I have recently been reading Freakonomics , which aside from the horrendous cover makes for a very interesting insight into various and sundry facets of life. One thing in particular that caught my eye was a table used by the state of Connecticut to compensate workers for work-related injuries:
I guess there are two things that really struck me about this table. Firstly for the table to exist there must be people out there whose job consists of trying to quantify such horrific events as losing an eye or an arm. It must take a special sort of detachment to be able to appraise many hundreds of cases of people being incredibly hurt, look through every case history and at the end of it all pluck out one number that decides how bad--in the eyes of the law--their injury actually is.
Secondly becoming disabled is a threat that hangs over every single one of us (I'd like to suggest that we don't call able bodied people 'able bodied' but rather 'not yet disabled') and an utterly life destroying accident is only seconds around the corner. And, you know what...
...if the worst happens to you the proper procedures, regulations and compensations for your tragedy and loss have already been set to paper by some faceless economist in a city miles away.
Sobering, no?
I guess there are two things that really struck me about this table. Firstly for the table to exist there must be people out there whose job consists of trying to quantify such horrific events as losing an eye or an arm. It must take a special sort of detachment to be able to appraise many hundreds of cases of people being incredibly hurt, look through every case history and at the end of it all pluck out one number that decides how bad--in the eyes of the law--their injury actually is.
Secondly becoming disabled is a threat that hangs over every single one of us (I'd like to suggest that we don't call able bodied people 'able bodied' but rather 'not yet disabled') and an utterly life destroying accident is only seconds around the corner. And, you know what...
...if the worst happens to you the proper procedures, regulations and compensations for your tragedy and loss have already been set to paper by some faceless economist in a city miles away.
Sobering, no?
