I came across this in the latest copy of the Economist in the letters section:
Petty’s cash ledger
SIR – You credited William Petty with inventing economics in the 17th century, but did not do full justice to his cost-benefit calculations (Free exchange, December 21st). The good doctor estimated the value of a person to be somewhere between £60-90 and in “Political Arithmetick” he suggested these values could be used “to compute the loss we have sustained” from the plague and war. In 1667 he argued that given the value of an individual and the cost of transporting people away from the plague in London and caring for them, every pound spent would yield a return of £84 as the probability of survival increased. (He also suggested that an individual in England was worth £90, and in Ireland £70.)
In a lecture on anatomy in 1676 Petty argued that the state should intervene to assure better medicine, which could save 200,000 subjects a year and thus represented a sensible state expenditure. Today’s economic estimates are more refined and the data are more exact, but the arguments presented by Petty still resonate in public policy.
Rashi Fein
Professor emeritus of the economics of medicine
Harvard Medical School
This set me thinking that since the govt is forever touting the importance of costing out the benefits of any spending proposal (something I agree with), maybe it should tell us how much it values a S’porean in monetary terms? Esp since the PM has just said that that more social spending does not mean better resultshttp://www.tremeritus.com/2014/01/11/like-a-war-zone/
As pigs are likely to fly first maybe the SDP RI brains trust (Paul A, Wee Nam, Ang -Drs three- etc) can “force” the govt to do so by coming up with their own SDP valuation, and what they calculate is the PAP valuation.
As to the co driver doing something? They wearing white?
http://atans1.wordpress.com/2013/12/13/why-a-2015-ge-is-now-more-probable/
Cynical Investor
*The writer blogs at http://atans1.wordpress.com/