How many bucks is a human life worth?6.1 million?

H. Armstrong Roberts



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THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
The Human Factor
By JIM HOLT

Published: March 28, 2004


ow much is your life worth to you? On the face of it, that's an idiotic question. No amount of money could compensate you for the loss of your life, for the simple reason that the money would be no good to you if you were dead. And you might feel, for different reasons, that the dollar value of the lives of your spouse or children -- or even a stranger living on the other side of the country -- is also infinite. No one should be knowingly sacrificed for a sum of money: that's what we mean when we say that human life is priceless.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/28/magazine/28WWLN.html
But the government set a price for it four years ago: $6.1 million. That's the figure the Environmental Protection Agency came up with when it was trying to decide how far to go in removing arsenic from drinking water. Arsenic can cause diseases, like bladder cancer, that will predictably kill a certain number of people. But reducing the arsenic in water gets more and more expensive as the poison levels approach zero. How many dollars should be spent to save one ''statistical life''? The answer, reasoned the people at the E.P.A., depends on how much that life is worth. And they're not the only ones doing such calculations. The Department of Transportation also puts a price tag on a human life when deciding which road improvements are worth making, although it's the rather more modest one of $3 million
(snip)
Poorer people, for whom an extra dollar is highly valuable, will take less compensation for facing danger. Thus, cost-benefit analysis tells us it is more efficient to locate toxic waste dumps near poorer neighborhoods.
This is insane.Poison our poor.I guess this is *s new entitlement program.Poison the poor and their offspring ,, problem solved.

or thereabouts. Sounds like we should all file suit and name every one of these legislators who are trying to take away the right I currently have.(it's just not recognized legally)

Hmmm, helluva class action suit. Actually, the str8 folks could join in as a certain brand of religion is codified into the Constitution.. One of the Repugs talking points is that it's all about the money, maybe it should be. Lot cheaper to give me a tax break!