convergence axioms leading from prediction to probable outcome. More than that, continuance of the 10:1 ratio through the last day tends to confirm that no maintenance consumption is recovered alongside human depreciation. If it were,
age-wage profiles show that it would have to hold the same 10:1 ratio throughout.
Exhaust Pay
The present value and maximand truisms affirm that all including human depreciation is expected to be recovered in positive cash flow. Positive cash flow is transfer out plus exhaust. In human capital it is pay less plowback. Might some human depreciation be realized in exhaust? I thought all was when | also thought maintenance consumption was recovered in pay and work products. The boss and secretary parable turned my thinking around on that. But it doesn’t follow that none
is.
Some pretty clearly is. ] argued that even suicide expresses the maximand rule. Deliberate self-maiming exists and expresses it again. Just as Citizen Kane destroyed his showcases because the fit was on him, some destroy their bodies. So long as the
destruction is intended and compos mentis, it counts as economic behavior.
Are there sunnier examples? What about voluntary unpaid vacations and voluntary retirements? What if the boss and her secretary enter convents in mid-career? These choices surrender human capital on the face of things because they surrender literal future pay. But the psychic pay of leisure makes up for it. Otherwise we would
have stayed on the job track.
Then some human depreciation is exhaust. Call the psychic pay for it “exhaust pay”. It seems mercifully small in the big picture. I tend to neglect it in modeling for that reason, just as with invested consumption after full-time job entry. But I claimed logical certitude as to expected recovery of human depreciation in pay. I’d better not leave loopholes. There are none. Some of the pay is psychic, and some of the tastes
satisfied are not pretty.
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