The Economics of The Purge
"The Purge" Film series seems to be another pointless series of films where the viewer gets to visualise chaos in the eyes of the 3rd person. A full day where all crimes are made legal, murder, rape, assault, etc are all legal, police are acquitted for a day and everyone in America can go on a crime-spree for a full day. But i'm going to answer the question that i think is worth answering "What is the Economic value of The Purge?". What would be the Economic outcome both in the Short term and the long term if there were a policy of a purge every year, The Purge movies seem to be all set in the USA so i'm just going to use the whole of the USA as a case study, I'm mainly going to stick to the Economic value that would occur with Murder.
--The Variables worth keeping in mind--
America is a mostly free-market system, where things like Income taxes and Corporate taxes tend to be pretty low in comparison to the rest of the world. I'm going to be relatively generous in that i'm going to assume in the America that the Purge is set in, Everyone pays their income tax and Corporate taxes. I'm going to work from the current average murder rate in the USA and use statistics dating from at least 2013, fitting what statistics are available at this time.
--The nitty gritty--
Murder as a crime logically benefits the Funeral industry, since all the people that die in the movies have to be buried or cremated somewhere. The current value of the Funeral Industry in the USA is $20 Billion per year (According to Forbes) and on average 1.5 Million people in the USA die per year. According to Worldometers the US Population is currently sitting at 326.9 Million and the average murder rate per 100,000 people per day is 4.9 (according to the UNODC in 2013), that would be roughly 16,018 people are murdered in the USA.
So, if we were to have a Purge randomly once a year where all 326.9 Million Americans could commit murder for a day, how many on average would they murder? Well following the Average murder rate that number would be 2-5 people per individual in America, and assuming that the success rate of those murders are 50% (because it takes some effort for an attempted murder to become a murder). If 50% of the USA took part in the purge, so roughly 163.4 Million people, and on average they "murdered" 2-5 people, they would have committed either 326.9 Million murders or to be more realistic 163.4 Million Murders and another 163.4 attempted murders. The average cost of a Funeral in the USA is $10,000 so if there were 163.4 Million murders, that would be an extra $1.6 TRILLION for the Death industry.
The Unsuccessful murders if they were attempted by stabbing or shooting, then the industry that would benefit would be the Healthcare industry in the states. According to the NCBI, the Average cost of a gunshot survivor is $154,000 and the average cost of a stab survivor is $12,000. If there were 163.4 million attempted murders in this purge then there would be 81.7 Million stab victims and 81.7 million gunshot survivors, this would generate $12.5 TRILLION for gunshot survivors and $980.4 BILLION for stabbing victims. The estimated worth of the healthcare sector in the USA is $3.4 Trillion.
The Purge would give the Death industry a boost of about $1.6 Trillion and $13.4 Trillion for the healthcare sector respectively.
If the Death industry and Healthcare Industry were to pay their 25.7% corporate tax rates, this would mean the state would gain $411.2 Billion from the Death Industry and $3.4 Trillion from the healthcare industry.
--In Conclusion--
In the Short term the USA would see a massive boom in their overall Economy for 5-10 years, however in the long term it would be a major detriment to the Economy. As it would take a long time to get the population numbers back up to their former glory to keep a consistent economy going.
Disclaimer: Of course this article is talking in the hypothetical's and that this kind of policy shouldn't be implemented because of its blatant ethical and moral issues not just the Economic problems and "benefits" it would lead to. It's just a good novelty and thought experiment to think through.
--Sources used:--
Average cost of a funeral: http://www.us-funerals.com/funeral-articles/usa-funeral-market.html
U.S Population: http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/
Death Industry Value: https://www.forbes.com/sites/perianneboring/2014/04/25/the-death-of-the-death-care-industry-and-eternal-life-online/#604a4b6e1c1a
Homocide rate: https://www.unodc.org/documents/gsh/pdfs/2014_GLOBAL_HOMICIDE_BOOK_web.pdf
Gunshot and stabbing costs: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9183471
US Healthcare value: https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2017/02/16/spending-growth