I’m working on a freelance story right now that is disturbing my brain. Frankly, it’s creeping me out. I’m writing a business profile about a guy who’s making a million dollars a year figuring out much life is worth. I’m not sure if he’d put it that way. He seems like an okay guy, but essentially, that’s what it sounds like he does.
He’s a forensic economist and makes his living helping attorneys on both sides of the court room during wrongful death or injury cases. He’s pioneered several theories or models for how to calculate the value of someone’s life. How much money would they have made? Who depends on them, and what is that dependence worth? For example, a stay-at-home mom, according to an interview I conducted today, is generally worth in today’s dollars about $30,000 a year for all that she does around the house (at least in Missouri). I’d argue that figure should be way higher, but that’s another blog entry.
In the case of a child that has been injured as part of a malpractice case, for example, this guy estimates the likelihood that the child would have gone to college, how much they would have earned over a lifetime and how much their care will cost now over the course of say, a 75-year life span. Then he figures out what it would take in today’s dollars, invested conservatively, to generate an income to care for the child and compensate the family for the loss of a life that would have been different had the injury not occurred.
I realize that this exercise has a practical necessity. No one can be replaced by money. No one’s dreams and aspirations can be paid for so cheaply really – but there are the practical considerations. Things such as how a family would survive without a wage earner, or how parents will care for a profoundly disabled child for its entire life.
But as I’ve been doing these interviews, and learning more about the give and take that goes on between attorneys in conference rooms and court rooms during these cases – I couldn’t help but apply my own life to the factors they outlined.
My conclusion - I’m road kill.
By such standards my life would be paid for very cheaply. If there’s a product out there about to go awry, corporate America should hope it does so while I’m using it.
I have no dependents. I have a modest income. I have a relatively short life expectancy. (Not that I don’t fully plan to require geriatric care one day.) It would be arguable as to who could even bring a claim in court that they were damaged should I wrongfully meet my demise.
My life is cheap. By such measures on a balance sheet you might even say expendable.
Thank God that life isn’t measured based on economics in heaven.
There’s a line in a contemporary Christian song I hear on the radio over and over (but the name escapes me right now). The line goes, “Nothing is small when God is in it.”
Someday when I’ve gone to heaven I hope that there will be lots of crying and tears and even whaling. None of this modest, “Don’t cry for me” stuff for me. If I’m missed, not for the value of my check book, but for the ways I’ve touched the people that have blessed my life, than my life will have been well spent.
For many of us with Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome issues of mortality often swirl around our existence. Some of us talk about them openly, while others never do. But I can tell you from many a late night phone call with a fellow HPS’er – many of us consider to ourselves what our lives have been worth. Have they been spent well? Did we make any impact on the world?
Sometimes we even compare ourselves to one another, which is dangerous territory. We look at someone who’s made more money than we have, or had more professional success and wonder why we didn’t achieve that? What’s wrong with us? Did we invest our lives as wisely?
I once had a sociology professor that said, “All people are of equal value, but all people are not equal.”
I think it’s true.
We’ve all had such different lives. Some of us have been more impacted by health challenges than others. Some of us grew up with more resources than others. Some of us had better access to tools to deal with our vision problems than others. Some of us had better families than others, or better educations, or better connections.
In the end, it’s not how much money we made. It’s not how famous we were, or how rich or how many awards adorn our walls.
To me, it comes down to what we did with what we were given. Did we choose to live a life that enriched and helped others? Did we choose to focus on the things we could offer the world, rather than the things we’d never have to give? And when we leave this world, will anyone notice we’ve gone?
So no, I don’t think my life is cheap. Still, I can’t help but be creeped out that somewhere tomorrow there will be a bunch of people in some conference room haggling over the value of someone’s life and probably never once considering their greatest assets in the equation.
He’s a forensic economist and makes his living helping attorneys on both sides of the court room during wrongful death or injury cases. He’s pioneered several theories or models for how to calculate the value of someone’s life. How much money would they have made? Who depends on them, and what is that dependence worth? For example, a stay-at-home mom, according to an interview I conducted today, is generally worth in today’s dollars about $30,000 a year for all that she does around the house (at least in Missouri). I’d argue that figure should be way higher, but that’s another blog entry.
In the case of a child that has been injured as part of a malpractice case, for example, this guy estimates the likelihood that the child would have gone to college, how much they would have earned over a lifetime and how much their care will cost now over the course of say, a 75-year life span. Then he figures out what it would take in today’s dollars, invested conservatively, to generate an income to care for the child and compensate the family for the loss of a life that would have been different had the injury not occurred.
I realize that this exercise has a practical necessity. No one can be replaced by money. No one’s dreams and aspirations can be paid for so cheaply really – but there are the practical considerations. Things such as how a family would survive without a wage earner, or how parents will care for a profoundly disabled child for its entire life.
But as I’ve been doing these interviews, and learning more about the give and take that goes on between attorneys in conference rooms and court rooms during these cases – I couldn’t help but apply my own life to the factors they outlined.
My conclusion - I’m road kill.
By such standards my life would be paid for very cheaply. If there’s a product out there about to go awry, corporate America should hope it does so while I’m using it.
I have no dependents. I have a modest income. I have a relatively short life expectancy. (Not that I don’t fully plan to require geriatric care one day.) It would be arguable as to who could even bring a claim in court that they were damaged should I wrongfully meet my demise.
My life is cheap. By such measures on a balance sheet you might even say expendable.
Thank God that life isn’t measured based on economics in heaven.
There’s a line in a contemporary Christian song I hear on the radio over and over (but the name escapes me right now). The line goes, “Nothing is small when God is in it.”
Someday when I’ve gone to heaven I hope that there will be lots of crying and tears and even whaling. None of this modest, “Don’t cry for me” stuff for me. If I’m missed, not for the value of my check book, but for the ways I’ve touched the people that have blessed my life, than my life will have been well spent.
For many of us with Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome issues of mortality often swirl around our existence. Some of us talk about them openly, while others never do. But I can tell you from many a late night phone call with a fellow HPS’er – many of us consider to ourselves what our lives have been worth. Have they been spent well? Did we make any impact on the world?
Sometimes we even compare ourselves to one another, which is dangerous territory. We look at someone who’s made more money than we have, or had more professional success and wonder why we didn’t achieve that? What’s wrong with us? Did we invest our lives as wisely?
I once had a sociology professor that said, “All people are of equal value, but all people are not equal.”
I think it’s true.
We’ve all had such different lives. Some of us have been more impacted by health challenges than others. Some of us grew up with more resources than others. Some of us had better access to tools to deal with our vision problems than others. Some of us had better families than others, or better educations, or better connections.
In the end, it’s not how much money we made. It’s not how famous we were, or how rich or how many awards adorn our walls.
To me, it comes down to what we did with what we were given. Did we choose to live a life that enriched and helped others? Did we choose to focus on the things we could offer the world, rather than the things we’d never have to give? And when we leave this world, will anyone notice we’ve gone?
So no, I don’t think my life is cheap. Still, I can’t help but be creeped out that somewhere tomorrow there will be a bunch of people in some conference room haggling over the value of someone’s life and probably never once considering their greatest assets in the equation.
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