Mickey Z. -- World News Trust
Sept. 26, 2006 -- In the film noir classic, “The Third Man,” Orson Welles (as the supposedly dead Harry Lime) looks down from the top of a Ferris wheel and asks Joseph Cotton (as the very naïve Hollie Martins) about the people moving about on the ground... "dots" he calls 'em.
Welles poses the provocative question of just how many dots Cotton
would allow to "stop moving" if offered $20,000 for each. How might you
respond if presented with such an offer? In a world where a child
starves to death every two seconds, just how much can one miserable
life be worth? Is it obscene to talk about humans having a monetary
value? According to more than a few corporations and government
agencies, it's not obscene... it's policy.
Executive
Order No. 12,292 (signed by Ronnie Raygun in 1981) states: "Regulatory
action shall not be undertaken unless the potential benefits to society
for the regulation outweigh the potential costs to society." Before
implementing a new safety regulation, all government agencies must put
it to the cost/benefit analysis test. To figure the "benefit to
society," the agency uses statistics to estimate the number of lives
expected to be saved. As for the "cost to society," that's estimated in
dollars. Now comes the tricky part: The agency has to assign a monetary
value to each human life. Yes, you read that right. The Feds tell each
of us exactly how much we're worth. From there, the number of projected
lives saved is multiplied by the dollar value of each life and the
resulting number is compared to the expected cost of implementing the
regulation. Then the economically based decision is made. (The going
rate for one slightly used human fluctuates from agency to agency.)
As
for the corporate world, insurance companies customarily settle
wrongful-death suits by evaluating the deceased's "earning power." New
York State law, for example, allows for a settlement in a
wrongful-death case based on either economic loss or pain and suffering
prior to death. In other words, if you go rather quickly in a car crash
and you don't have much in the way of earning potential... well, you
know the rest.
For
people with disabilities, the court will generously take into account
any household chores you do (or did). A professional economist will be
hired to equate a dollar amount to each domestic duty.
For a minor, however, you can count on a minimal amount of money based on the so-called "sympathy factor."
Middle-
to upper-class children born of educated parents are "worth" more
because of the assumption that they'll grow up to be productive and
educated members of the middle to upper classes.
Lastly,
staying single can actually enhance your disposable status. Anyone who
is not married and dies a wrongful-death faces the legal reality that
any ensuing loss of income is considered to not harm anyone... thus
resulting in a meager settlement. Simply put, when looking for a
bargain in the human life market, a single, poverty-level minor with a
disability can be had for a song.
I
guess we're supposed to come away from this morbid exercise with a
whole new perspective on life and death and all that. Me, I'll go back
to where I started, Harry Lime who proposes: "The dead are better off
dead" (and he soon gets the chance to find out for himself).
***
Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.
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