a tough question.... but lets explain it...

many things have a curve of less return for every 1 more euro put in.

say protection against flooding... you can never have 100% chance it never happens.
you can only have it 1 in 100 year 1 in 1000 year and so on.. each with their own price for the infrastructure that needs to be made

similairly for medical treatment.. even with a collective healthcare system we must make choices.. for some procesures are per life safed much more expensive than another..

and than we also need to factor in "years of life' as 10 old people dying is less loss of life than 1 baby.
one had still 80+ years of life ahead of it.. those other 10 only 5 years each.. thus those 10 old people dying to safe the one baby is a neth gain.

likewise measures that extend the life expentency even with merely 1 week for large groups of people add a massive amount of years of life and measures that do the reverse have a massive negative effect

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if you look at policies trough the eyes of "how much year of life does the taxation take away, and how much years does the taxation add"

you see that seeing them trough "what adds the most years of life" makes by far the most sence.. and every time policy makers defer from this for example cause of "the wane of the day issue" you see things turn to the worse..

example.. during covid.. where hundreds of millions of years of life were lost by the measures to save a much smaller number of years..
had they done nothing more old people would have died but life expentacy and economy would be better meaning we now have lost more life than gained by the measures..

I tell you most western nations place the value of a life at about 3000 euro per year of life lost
but how much exactly does ofcourse matter how wealthy the nation is...

well now how this translate to policies.

say a request comes in.. the ♥♥♥♥♥ are not upto code.. they now are assesed to be able to break 1 in 3000 years instead of 1 in 100000 years
it would take 10 billion to fix them back up to code... and than 100 million a year to keep them there...
is this worth it..
->
well lets calculate this.. lets say his ♥♥♥♥ protects 5 million people against drowning.. and we can realsticly presume they all die if it breaks..
**this group of people has an average age of 42 and an average life expentancy of 82.
meaning the potential loss is 5 million x (82-42) = 200 million years of life lost.
this reflects a value of 3000 euro per year of life x 200 million = 600 billion euro
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at currennt rate the chance of this loss is 1 in 30 thousand years.
600 billion / 3 thousand = 200 million a year
thats what were now spending on this disaster
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upto code we would only be spending
600 billion / 100 thousand = 6 million a year
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so the savings would be 194 million a year by making this expense.
that means we would have a surpluss of 94 million after coverting the maintenance.

ofcourse that 10 billion upfront would be an issue.. if we got it.. it is a no brainer build the ♥♥♥♥... 10 billion once / 94 permanent = we go in the green after 106 years...

it will be one generation takes the hit of living a little shorter by having to pay for this cost.. so that all future generations have more life... which would be 10 billion extra taxes on those who live right now... which would have the temporal effect of this generation living 8 months less life expentancy... to gain the permanent effect for all future ones to live 3 days longer.
-> which a noble society would do.. always pass it forward to the next generation blessed is a country where people plant trees which fruits they know they will never taste..

in practice it will be "can we increase the national debt by 10 billion at less than 94 million permanent increase to our debt obligations?
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we pay 1.6% interest on our national debt currently..
well than.. that 10 billion thus would cause 160 million in debt.. thats more than the 94 million gain.....

thus despite the clear deplorable state of the ♥♥♥♥... the investment is DENIED... in such a case.

thus it depends... often also.. are we willing to take ourself a loss for those in the future.. if policies pass or not..