Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

What the government thinks of you

The government has decided that a human life is worth substantially less money than it was five years ago. Note that money is the only worth they seem to recognize. They are admitting openly that they care less about whether you continue to live. The newsbit popped up in my email, forwarded by a friend from a list called waynepeace.

What Your Government Thinks You're Worth
If you didn't see this little item in this morning's paper....In its entirety:

A government agency has decided that an American life isn't worth what it used to be.
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.
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 pullution.

Compiled from wire reports


Meanwhile, the Supreme Court tells us that companies are entitled to a "sense of fairness" regarding judgments against them, when it lowered the punitive judgment against ExxonMobil for the Valdiz oil spill. It would be nice if individual humans enjoyed the rights currently granted to companies.

Crime, Punishment and ExxonMobil
By Robert Weissman
July 11, 2008

Last month witnessed the extraordinary contrast of two perspectives on crime, punishment and ExxonMobil.

Just two days after leading climate change scientist James Hansen told the U.S. Congress that he believed ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel company CEOs "should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature" for their role in delaying a serious global response to climate change, the U.S. Supreme Court decreed that a $2.5 billion punitive judgment against Exxon for the Valdez oil spill disaster denied the company the "sense of fairness" to which it is entitled.
Tags: environment, news, politics
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  • 2 comments
wyrmwwd

wyrmwwd

July 13 2008, 16:44:34 UTC 12 years ago

I have definitely noticed this, too. I didn't know about the numbers, but one can see this shift in attitude.
ysabetwordsmith

ysabetwordsmith

July 13 2008, 16:54:17 UTC 12 years ago

The shift in attitude was obvious. I'm a little startled that they codified it in a way that makes plausible deniability difficult. Most people are queasy about putting a dollar value on a human life, and rightly so. But everyone who is not directly profiting from it will be offended by the idea of lowering the financial value of a human life.