UPDATE:
While the man who seems to balance the value of the life of U.S. resident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi against the value of a potential arms sale appeared very subdued, two other strongmenn who have actually ordered the killing of journalists (and many others) were ebullient at the G-20 in Buenos Aires.
As can be seen in this video, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) were whooping it up, slapping hands and smiling ear-to-ear.
It was a striking display of locker-room camaraderie between the two vilified tough guys — Putin, the former KGB agent who has been Russia’s supreme leader for just shy of two decades, and the young monarch who, according to Western and Turkish intelligence, ordered the killing and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Politico adds, “In a twist, Trump, who has long admired powerful authoritarian leaders, finds himself shunning the very men that he has praised for exuding strength… White House officials have been at pains to fill the president’s schedule to limit the possibility of a lengthy interaction with Putin or MBS.”
“What a wicked web we weave when we practice to deceive”…and obfuscate, seems very appropriate here.
Original Post:
Economists, social and political scientists, health insurance experts and even some government agencies have from time to time attempted to put a monetary value on a human life.
While of course, ethically, no price can ever be put on a human life, those whose “job” it is to do so come up with the most arduous and complex justifications, cost-benefit analyses, and names for such concepts – such as the “cost of life,” the “value of preventing a fatality,” the “implied cost of averting a fatality,” the “value of a statistical life,” or VSL.
Wikipedia, for example, defines the value of life as “an economic value used to quantify the benefit of avoiding a fatality…the marginal cost of death prevention in a certain class of circumstances… [which] in many studies…also includes the quality of life, the expected life time remaining, as well as the earning potential of a given person…”
In its most recent Departmental Guidance on the “Treatment of the Value of Preventing Fatalities and Injuries in Preparing Economic Analyses,” the U.S. Department of Transportation, (DOT), “taking into account both the changes in prices and changes in real income,” increases the VSL (“the value of a statistical life) to $9.6 million.
In the same memo, DOT hastens to add, “This conventional terminology [VSL] has often provoked misunderstanding on the part of both the public and decision-makers. What is involved is not the valuation of life as such, but the valuation of reductions in risks.”
Thanks for making that clear, DOT.
Also, thanks for increasing the value of a statistical human life – you know, inflation and all that.
In 2010, DOT had pegged the value of a life at around $6 million. The Environmental Protection Agency divined the value of a life to be $9.1 million and the Food and Drug Administration guessed it to be $7.9 million.
That is much, much better than the estimated $160 worth of chemicals some scientists have estimated the chemicals in a human body are worth.
Back in 2008, TIME Magazine wrote “In theory, a year of human life is priceless. In reality, it’s worth $50,000.”
This figure is quizzically based on insurance companies’ calculations that – at the time – “to make a treatment worth its cost, it must guarantee one year of ‘quality life’ for $50,000 or less…”
TIME added that “Stanford economists had demonstrated that the average value of a year of quality human life is actually closer to about $129,000.” This figure was arrived at using dialysis costs, benefits and “quality of life” as benchmarks. “Considering both inflation and new technologies in dialysis, they arrived at $129,000 as a more appropriate threshold for deciding coverage,” TIME says.
The methods, sometimes “machinations,” used to come up with a price for a human life, or for the “value of a statistical life,” are way beyond this author’s grasp.
For example, Matthew Sedacca, in “Nautilus,” explains how companies in the tobacco industry “value people’s lives mostly according to profit and end up with a figure even smaller than the Atlanta kidnappers.'”
Sedacca is referring to the amount ($100,000) that a group of kidnappers in Atlanta demanded in exchange for a woman’s life and to a 2013 paper by Stanford historian Robert Proctor where the historian concludes that the value of a human life to a cigarette manufacturer is about $10,000.
At the top pf this piece, I wrote, “…of course, ethically, no price can ever be put on a human life.”
Regardless of hundreds of studies, analyses, models and processes that attempt to place a value (statistical, financial, economic or otherwise) on a human life, no dollar figure will ever be ethically or morally appropriate or acceptable, no matter how high the number, no matter how highly placed the person trying to sweep the value of a human life under the rug because of some thirty pieces of silver.
Not this post, not a thousand words can more clearly, more poignantly depict such lack of morals and ethics at the highest levels than a cartoon by Monty Wolverton, “Presidential Ethics (if any)” — lead image — illustrating how Trump balances the value of the life of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi against “a partly aspirational $110 billion arms deal” with Saudi Arabia.
That is exactly what the president of the United States is doing in the case of the despicable and horrific murder of the Washington Post journalist, notwithstanding reports by his own Intelligence Agencies, notwithstanding his own CIA Director’s listening to the tapes of the murder and briefing the president multiple times…
When the Foreign Minister of a nation that is not a paragon of human rights says, “This is not a correct approach. Not everything is about money. This is a murder. Our eyes should be blind to money,” those who condone or turn a blind eye to the U.S. president’s behavior (including the U.S. Secretary of State with his “mendacious pro-Saudi propaganda”) must bow their heads in shame
