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Originally Posted by FHwku
organ donors should be buried for free. maybe then, more people would become donors. along the lines of charity and public service, i would rank organ donating up there with any living personal sacrifice.
if someone in my hometown needed money for a funeral the community or a church would take a collection. if they did something notable, heroic, or tragic, they would probably get a "...has set up a fund for the family...donations can be made at Kroger's or any First Fifth Bank."
why do they have to cremate the bodies in Detroit? can't they just get a pauper's funeral? it's dignified and inexpensive. not just a cardboard coffin and a hole in the ground.
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From my experience in dead relatives, cremation is much cheaper, the cheapest option of all. Burials require a plot, a casket, and workers to dig the hole and refill it. Cremation can be done for much less and the storage isn't as much of an issue (scattering or given to a relative). Columbariums (a crypt for ashes if you will) cost money because well, space is at a premium and it costs a lot.
However there are many hidden costs with cremation. We had to pay for a container for my dad (we had no viewing) and a cardboard box was something like $85 in addition to the cost of the urn, picking up his body (he died at home with hospice care), the actual fire, the scattering, and so on. We went with the cardboard because he'd be mad if we wasted money, he had that kind of sense of humor, and umm yeah, we were setting it on fire!
In a big city it definitely costs more for a burial as there isn't land. I can't think of any place non-military one can be buried in San Francisco, and those spots are running out. There are whole suburbs full of cemeteries, where there are towns with more dead than living.