some minorities, I might add. This, at the same time some are talking about raising the retirement age. In effect, poor minorities would never be able to retire.
All this may seem tangential to the issue of greatly extended lifespans but we absolutely have to consider the wider socioeconomic implications of such advances. That isn't the job of science, per se, but it's definitely within the purview of sociologists, economists, and politicians. If we're about to have an even bigger retirement boom than expected (we've already got the Baby Boomers starting to retire), we should work to prepare for it now before it has consequences we haven't considered.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
I suspect that there will be a HUGE spread of inequality between the old and the young. First of all, the increased retirement age will mean it takes a lot longer for positions to open up. Young people will be stuck waiting for their turn to be a teacher or urban planner or whatever. Second, inheritances won't come at a time when they're particularly useful. Currently in western society you get an inheritance (if there is one) anywhere from the time when you're getting married to the time when your last children are going to university. The years between these two events are the years where you have some of your biggest capital expenses (wedding, buying a house, cost of having children, sending kids to uni, etc.) and inheritances tend to help with at least one of these things and reduce the financial strain on the family. Now people will get them at the age of 110 instead, which means they're going to buy a boat instead of earlier times when it would reduce financial strain. Third: compound interest. People who make sound investments at the age of 25 will be absolutely loaded by the age of 150. This in turn increases the lobbying power of old people. The AARP is already a huge lobbying force in the United States. What happens when enough old people are gazillionaires that they basically set policy (answer: I doubt it will be to the benefit of the young).
Currently, a lot of people need to continue working until age 71 in order to receive their full Social Security. That includes most Boomers who are hitting sixty right about now. You can retire with diminished benefits starting at 62. You can begin manipulating and using your 401.k at age 58.
As for me, I'd like to get to hold a grandchild or two, and then I'd be happy to move along. I was widowed (suddenly and too young) this past summer. It's gotten an interesting reaction from neighbors who are here from China to study. They're absolutely incensed that I didn't leave off working immediately and move in with one or the other of my two grown sons. Apparently my daughters in law are supposed to be taking care of me in addition to working at their regular jobs. The fact that I still have a meaningful job that brings in an income is incomprehensible to them. It's been a fascinating cultural discussion.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
^^ A hundred and fifty years of this. *Sigh*
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, except you have to throw out the fact that the average worker is several times, in some cases, orders of magnitude more efficient and productive than they were when SS was originally created. The gains came about through better technology, longer working hours for many, less vacations, doubling the workforce by adding women, etc. So, where did all the productivity go? It certainly wasn't shared, that's for sure. It's gone to support billionaires rich enough to buy entire islands and form their own countries. It's part of why unemployment keeps rising (if people are more productive, and you are over-producing, why keep them on the payroll when you aren't paying them enough to buy their own products?).
So, no, we won't HAVE TO raise the retirement age to 150. What we really need is to remodel the economic system in a way such that gains in efficiency are returned to workers, not owners. But, that means throwing out capitalism. Once that happens, things will become even MORE efficient, by leaps and bounds. Who would stay at work 4 hours if they could get it done in two? Right now, we incentivize people to be inefficient and many of them oblige us by dragging out a couple of hours of work into an 8 hour day. No one dares to do anything about it on a large scale, because people in power love capitalism, and a 50% unemployment rate would cause massive riots. So, they allow the rabble to keep themselves busy for 8-10 hours a day, so that they are too exhausted to get into trouble. Even with all that artificial inflation of work hours we still have problems finding enough "work" for everyone.