This question really got me thinking. What does it mean to lose an entire year of life? 8760 hours (with the exception of leap years). If it's your last year of life, it may not be a very big deal if you come down with a wicked case Alzheimer's or some sort of crippling, painful disease like bone-itis. On the other hand, the last years of your life are considered to be the most precious, if not the most enjoyable (diapers, arthritis and wheelchairs). So if the question is the minimum I would ask in exchange for a year, the answer takes a bit of thought.
How much time are we really losing? Assuming we sleep an average of 7 hours a night (even less when you're really old), in a year we only spend 6205 hours awake. Out of those hours, we spend about 2000 working, but if these are your final years then you probably wont be working. 6205 hours of spare time are flushed away. 6205 of hours you could spend living out your final days. From a purely financial perspective, how much money would it take to make it worth it? Well $100,000 over the course of 6205 hours is less than I earn right now. However, considering that these are my final years of life, would add or subtract from their value?
Some would claim that watching your grand children grow another year older is priceless. The fact that most of us are still really young would mean that we have really only one side of the coin to look at and we would probably not even give a second thought to robbing our future selves of that year of time (except for one of you, as of this post). I want to ask an older person what they would do. If they answered that selling that one year of life would be a big mistake, would that be out of genuine love of life, fear of death, or the drive for immediate benefit that most people are currently experiencing in the vote tally? Honestly, asking us this question is probably the best thing this devil could do, as our youthful avarice would lead us to make possibly one of the worst decisions of our lives.
That being said, I answered $100,000 before I really really really thought about this question. Thank you for killing an hour of time today at work.
