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07/15/2008: "American lives are worth less"
The "value of a statistical life" is $6.9 million in today's dollars, the Environmental Protection Agency reckoned in May â€" a drop of nearly $1 million from just five years ago.
The Associated Press discovered the change after a review of cost-benefit analyses over more than a dozen years.
Though it may seem like a harmless bureaucratic recalculation, the devaluation has real consequences.
When drawing up regulations, government agencies put a value on human life and then weigh the costs versus the lifesaving benefits of a proposed rule. The less a life is worth to the government, the less the need for a regulation, such as tighter restrictions on pollution.
[ We all know that there has been a drop in the quality of humans, don't we? ]
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=5353888