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Writer's pictureKurt Killen

What Is The Value of Human Life?!


Can you imagine living in a world where human life has a price on it? Well, we do! It's used in insurance for many reasons, but let me name a few.


I searched 'insurance value of a human life' if you want to see what comes up. Wikipedia asked me for more money, so many causes, so little time.


Oh, we are at 8 billion people on the planet by the way. I checked. Worldometer dot org was down. I had to check a US based site and yup, 8 billion. But the last time I checked, the counter was spinning wildly out of control. Today it was clicking. By clicking I mean moving along at a pace. Not the pace of a hare but maybe a swimming turtle - against the waves. So 8 billion people! Just before we head down the incorrect rabbit hole that I wanted to discuss with everyone, let's go back to the value of a life.


'The value of a life is the economic value used to quantify the benefit of avoiding a fatality. It is also referred to the cost of life, value of preventing a fatality, and value of a statistical life' - Wikipedia.


I also discovered a new site called Wikimedia! (Focus man, cripes). Anyway, a life's value varies wildly around the world, but insurance plans can go from 50k US to millions. Lives it is said, have more value in a Western country than other countries, well lah de dah. Your value may also decrease over time as you age and become obsolete, aka - economically unproductive.


So 8 billion human breathing beings x $50k insurance value = $402 trillion worth of human resources. Let's compare that to productivity. Say the average income per person is $50k (that is high) x 40 good years of working and assume that about 40% of human lives earn that (excluding kids, Nana's and the disabled like my Painters). This means we can produce 6400 billion dollars in that time. Thats 6.4 trillion dollars. May I suggest, we may simply be economic material for rich people. The biggest problem they face is the strain on resources, not human but ecological.


If you could work out a way to outdistance your competition (other rich people) while maintaining sales and decrease the population... 'Well hell, even more for me, they say.'


So you see, much to my dismay, there are, near as I can tell, about 4 trillionaires on the planet. Which means, the game is nearly over where you can believe in anyone running our countries other than that money.


Keep up. If 6.4 trillion dollars is earned every 40 years (how much do you get to keep? None.) and the value of a life is a million in an insurance claim but decreases over time, then how are you valued? And he who holds the gold makes the rules, how long before none, or practically none of us, relative to the richest have any value whatsoever beyond our economic use?


As they said about Connor Bedard, the rookie hockey player who lit it up when he entered the National Hockey League, 'it's Connor's World and we are just living in it.' Except, as you all know, we will likely not even know that person's identity. But there will be signs! Just thoughts.


Thank-you for reading. Hug your families. Follow us for more blogs.


We are a Social Enterprise that puts individuals overcoming a brain injury or mental health issue into careers as Painters, like we did. We collaborate with other companies if we can find them, or else we manage training and live support to complete their own jobs.


Team up for a friend and buy a BOGO gift card. Get two months for one or four months for the price of two.

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