Dead or Alive

Its interesting to consider whether a person is more valuable when he or she is dead or alive. I am not joking, consider this. An artist makes a good living with his/her art work. However when the artist dies, the value of the work goes up zillion times. Now i would say the artist is worth more dead (bless the poor soul) than alive. A good doctor, a honest firefighter, policeman save lives, so they are worth more alive than dead. However if you consider corrupt politicians or a bureaucrats, they drain the economy when they are alive and the economy recovers when they are dead. What would be the value of commoner like us ? I would say price increases everyday like an inflation in third world country but does the value really increase ?