EPA knocks $900,000 off value of a life

[Indenturedebtor]

Source: MSNBC.com

How to value life? EPA devalues its estimate
$900,000 taken off in what critics say is way to weaken pollution rules

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.

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.


...
Consider, for example, a hypothetical regulation that costs $18 billion to enforce but will prevent 2,500 deaths. At $7.8 million per person (the old figure), the lifesaving benefits outweigh the costs. But at $6.9 million per person, the rule costs more than the lives it saves, so it may not be adopted.

...
Dan Esty, a senior EPA policy official in the first Bush administration and now director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, said that "it's hard to imagine that it has other than a political motivation."

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25626294/

---

Mmmm Hmmm. What a shocker. At least this administration is consistent in telling us all to fuck off and die.

[PSPS]

1. Translation: You can live so long as we can make more money than if you die.

To be fair, this isn't new with BushCo. I first read about this kind of "accounting" in the reagan era.

[Indenturedebtor]

3. Yes but they LOWERED the amount that each person is worth

So as to make it less likely that through their "accounting" practices that new regulations would be enacted.

Please do read the article, it literally translates into 1/7 less of a chance that the EPA will do ANYTHING!

[MannyGoldstein]

2. In Medicine, A Life Is Worth $50,000 Per Year

Interventions that cost more than $50,000 per year of life saved are considered overpriced. Assuming that a person lives an average of 78 or so years, the EPA is valuing life at almost $80,000 per year.

[Indenturedebtor]

4. Please read the article. This is a different form of "accounting"

Basically what it accomplishes is to make it harder for the EPA to do ANYTHING!!!!!!!!

[Uncle Joe]

5. Does anyone else see the contradiction in these two paragraphs

of which I partially bolded?

"The the EPA figure is not based on people's earning capacity, or their potential contributions to society, or how much they are loved and needed by their friends and family — some of the factors used in insurance claims and wrongful-death lawsuits.

Instead, economists calculate the value based on what people are willing to pay to avoid certain risks, and on how much extra employers pay their workers to take on additional risks. Most of the data is drawn from payroll statistics; some comes from opinion surveys. According to the EPA, people shouldn't think of the number as a price tag on a life."

If people's earning capacity were rising, people could pay more to avoid risk and employers pay to their workers to take on additional risk would also rise as a result. Therefore it is based on earning capacity and the Cheney/Bush Administration have done a stellar job of devaluing life here in the U.S. not to mention abroad.

Their economists logic is bullshit, but if we're going to use the same logic, I believe the American People should demand pay cuts, reduction in the guaranteed lifetime of health care and generous retirement benefits at least from the Administrative, Legislative and Judicial branches as apparently the risk the American People have been taking from this corrupt, incompetent government has far exceeded the value from the money shelled out through taxation.

I'm sure legislation of this type will be in the works shortly to get in sync with the new guidelines of overall devalued American Life.

[Indenturedebtor]

6. HAH not to mention CEO salaries etc. n/t

[Uncle Joe]

7. I believe the current ratio on that is approximately 300 times that of their average employee

having gone up from 20 something times in the late 80s. Although whether the government can cap that is a separate issue, but the government can reduce their own pay and benefits to get in sync with their new reality.

[Indenturedebtor]

8. Well they just demonstrated yet again that they're ready and willing to INCREASE

CEO salaries by allowing companies to poison the rest of us more.

[Uncle Joe]

9. Well that would be a good tradeoff, cutting outrageous CEO pay

to cover the cost of saving lives from their corporate pollution.

[followthemoney]

10. Lee Iococa infamously kept the price of the Ford Pinto...

low enough to meet his target of "2000 pounds (weight) and $2000".

When the weight and price limits were threatened by a $10 plate to protect the gas tank in rear end collisions, the plate was eliminated. Fiery deaths resulted.

The calculation was that the money saved would be adequate to settle the wrongful death suits with a profit remaining.

Life is cheap in America. The cheap lives go to war and die while the precious lives enjoy the profits.

[gratuitous]

11. Life is indeed cheaper under Republicans

A little bit of truth leaks out inadvertently.

[underpants]

12. A life is worth less now, EPA says (Bush's EPA denies cooking books)

Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch

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.

When drawing up regulations, government agencies put a value on human life and then weigh the costs vs. 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.

Some environmentalists accuse the Bush administration of changing the value to avoid tougher rules -- a charge the EPA denies.

"It appears that they're cooking the books in regards to the value of life," said S. William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies.



Read more: http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news/business.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-07-11-0108.html

[Festivito]

13. THOSE DOLLARS are worth less than HALF of what they were.

We the people each go from 8 million to 3 million in a Bush and a half.

[undeterred]

14. Unless its an Iraqi child's life.

Those aren't worth anything.

[slackmaster]

15. It took me a while to get my head around the concept of putting a dollar value on life

Several years ago, when I first heard of the concept.

It actually makes sense if you want to do an objective cost/benefit analysis of doing vs. not doing something, or among a set of alternative choices.

The actual value assigned is not particularly important. The idea is to have a benchmark so that potentially useful ball-park estimates can be done.

[The2ndWheel]

16. When a form of organization, be it a corporation, or a government, becomes so big

and complex (since it represents and produces for more and more people), that they only way it can deal with you is to assign you a number, make you a statistic, become an objective other in relation to you, that's when you lose. More and more of your life becomes the play-doh of distant authority to shape into what it needs, and requires, from you, and for you, in order to increase the power it has.