Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals

by Tyler Cowen

Past some margin, an overly generous level of wealth transfer harms economic growth. Many people end up working less, or working less hard, and the associated higher tax rates discourage entrepreneurship and can lead to economic stasis.

Very vaguely put. At least needs references

So no, it is unlikely that measures of replacement cost are the correct way to value a human life.

To put it more concretely, today in the United States we are spending too much on the elderly and not enough on the young.

So we cannot always trust our innate programming and response mechanisms.

These mechanisms may have been adaptive in hunter-gatherer societies, but they are suddenly more costly in a flourishing civilization with large-scale political institutions, persistent long-run problems, and the ability to generate sustained and compounding economic growth.