Putting A Price On Life

from Jacqueline

Sometimes you learn something that just gets you going, or has you thinking for days, weeks afterwards. Cornelia’s post on the link between the preservative added to childhood vaccinations and the rise in autism did that for me a few weeks ago, for example. This week it had to do with money. Yes, the filthy lucre we all need to make the world go round.



I was chatting to one of the women I ride with – let’s call her “L” in case anyone from her company is reading this, not that it’s likely, and not that she’d worry about it anyway. “L” is a paramedic. She saves lives for a living, and she is really good at her job – a five-foot nothing powerhouse, she will get you to a hospital, alive, within twenty-five minutes of getting the call that you’ve had an altercation with a big-rig on the freeway or you’re in cardiac arrest. She is all business when she’s working – and pretty much all business when she’s riding, too. Her almost seventeen-hand warmblood even hides behind her when he hears something that scares him. That’s the warmblood she fell in love with and is paying for over time.

At our usual burger and fries luncheon destination of choice this week (training in dressage makes you really, really hungry), “L” happened to tell us that paramedics from her company working in LA were on strike over a pay deal (I hasten to add that she does not work in that area, and is not on strike). Emergency services coverage would continue, because the company brought in people from other areas, but as a private company they had the right to strike. Now, it had never occurred to ask how much paramedics and other emergency workers earn, so I asked “L” – who is a senior member of the team so you would think is doing really well. If you call thirteen bucks an hour “doing really well.” Last week she worked a 72-hour-week, because that’s what you have to do to make the world go around, and the company needs its workers to do the overtime anyway. Of course there are those who argue that in a 24-hour shift, she might only be called out once, and there are certainly days like that, however, sometimes it’s just one wreck after another. Twenty-five minutes – max – from the time the call comes in, until the time she hands over her patient to the emergency room doctor. That works out at just over six bucks. For a life.




Take that a bit further and you can bring in the men and women who are security checking at our airports, upon whose shoulders sits a responsibility to prevent more 9-11’s and keep the skies friendly – on minimum wage.

I am sure our Jim will weigh in on how we remunerate the men and women who try to keep the streets safe, and let’s spare a thought for the nurses, the firefighters and so many others out there who should be millionaires, if we paid a person according to their worth to society. And sorry, it’s just me, but I can’t help thinking about the fat cats who are currently raking it in – let’s start with the petroleum industry, shall we?



Of course, you could say that our “L” could make things easier for herself by not indulging in her equine-based passion – it’s not a cheap sport by any means. She skimps and scrapes in every other aspect of her life and heck, if that’s what you need to blow off steam after keeping a kid alive in a car wreck, or saving someone’s father in the midst of a heart attack, then you deserve every moment of lightness you can lay your hands on.

Oh, and to end on a bit of whimsy: My brother thought he had a grand idea this week - Stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for a few days and use the money saved to give everyone in the country one million dollars. “That’s what you call an economic stimulus package,” said John.



May you have a lovely weekend.