Kenneth Feinberg The Value Of Life

When the major event 9/11 took place it caused the government to really question. What is a person's life truly worth? In the article “What is The Value of A Human Life?” by Kenneth Feinberg. He actually came up with the idea about how each individual's lives is valued financially. In the beginning of building this new law Feinberg came across that. Not everyone gets the same amount of compensation. For example, “The law required that I give more money to the stockbroker, the bond trader and the banker than to the waiter, the policeman, the fireman and the soldier at the Pentagon.” (Feinberg para 2). Since the required

In “Your Money or Your Life”, Nicholas Goldberg notes the chief “critics about cost-benefit analysis: that it requires setting dollar values on things that are simply not measurable”. Goldberg argues that “the value of life is immeasurable and that deaths are not mere ‘costs’ that can be coldly calculated by statisticians”. Furthermore, “cost-benefit analysis understates both the value of life and the benefits of government oversight”

In Money Love, Lauren Slater explores the importance of life. Whether it be animal life of human life, each are proven to be equal, but in different ways. In the chapter, Slater even questions whether her daughter’s life is more important than a monkey’s, along with the human population in general. There is a part to humans that makes us much more likely to value our own lives over an animals’. The question is: is there really more value to a human’s life?

Should we as a society set a monetary value on life, or let it exist on an emotional level? Are the accomplishments we achieve and the money we make throughout our lifetime the only things that determine what our life is worth after death; or should it be based on the value that the individual put upon their own experiences. In contemporary American Society, this question remains to be asked when someone loses their life. In the excerpt from Chris Jones’ “Roger Ebert: The Essential Man” The struggles which Ebert Endures, and the high value he remained to keep on his own life was revealed, which displayed his own personal value of life and how it is precious throughout the conflict. I agree with this mentality completely, because one’s circumstances may outweigh another’s, meaning that there is

Flannery O’Connor’s short story The Life You Save May Be Your Own, takes place in a rural area with a few powerful main characters, and though the literal meaning is not challenging to comprehend, the symbolic and metaphorical meanings are much more complex, requiring further analysis. One of the most touching and relatable themes in the story is that redemption is often overlooked because of personal greed.

When a loved one dies, it feels like the end of your world. No apology could fix it. However, I believe that even the most sincere acts of sympathy and grief towards the victim(s) would show more respect than trying to put a price value on those who suffered. Amanda Ripley, author of WTC Victims: What’s A Life Worth?, writes about what the government planned to do to compensate for family losses. According to the article, Kenneth Feinberg, who is responsible for dispersing money to the ones that were increasingly affected by the attacks, without shame went into detail of how one can figure out how much the government is willing to pay. In the end, most people’s total compensation were either near or at zero. Many family members were appalled and a woman by the name of Maureen Halvorson even said,“I just can't accept the fact that the Federal Government is saying my husband and my brother are worth nothing.” It would have been more gratifying to those experiencing mass grief if the government simply sent out messages of deep condolence rather than try to put a zero next to the victim’s name.

This capacity to carefully listen to the backstories and motivations of individuals, even those whose ideologies or behavior profoundly disturb me, is what attracts me to the law. At its core, our legal system succeeds when participants’ complexities are fully appreciated and their stories heard. In employing my drive for unraveling the perplexities of each individual, and lending a voice to those understandable slices of humanity contained in each viewpoint, I hope that I can play a part in advocating not just for the rights of the conferred, but also of the

Determining the amount of damages that should be given to the different types of people is the central issue of the article. “I had always accepted that no two lives were worth the same in financial terms. But now I found the law in conflict with my growing belief in the equality of all life” (Ripley 3). This means that the best solution from a moral standpoint should be that all victims receive the same recompense. Feinberg’s job, however, was to administer the congressional directive to ensure victims’ families “maintain something resembling their current standard of living.” (Feinberg 11). His work attempted to uncover the true value of life by diverting attention away from a lump sum of money for each victim, and instead focusing on the victims’ lives, ensuring that each family gets what they deserve. Using complex calculations of compensating for potential unearned wages and then deducting other financial assets meant that some families actually qualified for no money at all. Did that meant that their loved one’s life was worthless? The government’s virtuous intentions, while seen by many as flawed, were not always derided. Victim David Gordenstein, who lost his wife on 9/11 reflects, “I am proud of what my country tried to do. I think the intention is noble” (Ripley

The article “What is a Life Worth?” By Amanda Ripley gives support to Feinberg on the issue of placing a value on a human life. Ripley includes evidence of two different social class families the Sparacio family and the Fields family. Sparacio family included a current trader and a part-time school psychologist as the occupation of the parents. While the Fields family only had one income which was from a security guard. Even though the Sparacio family holds a higher social class than the Fields family, The Fields were awarded $444,010 due to having three more children than the twin two-year-old sparacio family which were only awarded a small compensation of $138,000. The widow Cheri Sparacio states “This was just one screw-up after another”

Are some lives worth more than others? Are some lives worthy to be considered lives at all? Bryan Stevenson aims to answer that in his book Just Mercy. In it, he explores the American justice system and its systemic prejudice, whether it’s based on race, income, or gender. Stevenson is a lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), an Alabama-based nonprofit that aims to defend those who have been unfairly represented or unjustly imprisoned, and Just Mercy is a compilation of some of the cases he encountered during his time. Just Mercy is a collection of redemption and corruption--almost everyone he represents in the story finds their freedom from the unnecessarily harsh sentences they were given. In every other chapter he details the stories of multiple people punished by the legal system, including women and children. It is notable that throughout these chapters Stevenson emphasizes real, human connections with his clients to shine light on how distant and unjust the prison system is. In a system where these people are given subhuman treatment, Stevenson reaffirms their inherent dignity and cares for them. This has a profound effect on them and the people around them, seen especially in the cases of Charlie (Chapter 6), Joe Sullivan (Chapter 14), and Avery Jenkins (Chapter 10).

The article by Amanda Ripley stated ¨First , the government will estimate how much a victim would have earned over his or her lifetime had the planes never crashed.¨ This ideal is

As blood trickled down the flight attendant’s neck, the screams of passengers echoed while hoping and praying that it was not their time to perish. A dark-skinned man headed towards the front of the plane, claiming the pilot as his next victim. As this occurred within the four other planes, hostages aboard knew they were living the last few moments of their life. Each tear and scream would ultimately be their last-their last breath taken as the plane crashed into a building of peace, dying with the thought of “I should have said goodbye,” as their lives were taken away in seconds by strangers. Thousands of innocent lives were lost, as well as the hearts of millions of others worldwide who felt the repercussion and heartbreak of these terrorist attacks. The Tuesday morning of September 11, 2001, swept worldwide panic and sorrow, naming itself the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil to date. Nineteen terrorists, four planes, and millions of hearts broken later, the world was now split into the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of 9/11, impacting our environment tremendously both physically and psychologically.

“Many of life's decisions are hard. What kind of career should you pursue? Does your ailing mother need to be put in a nursing home? You and your spouse already have two kids; should have a third?”(Levitt, Dubner, 1). Through the course of what seems like an insignificant life People come across opportunities and choices. These decisions shift the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth. In Steven D. Levitt’s & Stephen J. Dubner’s Superfreakonomics Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes And Why Suicide Bombers Should Get Life Insurance, the authors give bizarre instances that have occurred in people lives and make the reader think outside the box about their choices and its effects.

Picture yourself as the most powerful person in the free world. Ask yourself the question “How much is one American life worth?” Could you even put a price tag on it? Would you be willing to come up with challenging new ideas or potentially do what is wrong to save a life if you can’t put a value on it?

Though our society has adapted and developed, inequality remains prevalent all around the world. Our society assigns value to human live based on ethnicity and gender. Currently around the world there are over 30 million slaves in which 60,000 are in the United States. Even though slavery has been abolished in nearly every country many people still measure the value of individuals in cents and dollars. Should life be calculated in terms of money? How should we as a society assign value to a persons life? I personally believe that you can't assign a price to someones life and you shouldn’t It’s both politically and morally unjust.