The Value of a Human Life

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Isgrimnur
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The Value of a Human Life

Post by Isgrimnur »

NPR would have us believe that federal governments value every citizen at $10M. And this was at the beginning of the pandemic.
Epidemiologists said shutting down the economy could save 1 to 2 million lives. So 1 million lives saved at $10 million each, that's $10 trillion. That's about half of the U.S. GDP in a year.
Obviously, recent events, and indeed, much of the pandemic, has demonstrated to me that those in power, be it political or economic, do not value the lives of citizens and workers at anything close to that. We're sitting at 819K deaths, and 1M is going to get here by next summer.

Back in 2008, Time says it's only $129k. Still too high, I think.

As a society, we are making movers to keep the economy going in the short term, quarterly to yearly, and willingly sacrificing lives that would generate more in economic benefits what would have remained in their lifetime.

And that's not even getting into the populace's view of the value of people. We have people that are willing to let people die rather than face a tax increase to prevent it.

I don't really have an endpoint to this rant, other than to say that we have failed as a society to value anything of a community except what we can extract from it.
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Drazzil
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Re: The Value of a Human Life

Post by Drazzil »

Isgrimnur wrote: Wed Dec 29, 2021 12:21 am NPR would have us believe that federal governments value every citizen at $10M. And this was at the beginning of the pandemic.
Epidemiologists said shutting down the economy could save 1 to 2 million lives. So 1 million lives saved at $10 million each, that's $10 trillion. That's about half of the U.S. GDP in a year.
Obviously, recent events, and indeed, much of the pandemic, has demonstrated to me that those in power, be it political or economic, do not value the lives of citizens and workers at anything close to that. We're sitting at 819K deaths, and 1M is going to get here by next summer.

Back in 2008, Time says it's only $129k. Still too high, I think.

As a society, we are making movers to keep the economy going in the short term, quarterly to yearly, and willingly sacrificing lives that would generate more in economic benefits what would have remained in their lifetime.

And that's not even getting into the populace's view of the value of people. We have people that are willing to let people die rather than face a tax increase to prevent it.

I don't really have an endpoint to this rant, other than to say that we have failed as a society to value anything of a community except what we can extract from it.
Welcome to capitalism. Our entire society is built around the next quarter. It's almost as if we need to legally decide that corporations are allowed to do things besides maximize immediate shareholder value at the cost of everything else before we can move forward to actually attaching any meaningful dollar amount on a human life.

That being said. That'll never happen. Humanity is too polarized now. We're a herd animal denying the herd part. I myself am guilty of this. There are people I met today in the course of retail I wouldn't spend literally a penny of my own money to save their life if they were on fire in the parking lot.

So. Yeah. We're in deep trouble.
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LawBeefaroni
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Re: The Value of a Human Life

Post by LawBeefaroni »

I don't know of any society that doesn't/didn't put a value on human life.
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Jaymann
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Re: The Value of a Human Life

Post by Jaymann »

About a hundred dollars.
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Daehawk
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Re: The Value of a Human Life

Post by Daehawk »

Whatever the going death tax rate is now days.
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Re: The Value of a Human Life

Post by malchior »

I think the mechanism at play in the NPR piece is unfortunately outdated. That assumes the bureaucracy does some data exercise and presents options to the political class to make a risk based decision. It'd be better if it worked that way still. Instead, I think if you looked under the cover you'd more see we have political appointees from an elite population making individual decisions and then getting the bureaucracy to paper it over for them. They aren't even doing a valuation. It's a 19th century class system mentality with a fresh modern coat of paint.
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