book

The Price Tag on Life

21 Pages 954 Words 1557 Views

Not everyone can have the influence that Martin Luther King Jr. had in his "I Have a Dream" speech, but anyone can teach their community what true compassion and love is. It's as simple as having a barbecue every Friday and inviting everyone over, to waving to your neighbor at the same time every morning as you wait for a bus outside of their house. The little things in life are always the most precious, and you cannot put a price on that. When someone hears the name Agustina Villanueva in the future when I'm gone, I'd love to be remembered as the person who went out of her way to help others and made a legacy of being a great Samaritan instead of what I signed on my final paycheck. The ideas stated in Kenneth Feinberg's article base life on a moral perspective, rather than placing an actual monetary value on it. Feinberg is a Washington attorney who specializes in alternative dispute resolution, and he was in charge of the compensation for the families of the 9/11 victims, as well as other tragedies. At first, he showed no emotional connection because it was the norm and he did this on a daily basis. To him, it was just another day at the office. However, after being confronted by the family of a fallen firefighter, reality struck when he realized that a banker who was killed in the attack was to receive more compensation than the firefighter who lost his/her life rescuing those in need. "...wrestled with the issues surrounding the valuation of lives lost, I began to question the basic premise of our legal system" (Feinberg). In my opinion, he began to see the dichotomy between the law and morality. He was obliged to see the situation through the eyes of a lawyer, but behind this mask, he saw inequality in what the law required him to do. In America, there is a belief that all human life has a price tag that comes along when it reaches its end. For some people, this ends up being tens of thousands of dollars, and for others hundre

Read Full Essay