Thursday, January 17, 2013

"If It Just Saves One Life"

Permit me to go out on a limb here and point out something that is factual, but politically incorrect.

Oh, I know, I know.  How dare I point out truth when people's feeeeeeeelinnnnnzzzzz are at stake, but I'm frankly too damn tired and too much of an adult to care.  So the rest of you can suck it up or go to hell.

What is the value of a human life?

Many years ago when I was stupid and young, I tolerated dating this evil woman because she was hot and gorgeous.  She also happened to be in insurance and told me one time that significant moral issues arose when it came to instances of paying out life insurance.

Specifically, what precisely is the value of a human life?

Well, actually, it depends.  And actuaries have gone to great lengths to develop formulae and algorithms to determine it.

If you're a surgeon insurance companies pay out more in your death because obviously you are going to produce more and contribute more to society than an "aspiring rap artist."

If you're an aspiring rap artist, then chances are you have a negative NPV because you're most likely engaged in thuggery, parasiting off of the taxpayer, the drug trade, and mayhaps, even murdering other people.  Besides, chances are the concept of investing in something like "life insurance" wouldn't even occur to you.

But in general she said the value of a human life, economically, was roughly $1 million.

This was back in the 90's and a recent search on teh interwebz shows it to be around $2 million.

That's the facts Jack.

Each person produces economically about $2 million.

Now I do not wish to become so callous or macabre, but this should be mathematical proof than any time some whinny leftist says,

"If it just saves one life, then it's worth it!"

Uh, actually, no it's not, and I'll prove it to you in the most politically incorrect way possible.

26 kids/people died unnecessarily and tragically at the Connecticut shooting.  You take 26 people and multiply it by $2 million, you get $52 million.  With Barack Hussein Obama's recent proposal to spend another $500 million, that means an economic loss of $448 million to the taxpayer.  And if we're supposed to believe the leftist tripe "if it just saves one life" then each person's life is worth $500 million.

So let's do some simple math, shall we?

310 million Americans times $500 million dollars equals...

$150 QUINTILLION.

That is precisely 10,000 times (if I counted the zeroes correctly) THE SIZE OF OUR GDP.

In other words the math and economics just plain doesn't add up.

You sadly cannot tender the argument, "if it just saves one life, then it's worth it" because if you did you would be ENSLAVING THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE COUNTRY TO TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF SERVITUDE.

You wouldn't just merely be taking a person's life away, you would be taking their life away A MILLION TIMES OVER.

I like to refer to this as "economic murder"...just 10,000 times over.

Leftists and liberals have no problem forcing you to work 14 years of your life to support other people.  You don't care about it of course because we have a weekly payroll tax and you never stop to calculate how much of your finite life you spend working to pay the taxes to pay for other people to live.  But if you did take the time to turn off American Idol and calculate your servitude, you'd find that about a good third of your working life is spent slaving away for other people.  That right there is unacceptable, but when a mindless, pissant, worthless liberal tenders the argument,

"If it would just save one life"

then they are saying you not only need to pay more than 33% of your working life, but

1.  Increase your life expectancy by 10,000 fold
2.  Dedicate your entire production and work to other people
or
3.  Increase your production by 10,000 fold AND still forfeit all of it to taxes

In other words their entire argument is impossible bunk and is a sure fire sign you're dealing with (in the case of a politician) an intellectually dishonest person or (in the case of a math-impaired trophy wife soccer mom who just "thinks of the chillllldreeeennnn") an idiot.

Sorry to be blunt, but what are you going to do about it?  It's mathematically true.  Us adults are sick of your naivety, we're sick of your idiocy and ignorance costing us and resulting in ineffective policies, and we're not tolerating childish arguments anymore.  File you're complaints with the Department of Reality.

21 comments:

Erasmus said...

If liberals want to save lives, that's a noble goal. I wish them the best in using their own resources and time to that end.

But that's not what they want, is it? They want to use *my* money and *my* time to possibly, maybe save a life. Even if it's certain to save one life , or thousands of lives, what about *my* life? If I refuse to comply with their plan, they will send armed thugs with guns, break down my door and put me in a cage. And if I resist they will shoot me down.

Liberals think they can play God and decide who gets to live and who gets to die and whose freedoms get trampled on to achieve their goals.

Anonymous said...

I agree entirely with your premise, but I think your math is flawed. Obama proposed $500 million regarding the deaths of 26 people. So, rather than multiplying $500 million times the entire citizenry (310 million, approx), shouldn't you divide the citizenry by 26, then multiply? (approx. 12 million x $500 million= 5,961,538,461,538,461). 6 quadrillion is much more manageable than 150 quadrillion. No decline! We're all saved!

Anonymous said...

Let's view it from the other perspective.

What is the VALUE, in dollars, of liberty ?

Unknown said...

Left wing politics, math and economics don't really mix too well together. I am convinced. Thank you proving this.

Anonymous said...

Why are you sorry to be blunt? I'd rather have a blunt truth than a sugary lie - like the lie that they're pushing about the value of one person.

By the way, am halfway through "Enjoy the Decline" - it arrived yesterday. Very interesting parallels happening here in New Zealand.

~YB

August said...

I looked into this a long time ago, and it was $100,000.
A hundred thousand to two million within my lifetime means MUCHO inflation. We aren't that much more productive.

Anonymous said...

As Mark Levin said last week, they used this same mantra for DDT and look at how many lives it's cost.

Anonymous said...

Damn man... You keep it real.

Anonymous said...

We could save a whole lot of lives by eliminating those of the liberals. It's a win-win IMO.

The Outsider said...

While I agree with the basic point, here, the value of a life is probably higher than $2 million. The question to be asked is not, "How much is this person's life worth in the marketplace," but rather, "How much is this person's life worth to *him*."

Economists used revealed preference -- e.g., how much more do risky jobs have to pay to compensate for the chance of death, how much will people pay for safety features in their cars -- to estimate this value. The EPA publishes an estimate based on this approach, which I believe is currently something like $7 million.

So, Cappy, you're off by a factor of 3.5. Not ten-thousand years of slavery, less than three-thousand. I could do that time standing on my head.

Anonymous said...

So, if owning a gun saves just one life by enabling someone to defend himself or herself, it's worth it, right?

Unknown said...

We'll see what the progressives think the value of "saving just one life" is when the Obamacare bureaucrats start deciding on a cost / benefit basis which treatments are allowed for which ailments in which age group.

It will come in quite a way short of a $million.

Steve Adams said...

The other issue is that these stupid Obama changes won't even stop the next shooter. Like the shooters in Colorado during the Clinton assault rifle ban, they will just use something else.

Instead, $500 million times zero lives saved equals infinite cost for all of the citizens of the US. Luckily China is still lending us money, right?

Anonymous said...

I hope you take the chance to clarify some things for me. As I see it, the $500m is being used to reduce expected gun violence deaths, not as insurance to be paid out to the families of the 26 people. My reading is that even if the reduction in deaths is one person, then the cost of reduction is $500m. But to me that statement was an appeal to emotion rather than an economic argument.

I do agree there that if it only saved one life and did nothing else, the money could spent more efficiently. But on a practical view, that is not what the package will achieve, nor can we (to my knowledge) calculate how many lives it will save given once that course is taken there is no counterfactual to compare it with.

Aside from that, I do not find the single simplistic equation compelling, nor proof, given there are economic models out there that do take the other considerations into account.

It is not true that left-wing politics, math and economics do not mix. Math and economics are objective frameworks, not the slave of any political leaning. It is true that economics does lend support to a right-wing view of how the economy ought to operate, but the area law and economics can be used to assess any policy. With respect, the blog does not “prove” the three things cannot mix. You need only sample some of the law and economic literature out there.

Anonymous said...

Ok..I'll play the game..if it saves just one life..how come the left will not brook the subject of placing armed guards in schools?

Surely it would save at least one measly life if the legislation was enacted?

Kursk

S. Harvey said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD0dmRJ0oWg

On this exact subject: Milton Friedman Puts A Young Michael Moore In His Place

Reputo said...

First time I have been to your blog. It is interesting that we came to the same words to describe people who use this argument liars or idiots. I said it in the first paragraph, you said it in your last.
At What Cost?

Laughingdog said...

@ Anonymous (7:20pm)

Either your ability to exercise logic is weak, or you're being deliberately deceitful. You start by talking about gun violence deaths, and then switch to it reducing overall deaths.

There's the big lie that gun control groups continue to perpetuate. Focusing on "gun deaths" is their admission that gun control laws don't reduce murder rates or violent crime rates. At best, they just shift the tool used to kill to something else. More often, murder and violent crime rates actually go up because younger attackers know their weaker victims won't be able to defend themselves.

Gun control, or "gun violence reduction" as they call it now, has nothing to do with making any of us safer, and everything to do with exercising greater control over the unwashed masses.

Don't Work In Kansas City said...

New Gun Control Laws?

Please tell me more about how criminals observe and obey laws.

Anonymous said...

Yup, it's become a truism that if if you have one or two things associated with a justifying a law it's almost certainly a horrible legislative idea.

1. It's for the children
2. It saves just one life.

In both cases put one hand on your constitution(al rights) and the other on your wallet, because one or both are about to be stolen.

That and it's almost always a highly liberal law project.

Notice the correlation there?


Eric S. Mueller said...

I hate the "if it saves just one life" fallacy. I was complaining to a friend a while back about how hard it is to buy over the counter cold medicine anymore. He said "Yeah, but if it saves just one life, it's all worth it". I told him I don't care. If people are stupid enough to get themselves killed over NYQUIL, then to heck with them. The value of their life, in my opinion, does not exceed the value of my inconvenience.