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So, I get where you’re coming from here, but $25 million is still an enormous amount of money objectively. Obviously there isn’t really a way to convert 44 years of incarceration into an equivalent financial denomination, but if we think about earnings that could be had in that time, $25 million by far covers it.
If this guy were to have a job paying $100k a year for his whole life, he’d be making well in excess of the average, and still only have about $6 million total earnings by the time they retire. Let’s double it and assume he was making $200k a year for his entire working life, that’s still only half the amount he was awarded. So this amount paid could be said to cover a lifetime of high pay, plus an equivalent amount in damages, plus a little extra on top for good measure.
Of course, hence why I said that it’s not possible to convert incarceration time into money. Removing agency is to remove possibility to proceed however one sees fit. Likely he would have been financially poorer off, but life isn’t a measure of worth by dollars. Only the most degenerate among us think that bigger numbers in various accounts equates to a good life.