How much is a human being worth? This is a question often dripping with questionable motives and with monstrous

historical precedent, but it's a potentially valuable question to ask as well because of the

nature of the world we live in and because of the incentives many of us experience at some point

in our lives to monetize various aspects of ourselves. And the answer to that

question of how much a human being is worth is highly dependent on what aspects of a person we happen

to be talking about and what market forces apply to that particular valuation method. For instance,

the average American, based on data from the 2015 census,

will earn around $1.4 million over the course of their lifetime. At different points in their

life, their net worth, that is, the amount of money, everything they own is worth, including the actual money in their

pockets and in the bank, but also their car, their computer, their other valuables, all of that

minus the value of everything that they owe, like debt, car payments, and so on. Their net worth

will vary, depending on countless factors, but in general,

the average American's net worth starts at around $11,000 for adults under 35, and then balloons up

to closer to $60,000 for 35 to 44-year-olds. It then more than doubles to 124,000 at 45 to 54 years old and increases

a bit to just over $187,000 at 55 to 64 and then hangs on at the low to mid-200,000 range in their

mid-60s through their 70s. You could, then, look at a person's

age and where they live and have a rough idea of how much they're worth, in terms of their assets

and liabilities based on those numbers. You could get even more granular by looking at their actual

bank account and possessions, their debts and liabilities if you

wanted to chart out precisely how many dollars and cents a person represents in the economy

in which they operate. You could also attempt to measure a person's popularity or influence,

and then slap a number on that, A wildly imperfect but illustrative stand-in

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