My mother's family and I, when my grandmother was still alive, became the head of the family after my grandmother died.

Cost-benefit analysis is a difficult task. Because everyone can use the expressway for free, there is no judgment on the price of the expressway. It is not reliable to simply ask people how much they value the expressway. First, it is difficult to quantitatively analyze income with the results of questionnaire survey. Second, people who answer the questionnaire have no motivation to answer truthfully. Those who want to use the expressway have an incentive to exaggerate their income in order to build this road. Those who are injured by the expressway have an incentive to exaggerate the cost in order to stop the construction of the highway.

Therefore, it is more difficult to effectively provide public goods than private goods. Personal items are provided by the market. Buyers of personal goods reflect their evaluation of the goods through the price they are willing to pay. Sellers reflect their costs through the prices they are willing to accept. In contrast, cost-benefit analysis does not provide any price signal when evaluating whether the government should provide a public product. Therefore, the conclusions about the costs and benefits of public projects are approximate at best.

How much is a life worth?

Suppose you are elected as a member of the local town Council. The engineer of this town came to you and made a suggestion: this town can spend $6,543,800+0,000 to set up and run a traffic light at the intersection with no-go signs. The advantage of traffic lights is to increase safety. According to the data of similar intersections, engineers estimate that the risk of traffic accident death can be reduced from 1.6% to 1. 1% during the whole traffic light use period. Should we spend money to repair this new traffic light?

To answer this question, you have to go back to the cost-benefit analysis. But you will soon encounter an obstacle: if you want to make the comparison of costs and benefits meaningful, you must measure costs and benefits in the same unit. The cost can be measured in dollars, but the possibility of saving a person's life one by one cannot be directly measured in money. In order to make a decision, you must evaluate people's lives in dollars.