Now You Know: Your Life is Worth $6.9 Million

It’s kind of nice to know we’re worth that much, at least. But according to the AP, it’s apparently a million clams less than we used to be worth.

The Environmental Protection Agency uses this figure as part of their cost-benefit analyses, trying to determine whether life-saving environmental measures are, you know, worth it.

Our lives used to be worth $7.8 million to the EPA, so one would assume that they worked a little harder to protect them. But they just lost about 12% of their incentive to save our asses. Some number cruncher just made it statistically cheaper for the government to toxify the planet.

The devaluation of our lives has happened gradually over the past five years (and to be honest, we could sort of tell, right?)

If it makes you feel any better, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.), head of the Environment and Public Works Committee, says she’ll introduce legislation to raise our value again.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Death, Environment, The Feds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.