Posted on 02/09/2009 6:56:56 PM PST by Asceticon
Assigning a monetary value to human life is something that is performed as a regular matter of business in society. In the early 1970's Ford Motor Company made an economic decision not to add eleven dollars to the cost of a Pinto for an improvement that would have prevented the gas tank from exploding in rear end collisions. It used a valuation of $200,000 per human life in its analysis, a figure that it derived from the government agency that was responsible for auto safety. Life insurance is a contact that assigns a monetary value to a human life. Juries are commonly asked to value human life in terms of dollars in wrongful death suits. A review of federal agency regulations by Gillette and Hopkins in 1988 concluded that the range was $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 per statistical life saved.
Using the high end of that valuation, an argument could be made that Madoff's alleged $50 billion dollar swindle caused an equivalent in social damage to 25,000 deaths. That's over eight times as many deaths that occurred on September 11, 2001. It is far more lives than were lost in the Bhopal disaster. So is it really unthinkable that there should be some level of financial crime that qualifies for the death penalty?
(Excerpt) Read more at searchingforthetruth.typepad.com ...
Those aren’t financial crimes, those are criminal negligence.
And the family of the deceased will be charged for the cost of the bullet. [/kidding]
Not going to happen. The biggest economic crime in all of human history is about to pass in the Senate. At a value of $200k per life, it would only take $107M to justify 535 death penalties. The pork bill is more than 8,000 times that large, so I don’t see our government approving this punishment for their crimes.
The reason we have seen so many huge financial crimes is that the risk/reward trade off is so good for them. Even for those who get caught the amount of prison time is very low. It s a very attractive wager for certain people. For Madoff a death penalty would not make up for all the harm he has done, but it would be a start. Anyone else we find that HELPED HIM IN THIS SHOULD GET LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE.
The death penalty for financial crimes would never pass constitutional muster.
That is the point and why these people like Madoff need to fear the needle.
It would if there is a constitutional amendment.
Madoff wasn’t negligence. Some of the other stuff was.
And sensible Americans know better than to even try something so ridiculously brain dead stupid.
Debtors prisons are wisely a thing of the distant past.
No but they should be punished every bit as much as common street crimes. If a kid steals some TVs he probably gets more punishment than some dirtbag in a suit who steals millions. That ain’t right. Lock up for a long time and deny them bail before trial. Don’t let ‘em laugh it up in a fancy penthouse like Madoff.
Exactly. Strip them of all they own and put them in a real prison.
>The biggest economic crime in all of human history is about to pass in the Senate.<
Which makes the US Senate more destructive to the country than Al-Qaeda.
I'll take it as a starter, but I would have no problem volunteering for the firing squad if they were lawfully sentenced to death.
There was a cartoon where the guy is in prison, got 100 million dollars, is doing a decade or two and tells the other prisoner “it comes out to $80 an hour, so I’m good”.
"The chairman of a trading company in northeast China has been sentenced to death after he was found guilty of raising 3 billion yuan (380 million U.S. dollars) from gullible investors for a bogus ant-breeding project between 2002 and 2005.
Wang Zhendong, board chairman of Yingkou Donghua Trading (Group) Co., Ltd. in Liaoning Province promised returns of 35 to 60 percent for the fictitious project under the name of Donghua Zoology Culturing Co., Ltd and Donghua Spirit Co., Ltd."
It is unfortunate that the mainstream press version of the story only reports the absurd side, content to focus on the bogus ant-breeding project.
The mindless repetition of old wives’ tales needs to stop.
About 20 people died in Pinto fires. Out of something like 2+ million cars produced.
Not exactly an epidemic, especially when compared to other cars of its time.
So Obama and our Congress are all Mass Murders on the scale of Pol Pot by comparison to Madoff’s paltry $50B/25000? How many death’s for Trillions of dollars wasted?
I don't disagree, but one problem at a time.
Off the topic, but this link in the article above provides a lot of detail.
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