What Is An American Worth?
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What Is An American Worth?
Somewhere between $5,800 and $9.3 million, depending on who you ask
Many years ago, I managed a car dealership. One day we spotted police cars at the house across the road. We later learned an old man had accidentally run over his wife and killed her. He was blamed for hitting the gas instead of the brake.
A few years later, it came out that his car model had a fault. The car company did the math and it made more sense to just settle future lawsuits rather than recall all the vehicles.
In other words, they murdered his wife for a few dollars of shareholder profits.
What is an American worth?
$10 million?
$1 million?
$100,000?
Surely there has to be a dollar figure.
After all, we no longer live in the age of Imago Dei, where the vast majority believe humans are made in the image of God, “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
What utter nonsense in 2023.
We really should’ve scrubbed it out of the Declaration of Independence long ago. Jefferson clearly didn’t know what he was talking about.
We know better now. We shed the spiritualist mindset and its silly ideas like rights and love and hope and faith and meaning and the difference between good and evil.
We wear the materialist mantle now — only the physical exists. Hurray for sex without love, interactions without relationships, wealth without meaningful contribution, and living without purpose. Give me hard science or give me death — we’re just a bag of worthless cells anyway. You, dirt, what’s the difference?
Material is ultimate; humans are subordinate. Material is god; humans serve material. With this new mindset, humans, too, are just material. Not souls or spirits, just a collection of atoms. Objects. Things.
A thing can be treated as a tool. A thing can be treated as capital. A thing can be used. A thing can be mistreated. A thing can be surveilled. A thing can be controlled. A thing can be consumed. A thing can be ignored and abandoned. A thing can be destroyed.
But most importantly, a human thing can be used as a profit center, a homo sapien cow to be milked for labor and spending until it’s all dried up.
This is the most important calculation in 2023.
So what is an American really worth, in hard U.S. dollars?
The TLDR: Not much.
A little more nuance: It depends.
The seeker asks: On whom does it depend?
The answer: Corporations and their shareholders, obviously.
The value of an American life differs from industry to industry, so it’s important to know how much each value you.
We’ll look at 9 predators in this article — land-lorders, “health”-“care”, big pharma, big oil, fast food, the gun industry, universities, and big tobacco — to see who wants to squeeze the most life out of you, versus who wants to squeeze it out fastest.
The Land-lorder’s Equation
Net profits: ~$373 billion
Annual deaths from homelessness: 40,000
An American is worth: $9.3 million
Note: Before all the land-lorder-loving sycophants start whinging in the comments section, consider the facts — for-profit land-lording is nothing more than the monopolization of property for the purposes of extracting maximal profits under the threat of homelessness. To wit, 41% of land-lorders have a vacancy on an annual basis and 6% of all rental properties — 1.06 million properties that could house the homeless — are unoccupied at any given time.
Our calculation also doesn’t include the fact that the financialization of property massively pushes up the living costs for everyone, causing completely unnecessary added hardship and poverty for tens of millions of Americans. Considering the US experiences hundreds of thousands of deaths each year due to poverty, and the stupidly high cost of shelter is a leading factor, American lives are more likely worth <$1.5 million to land-lorders.
The Corporatized “Health” “Care” Equation
Net profits: ~$66 billion
Annual deaths due to lack of corporate healthcare insurance: 45,000
An American is worth: $1.46 million
Big Pharma’s Equation
Net profits: $81.9 billion
Annual deaths from drug overdoses: 100,000
An American is worth: $819,000
(Note: Nearly 600,000 people have died from the opioid epidemic, but to the Sackler family who made $12 billion in profits, Americans are worth ~$20,000.)
Big Oil’s Equation
Net profits: $1 trillion globally
Annual deaths from fossil fuel pollution: 8 million globally
An American is worth: $125,000
Fast Food’s Equation
Net profits: ~$25 billion
Annual premature deaths: ~300,000
An American is worth: $83,333
The Gun Industry’s Equation
Net profits: $2.2 billion
Annual gun deaths: 40,000+
An American is worth: $55,000
Post Secondary’s Equation
Net profits: $136 billion
Annual debt serfs added: 3.2 million children carrying a newly minted $120.2 billion in unbankruptable interest-bearing debt for decades to come.
An American is worth: $42,500
Big Tobacco’s Equation
Net profits: $35 billion globally
Annual premature deaths from smoking: ~6 million globally
An American is worth: $5,833
In conclusion
The most profitable of the nine American predators listed is land-lording.
American lives are worth the least to Big Tobacco.
All told, nearly 1.5 million Americans die per year to create profits for these 9 predators alone.
That’s 503 9/11s attacks.
Think back to the morning of September 11/2001.
Remember it.
The crashes. The flames. The jumpers.
Now imagine that happening every single Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, plus two every Saturday and two every Sunday.
But remember: This is a good thing.
We’re materialists now.
People are just things.
Profit centers.
Profit is all that matters.
You and your children are just sheep to be slaughtered on the altar of corporate profits.
If you’re lucky, you’ll earn enough to “put your money to work for you” and actually reap some of those unearned suffering-derived profits into your retirement accounts.
Good for you.
In the materialist world, rights don’t actually exist.
But if there is one, it’s the right to private profit — all others be damned.