The government says we can put a value Life.
Posted on: July 12, 2008 9:10 am
I recently read this article and was appalled that there is even a way to put value on an Americans life. So I thought I would get your opinions.
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Posted on: July 12, 2008 9:11 am
The government says we can put a value Life.By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Fri Jul 11, 2:14 AM ET WASHINGTON - It's not just the American dollar that's losing value. A government agency has decided that an American life isn't worth what it used to be. ADVERTISEMENT The "value of a statistical life" is $6.9 million in today's dollars, the Environmental Protection Agency reckoned in May — a drop of nearly $1 million from just five years ago. The Associated Press discovered the change after a review of cost-benefit analyses over more than a dozen years. Though it may seem like a harmless bureaucratic recalculation, the devaluation has real consequences. When drawing up regulations, government agencies put a value on human life and then weigh the costs versus the lifesaving benefits of a proposed rule. The less a life is worth to the government, the less the need for a regulation, such as tighter restrictions on pollution. Consider, for example, a hypothetical regulati |