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Yeah. All else equal, I'd rather have a taller child. If I could have invested $1M in the S&P 500 at birth or be seven feet tall, I'd take the height.


7 feet is in the range where you'll encounter daily inconveniences for being tall - from having difficulty finding clothes and shoes that fit, to always having to duck your head, to having feet always sticking off the end of the bed, to having to squash in to bus, plane and car seats - or you'll have to pay a premium to avoid such things.

I'm 6'3 and still get that to some degree. I like being this tall, but I think 6'1 or 6'2 are probably around the ideal height to reap the benefits of being tall, without being too affected by the drawbacks.


This would likely be largely dependent on your birthdate. At various eras, the structure of NBA contracts and the collective bargaining agreement would have a large impact on your expected earnings. There's a window of time in which virtually anyone seven feet or over who could walk and chew bubblegum at the same time could have a very high chance of earning serious money as an NBA center, even with minimal skills[1]. If you came of age in the salad days of ridiculous rookie contracts, after the NBA had exploded in popularity and TV and advertising money ballooned salaries, and the newer, cheaper, rookie contract scales had yet to come into effect, this very well could be valid tradeoff.

[1] http://www.truthaboutit.net/2012/05/true-or-false-half-of-al...


You must seriously value being tall. I wouldn't mind being 5ft tall with 25 million in my bank account.

edit: bad math not 2.5 billion, still 25 million is not bad, I take it in exchange of 1 foot 7in.




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