I had a conversation today with a coworker about the value of a human life. Considering there is a limit to the GDP, we as a society are forced to develop a quantifiable value for a life. Current spending of GDP has about 17% of it dedicated to health care. If 17% of our labor is put into taking care of each others health care needs, perhaps this would be a great figure. Hypothetically one could divide the GDP again, by the number of inhabitants, but this wouldn’t be patriotic, because some lives don’t honestly matter, at least not nearly as much. Likely we put very little of our labor into health care relative to the GDP, due to high costs of health care including 100 thousand dollar drugs and other such high value health care products. The intellectual property, skill sets and services of medical professionals and the health care sector of our economy are viewed as more valuable than the labor of someone who feeds those medical professionals, such as a farmer, grocer or restaurant employee, or someone who protects the lives, liberty and property of those employed in the medical field, such as the police, firefighters and warfighters. As a capitalistic society, we allow the market to determine the value of life, combined with a token element of socialism that results from elected officials.
Elected officials set health care policy, and thus they are often held accountable between the voters and the wealthiest people capable of influencing both our choice in candidates and leaders. Since they are generally affluent enough to make the primary, their accountability is largely only in relation to their desire to continue being elected to positively influence the bottom line of the industries and donors that ultimately we elected them to increase the value of. This means that the entire system is a much more complex mess than the average voter and their leader can intellectually comprehend. The reality of economics as it relates to contemporary social problems is that it’s probably something we all think we have a fairly solid grasp on, and yet we are bitterly divided and intellectually have a middle school grasp of issues ultimately beyond human comprehension. Perhaps the most fascinating part about this reality is that such issues are still a life or death matter where we seem to pit individuals and various entities into monetary struggles that reduce the value of life to quantifiable dollar amounts. It is an actual economic necessity for some bean counter to crunch the numbers for the health care providers on this. The growth in heath care costs is in relation to the GDP as it relates to the provider’s financial assets or profit margins would be unsustainable. The result is one’s life span in deeply tied into their socio-economic status. This creates racial disparities as well as disparities based on one’s pure financial strength. Every life is bound to an algorithm of a quantifiable sum value.
On the bright side to a social pessimist, it appears to get grimmer. As the completely impoverished often get medical coverage with little to no copay premiums, you can pretty much bet that it will pit those who have low paying jobs with shitty benefits against those on Medicaid and other such ‘safety nets.’ Meanwhile dental, optical, and mental health needs are seen as separate from everything else related to one’s general medical needs. The complexity of the current mental health care system allows for disparities and services and social stratification as to very real quantifiable financial values as to the lives of every individual. Thus black people are generally worth less money than most white people, but they are pitted against more employable races that among the lower middle of the socioeconomic statuses my find themselves to have an even lower financial value as a result of shittier coverage that the government provides as a safety net to the destitute.
Luckily those who rise to power, such as our president Trump, have great medical services at their disposal because of their financial value as a percentage of the GDP far exceeds those of a restaurant employee. Dishwashers and seasonal warehouse employees, such as myself, probably have one of the lowest financial value allotted to their lives. This is why we should ban the second amendment, but only if it is not used to thin the excess population. In America, we put those unable to pay their debts, to include, but not, limited to child support, into the criminal justice system. Veterans are a key group to force into ‘behavorial health’ care. The VA may not have an ER room or even a properly staffed urgent care, but the quantifiable value to individual life is directly proportional to it’s economic value to the GDP and should never be seen as of inherent moral value unless temporarily useful for political, and thus industrial, gain. In the land of equality, the pragmatic reality is some people are worth a much greater slice of that 17% of the GDP and some are basically junk bonds.
In the end, American values are in individualism and the priority of one’s own comfort. One’s intellectual property and advanced skill sets are reasons for their right to survive without need to consider excess. If one kills the deer, they own that deer. It doesn’t matter if the meat spoils. Go kill your own deer. That’s the American social Darwinianism of Ayn Rand. One is not entitled to the spoils of another. One can eat their fill and let the produce rot they don’t want. This is no different than the intellectual rights of those willing to burn the midnight oil in study. The joy is not in learning in America. It is in knowing one’s financial assets directly reflect the value of their life right down to their ability to extend their years with health care. Moral equality doesn’t translate to economic equality in the value of individual life. We are stratified so that we can pay Elon Musk to blow up the rich in the sky, while the smart people who are humble realize we aren’t headed to Mars, but merely spirits hopping the universe with faith it will continue. They’ll take Mr. Musk’s money though, buy some health care, and enjoy the humor of helping rich stoners putting a sports car in orbit, because WTF. He’s rich, bitch.
Joker's Wild 