You have to love the NY Times for publishing an article with this kind of heading:
"As US Agencies Put More Value on a Life, Businesses Fret"
So what kind of numbers are we looking at here? The EPA says it's about $9 million, up from $6.8 million during the Bush era. In the twisted world of the FDA, it's only $7.9 million, up from $5 million ever since they started putting scary cancer pictures on cigarette packages.
Behold the gist of the argument over a million here, a million there:
"Some industry representatives said assigning a value to life was inherently subjective, and that the recent changes were driven by the administration’s pursuit of its regulatory agenda rather than scientific considerations."
vs.
"Several independent experts, however, said that the increases were long overdue, noting that some agencies had been using the same values for more than a decade without adjusting for inflation. One office at the E.P.A. cut the value of life in 2004."
Ah, politics.
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