In today’s society the value of human life is based on discrimination. Occupational salary, insurance plans, and tax deductions define a person’s worth in the eyes of the government. Inequality plays a significant role in this unjust system that categorizes each life into a monetary bracket where the story of each individual is disregarded and forgotten, leaving only a dollar sign. A life is worth more than any dollar amount and should be valued by individual compassion, impact, and attitude. Humans are not numbers. A person’s worth should not be defined by one’s financial assets. Through the words of author Amanda Ripley in “What is a life Worth?” the reader is introduced to the concept of determining life’s abstract value into actual dollars …show more content…
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
R1: The author states in the article that no matter the financial circumstance of each victim, they should all be compensated equally. “The law required I give more money to the stockbroker, the bond trader, and the banker than to the waiter, the policemen, the fireman, and the soldier at the pentagon” (Feinberg 84). It is stated in the law that all lives should be treated equal, but how can a live be treated equal when one person is paid one dollar
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”
For decades, a person’s socioeconomic status or SES has affected the healthcare that people receive due to race and “wealth”. This problem has plagued American society because of these factors leading to many receiving inadequate healthcare. All of these factors for someone’s SES has changed a lot in the healthcare domain that is unfair to many who are not the “ideal”. Due to this the perception, experiences with healthcare waver and are different between the stages of these SES’s. No matter the status of a person they should receive the same amount of care, treatment, and closer.
Every single life on the surface of this earth has an equal right to existence. The life of an affluent American should not be worthier in the right to existence than that of a poor American. Neither should is the life of a bishop be more important than that of a Muslim child. Every life is sacred and equal. Without a healthy citizenry, no nation of people could fight enough to either demand for their freedom nor maintain the freedom that has been already gained. It is within that context that I declare that the right to an affordable healthcare is as sacrosanct as the right to be
To start, the article, ‘“All Lives Matter’ Disregards Race-Based Inequality” by David Theo Goldberg, sheds light on the modern discrimination in America. It also shows how powerful, political leaders
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
The most pressing problem surrounding social insurance in the United States today is a faulty perception of who deserves to receive assistance from these programs – forwardly referred to simply as deservedness. The idea that two, equally in-need people can have different levels of deservedness creates inequity within social insurance systems.
Saw life in a money perspective. For example, Amanda Ripley said “...assigning a price tag to a life has always made people intensely squeamish.” (Ripley Pg. 63) This means that people aren’t usually in the state of mind to know how much their loved one is worth. This is significant because your loved one is very dear to your heart and knowing how much they worth, either a lot or very little, can be very pernicious. Another example of a financial standpoint is when Amanda Ripley says “...86% said all families should receive the same amount.” (Ripley Pg.64) This shows us that everyone should receive the same amount of money if one person were to make more than another. This is important due to the fact that having an unequal pay to families will make the families have a content against the government who is giving them money. In conclusion a financial standpoint is another way to view the values of
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?
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane” –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
A sensitive topic in the United States today revolves around the issue of healthcare. Is health care a basic human right or is it just a privilege to those who are able to afford it? Health care in the United States is in desperate need of reform. The Affordable Care Act takes that stance that health care is in fact a basic human right and that everyone should have health insurance. When the term “basic human rights” is used, most people think of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This doesn’t necessarily mean that people should be forced to sustain others’ lives, or that they have the responsibility to make others happy because they have a “right” to pursue happiness. You are born with these basics rights that no
A world where humans have a well defined set of undeniable rights is an important goal for this generation. But aside from rights, the human race has a more dire set of biological needs that it must secure in order to survive. When someone is denied a right, they suffer. When someone is denied a need, they die.
To understand the culture of a certain time period, one of the best resources available is not a textbook but a story written from that time period. For example, the story Beowulf, which was written at the beginning of the Middle Ages, is a fantastical story about a man named Beowulf who defeated demonic monsters through heroic acts. Despite the fact that it is fantasy, Beowulf depicts what the local and national government of Scandinavia was at the time, what the religion of the area was, and what human characteristics were seen as most important during that period. Another example of a cultural piece was the story Aeneid which was a Roman story written during the Classical Period. This piece makes the same illustrations of the culture as Beowulf did. Comparing both these stories as well as their characters excellently demonstrates how two pieces from different periods can give an in depth look into the
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.