What’s a Life Worth?

Today in NR, Warren Bell writes:

Good Morning America presents this cautionary tale of Kathy Trant, who received 4.2 million dollars from the Federal Victim Compensation Fund, and then due to depression, survivor’s guilt, and compulsive shopping, turned it into, among other things, “a $500,000 shoe collection, gowns by Versace and Capelli that go for $5,000 each and Fendi and Judith Leiber handbags, also $5,000 per bag.”

Poor thing is down to her last $500,000. Hopefully the Federal Victim Compensation Fund will realize she is once again a victim, this time of a nutty government program that stuffs an absurd amount of money into grieving widows’ pockets when the real help they need can’t be measured in dollars.

For starters, this guy sounds like a real schmuck. Clearly this woman has some kind of mental problems as well as problems managing money, but, then again, her husband died, and she was likely thrust into the role of managing money that she never had to before. I asked Warren in an email, “Why is $5mm absurd as compensation for a lost life and in exchange for giving up the right not to sue the airlines and others for their negligence—particularly with respect to security? That’s a very typical amount for a lost life. If you look at the amounts of compensation people accept for risk, it’s coordinated with what people take for a 1% increase in mortality for instance. So it just seems like a lot to you, but you have no real basis for saying so. Indeed, for a bond trader, the lost income alone is likely in the millions.”

Bell is a good example of the unthoughtful, knee-jerk regime that has increasingly prevailed at NR.