What would you give to increase your chance of living from 45% to 55%?

[mbillie1]

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The government values a single life at about $6 million

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This estimate seems absurdly high... if this is true, someone owes me about $5,999,947.74

[djj6835]

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The government values a single life at about $6 million

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This estimate seems absurdly high... if this is true, someone owes me about $5,999,947.74

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This is the value determined by the EPA when deciding how much to spend on the removal of arsenic from drinking water. I think other government agencies have different values, but I'm pretty sure they are all multi million dollar values.

edit: Upon further evaluation it appears they lowered it to $3.7 million in 2002.

NY Times Article

[timex]

I have a skill to make me all the money I need, no one who depends on me, and people to support me, I'd give 100% and its not close.

[Hume]

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This is the value determined by the EPA when deciding how much to spend on the removal of arsenic from drinking water. I think other government agencies have different values, but I'm pretty sure they are all multi million dollar values.

edit: Upon further evaluation it appears they lowered it to $3.7 million in 2002.

NY Times Article

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If this was necessary for 100% of all Americans that number would drop by a lot.

[Analyst]

Very good post, MicroBob. For people who *really* want to learn about this stuff, this presentation, based on Ron Howard's work at Stanford, is a good start. If you just want to skim, look at pages 10-12, the "black pill" problem.

Bottom line - until you start getting to risks of death of ~1% and higher, people value a 1-in-a-million chance of death at ~$10; in other words, people will pay $10 to avoid a 0.0001% risk of death, $10k for a 0.1% risk, etc. The $10 per 0.0001% figure does not apply to the given scenario, however, where as shown on page 12 of the presentation people will pay everything they have to go from a 55% to a 45% risk of death.

[vanwely]

I wouldn't pay anything. I couldn't win a coin flip if my life depended on it.

[SuperUberBob]

I've got like zippo.

Easy 100%

[Deorum]

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If I were worth $100mil I'd give nothing. To go back to being at rock bottom would probably be too much of a thud for me to handle. It's easy to say now of course, but when you sit back and think about it, that $100mil must've been a f*cking LOT of hard work.

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This is probably not true. Most people who are worth that kind of money got that way because they understand how money works, not because they got lucky or worked harder than anybody else for it. In the words of Robert Kiyosaki, the way to get rich is to be lazy. The idea is to get other people to do the work of a project for you, while only paying them a percentage of the money that the project produces. This way you can spend your time searching for more projects, rather than working on them yourself.

An interviewer once said to Henry Ford that the views he held on money were because he was a billionaire, and asked him what would happen if somebody took all his money away. Ford replied that it would be no big deal, and that he would have it all back or more in five years.

People who have a lot of money have it because they understand how to get money to work for them. They have it because of the way that they view and use money. Once you have those skills, the problem of not having enough money is no longer a problem, and they can make money anytime they want. So somebody worth a lot of money would probably be more willing to give it up to increase the likelyhood of survival than somebody with less money who does not understand how money works.