But that's precisely my point. I'm not saying that you or the OP is actually arguing the extreme of the position, I'm saying that the argument that "cutting the budget is needless" because "lives are on the line" implies the extreme unless you are willing to accept that there is a correct amount of diminishing returns where we would agree that cuts to the budget were not needless, but justifiable, regardless of lives being on the line. So if we accept that we both agree that there is a figure where this tradeoff takes place, then what I'd like to know is why the previous figure was correct, and the figure post-cuts is not.