Putting a Price Tag on Life

In the viewing of assignment 2, there is a suspicion that I am trying to illustrate life as a value – Putting a price tag on life which was really the concept I was looking for. My initial thoughts were that in a bad situation would you try to buy or buy back time to make things better, by illustrating how fast this would escalate compared with how much money we can earn/save in real life. However, as discussed with my tutor there is confusing permeance to this work nothing to visually link the images to my ideas.

As the idea of Putting a value of life came up I thought It was worth my time to watch the YouTube video suggested by my tutor and put my thoughts down.

Personally, I believe life is priceless it cannot be purchased whole and complete – hence my image of a blank background in the assignment. It is a series of experiences good and bad that cumulate in a lifetime. Money plays a part in this, of course, it allows us to buy things, go on holiday to exotic places but it not the sole factor.

The is a utilitarian view that a cost can be on human life, famous examples of this have been when the Tobacco giant Philip Morris conducted a cost analysis of the cost/benefit analysis of smoking for the Czech government and also the cost analysis the Ford Motor company conducted as to whether to recall and repair a fuel tank problem on the Ford Pinto.

These studies which created major problems for the companies involves weighed up the cost and benefits in monetary terms to the companies/governments of potential changes. In the case of Philip Morris, they showed that it was better for the Czech government to have their citizens smoking because of the benefit of tax revenues and the reduction in long-term health care costs and elderly house caused by premature smoking death!

Ford on the other hand physically put a price of life its self they calculated that a repair recall costing $11 per car would cost them $137Million to fix potentially lethal fuel tank explosions. However, they calculated that since not all cars exploded they estimated:

Expected Costs of producing the Pinto without fuel tank modifications:
Expected accident results (assuming 2100 accidents)
180 burn deaths
180 serious burn injuries
2100 burned out vehicles

Unit costs of accident results (assuming out of court settlements)
$200,000 per burn death
$67,000 per serious injury
$700 per burned out vehicle

Total Costs: $49.53 million (180 deaths x $200k) + (180 injuries x $67k) + (2100 vehicles x $700 per vehicle)

In fact cheaper to let people die. Ok, these figures are dated as the incident happened over 40 years ago but can a life really be boughtforf $200,000 or $2,000,000 or $2,000,000,000,000?

Of course, that amount can financially compensate family from lost income but it can’t wipe the emotional trauma of a death or replace the deceased person.

We work money we have hour hourly / monthly rate but this not the price of life is just how we barter our skills to enhance our lives.

As I stated I believe that life is priceless and therefore not an avenue I want to head down with this work.

Reference

YouTube. (2009). Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? Episode 02: “PUTTING A PRICE TAG ON LIFE”. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O2Rq4HJBxw [Accessed 14 Sep. 2018].