Some people like to say that you can't put a price tag on a human life. On the contrary, it happens all of the time. Would it be appropriate to require an insurance company or the government to pay a million dollars to save a single life? Probably. How about $100 million? How about a billion dollars? How about the entire national budget of $2 trillion just to save a single life? Clearly, there is a point where the payers will balk and refuse to pay more to save that life, and that is what a life is worth in the end.

Economics is sometimes called the dismal science because it deals with trade offs. There are essentially unlimited demands but only limited resources to meet them, so something has to give. It's amazing how many people go through life still believing there is such a thing as a free lunch.

We could spend billions to save a few lives but what will we have to give up to do so? Every expenditure has what economists call an "opportunity cost", which means that you have to give up something in order to buy something else. For example, that same million dollars used to save one life might save dozens of lives through better highway safety. It might even save hundreds of lives through better prenatal care for pregnant women or childhood vaccinations. However, by spending all of that money to save a single life, we're effectively dooming many more to an early death.

"You can't always get what you want...
But if you try sometimes,
You just might find
You get what you need."