Value of Life
Keirstyn Anderson
Mr. Johnson
C.P. English
29 April, 2011
The Value of Life Essay When it comes to assigning value to human life many people decide with their emotions, especially when they are assigning value to a loved one. Currently, our society uses the human life calculator to assign value to life. I don’t believe we should use this method because it is based on how much money the person makes, if they have a spouse, and the number of children they have. I believe that the human life calculator is an imprecise way to value human life. I think our society should take into account how much the person helped society throughout their lifetime. Volunteers for hospitals, humane societies, “soup kitchen people…figure out what its called” help society a lot without getting paid for it. Teachers, “more low income jobs that help”, also help society with a low income. Many people dedicate their lives to helping others, and in many cases they don’t get paid a lot for their good deeds. For example, there are many programs that benefit society in many ways and most of the people that are apart of those programs are volunteers. Red Cross, Cancer Society, and St. Jude’s are all programs that people volunteer for and help save people’s lives every day, but according to the human life calculator they would not be worth very much because they don’t make a lot of money. On the human life calculator a lottery winner that doesn’t help society in any way would still be worth more than a person who dedicated their whole life to helping society. In the article, What is a Life worth? Kenneth Feinberg came up with a way to assign value to those that were killed in the September 11th tragedy. “I underestimated the emotion of this at the beginning… I didn’t fully appreciate how soon this program had been established after 9/11, so there was a certain degree of unanticipated anger directed at me that I should have been more attuned to.” (Ripley, 2) When people felt the amount
Mr. Johnson
C.P. English
29 April, 2011
The Value of Life Essay When it comes to assigning value to human life many people decide with their emotions, especially when they are assigning value to a loved one. Currently, our society uses the human life calculator to assign value to life. I don’t believe we should use this method because it is based on how much money the person makes, if they have a spouse, and the number of children they have. I believe that the human life calculator is an imprecise way to value human life. I think our society should take into account how much the person helped society throughout their lifetime. Volunteers for hospitals, humane societies, “soup kitchen people…figure out what its called” help society a lot without getting paid for it. Teachers, “more low income jobs that help”, also help society with a low income. Many people dedicate their lives to helping others, and in many cases they don’t get paid a lot for their good deeds. For example, there are many programs that benefit society in many ways and most of the people that are apart of those programs are volunteers. Red Cross, Cancer Society, and St. Jude’s are all programs that people volunteer for and help save people’s lives every day, but according to the human life calculator they would not be worth very much because they don’t make a lot of money. On the human life calculator a lottery winner that doesn’t help society in any way would still be worth more than a person who dedicated their whole life to helping society. In the article, What is a Life worth? Kenneth Feinberg came up with a way to assign value to those that were killed in the September 11th tragedy. “I underestimated the emotion of this at the beginning… I didn’t fully appreciate how soon this program had been established after 9/11, so there was a certain degree of unanticipated anger directed at me that I should have been more attuned to.” (Ripley, 2) When people felt the amount
Cited: Armstrong, Lance, and Sally Jenkins. It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life. New York: Penguin Putham, 2000. Print. Ripley, Amanda. What Is A Life Worth? Time, 11 February 2002: 1-6. Print.