The Tao of heaven is to take from those who have too much

       And give to those who do not have enough.

Man's way is different.

He takes from those who do not have enough

        To give to those who already have too much.

What man has more than enough and gives it to the world?

Only the man of Tao.

                                (Tao Te Ching C-77)

Even someone as ill educated, ill slated as a national leader and ill suited for any decent debate can come up with garbage that can actually be translated into real issues. It was certainly accidental since she has no real purpose in life except to make money as fast as possible. 

Former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin defended her claim that the Democratic health care proposal would create "death panels" and attacked President Obama in a long statement Wednesday night.

Yesterday President Obama responded to my statement that Democratic health care proposals would lead to rationed care; that the sick, the elderly, and the disabled would suffer the most under such rationing; and that under such a system these "unproductive" members of society could face the prospect of government bureaucrats determining whether they deserve health care. [...]

Now this is all a lie of course. But it brings up a real issue concerning the value of human life in general as well as the specific value of a human life.

Before I discuss the opinions of the experts we must admit that we as a society make this value judgment every day.

I never forgot when I was confronted with the fact that although some 58,000 of our soldiers died in a war longer than a full decade; we had been losing that number every year on our highways when our population was half what it is now.

Our fight against those pursuing some theory of 'international communism' made our leaders compute how much a human life was worth.

Those that understood the value of trade and industry in this country made a value judgment concerning annual deaths on our highways.

Hell, the onset of blackberries and cell phones proves that any tech change can result in deaths.  All deaths related to these objects had already been put into corporate as well as governmental calculations.

The need to evaluate the economic value of human life is important in various areas of public policy, and arises in the determination of damages in wrongful death and personal injury cases. Here are some highlights of the issues to be considered in determining the economic value of human life. The economic value of human life involves the length of life, and the net economic contribution that a person could be expected to make during his or her lifetime. Both of these areas involve issues that can be established through expert testimony.

Total net economic value involves the life expectancy, the value of the person's earnings and other economic contributions, and the valuation of the present value of a stream of future uncertain monetary amounts. http://www.behan.ws/lifevalue.htm

Actuaries come into play here. Economists also arrive at the scene. Accountants are not that far behind. Medical testimony may come to bear upon these issues.  But where might you find a group that includes these experts besides HHS for instance?  Why our friendly health insurance companies just as surely as the same group of experts  receive salaries from life insurance companies.

Now arriving at this 'human value' is not easy and the... calculation can often be controversial. After 9/11, attorney Kenneth Feinberg had the unenviable job of determining the compensation packages for families of victims based on how much the deceased would have made in their lifetimes. But it's a widely accepted metric for assessing the economic value of a life. Everyday policy decisions also put a price tag on human life. If a city is deciding whether to install a traffic light at a particular intersection, for example, it will weigh the number of lives saved against the cost of installation. Or take something more controversial: the decision to send American troops to Iraq without fully protective armor. It's not that the armor didn't exist, says Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton University. It's that in a cost-benefit analysis, the increased risk of death did not outweigh the increased cost.

There are other ways to calculate a life's worth: Look at how much people get paid to do dangerous jobs like mining or construction. Examine how much people will pay for live-saving treatments like kidney dialysis--it costs about $70,000 a year--and extrapolate. Or simply survey people: How much would they be willing to spend to extend their life by a year

So what is the value of a life? Somewhere around $5 million. It's an extremely general estimate, but it's based on a vast literature of cost-benefit analysis of the various types described above. One study published in 2004 and using labor data from 1997 puts the value of an average life at $4.7 million. Other studies by the same author, Vanderbilt University's Kip Viscusi, put it anywhere from $4 million to $10 million. Estimates based on revealed preference studies, in which Americans analyze costs and benefits in the context of their own lives, put the value of a year of life at between $100,000 and $300,000, according to Peter Neumann of the Tufts Medical Center.  http://www.slate.com/id/2224790/pagenum/all/#p2

It is just that something is missing in all of this. I mean supposedly in civil suits, when that uncle you never liked dies in a Viagra experiment where he became conflagrated with a wild goat, you must give the jury some sort of standard, a formula for arriving at the economic loss involved. And since you are the sole surviving relative, hey go for all the gusto you can. So the loss might be presented as a formula:

NFW:  Neutralized Funds Worth:  Kind of a formula for how much was in the bank at the time of decedent's death plus value of all assets including real and personal property less taxes  and other debts due.

FYI:  Foreseeable Yearly Income

YES:  Years Estimated for Survival: How long might the decedent might have survived based upon testimony concerning dietary habits, danger of his occupation, previous illnesses, handicaps ...

URA:  Unpredictable Rates of Approximation:  What might have happened to diminishe the final figures like earthquakes or floods or increases in cable rates.

COLON:   Cost of Living Ordinarily Needed: How much would  the decedent have spent over the years, from the date of actual  death through the estimated time of death.

This is otherwise known as the Plaintiff's equation:

NFW; FYI, YES URA COLON

But these types of formulas fail to grasp some other variables, some really not that tangible as well as those that are extremely tangible.  A great philosopher once said:

The Vice-Presidency is not worth a bucket of piss.

If he had only said: There will one day be a Vice-President who will not be worth a bucket of piss; thereby predicting a dick cheney.

But is it really true that dick cheney is worth a bucket of piss.

One might calculate his current value based upon NFW; FYI, YES URA COLON.

Fine, but the figure you are left with, must undergo further reductions.

I mean if you take my NFW; FYI, YES URA COLON  you would end up with a figure based upon estimated inflation rates and such of about minus fifty thousand dollars.

But dick cheney's NFW; FYI, YES URA COLON would equal about two billion dollars if you count all the off shore accounts and corporate shares etc...

We should deduct from this other variables:

Failures of leadership resulting in needless economic loss to the country.

Unreasonable transgressions against Humankind

Knowing lies leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people

Unforgivable destruction of democratically derived rights

So the new formula would look something like this:

NFW; FYI, YES URA COLON - FUK U

Or

$2,000,000,000 less $1,000,000,000,000

So dick cheney is really 'worth' about negative Nine Hundred Ninety-Eight Billion Dollars.

Worth is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.