Originally Posted by
MickG0105
What stats would they be?
What data supports your contention that lives, calculated for risk, have historically been worth orders of magnitude less?
An estimate of the value of statistical life that has been discussed here is around $5 million. I've estimated that we've probably spent somewhere between 2 - 3 times that. A factor of two or three is at least 30 times less than 'orders of magnitude'.
The data differs from your sums. The stats are freely available on government websites. I won’t do the work for you.