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The EPA’s bargain bin

Jul 19th, 2008 by Joe Newman | 15

If you’re still brooding over how much the value of your house has sunk during the current real estate bust, cheer up. Things could be worse. Chances are, your house didn’t lose as much value as your life just did. Last week, the AP reported that the Environmental Protection Agency over the last five years has marked down the value of a human life from about $8 million to $6.9 million. Talk about depreciation.

I loved the way David A. Fahrenthold described it in his Washington Post story, “Cosmic Markdown: EPA Says Life is Worth Less“:

Someplace else, people might tell you that human life is priceless. In Washington, the federal government has appraised it like a ’96 Camaro with bad brakes.

We should note, though, that Fahrenthold reports the EPA’s new value of life is $7.22 million, a little higher than the original AP story.

Either way, it doesn’t really change the significance of the EPA’s downward sliding scale: By devaluing human life, they’ve just made it easier to argue against expenses, such as costly pollution measures, at least according to some D.C. environmental types.

Seth Borenstein of the AP had a better explanation:

Consider, for example, a hypothetical regulation that costs $18 billion to enforce but will prevent 2,500 deaths. At $7.8 million per person (the old figure), the lifesaving benefits outweigh the costs. But at $6.9 million per person, the rule costs more than the lives it saves, so it may not be adopted.

But no matter what the EPA’s intentions – and you CAN’T give those sneaky bastards the benefit of the doubt – you’re still worth more to them than you are to the people in charge of our highways. The Department of Transportation puts the value of human life at only $5.8 million.

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