It's definitely much easier to convince people when you're talking dollars rather than "beauty" or "maintainability" which are much more abstract concepts. This pushes that to the forefront.
I wonder if anyone has experience with trying to use this language that they can share. I'm curious because it seems like a great idea. But I wonder if it would solve the "just ship it!" mentality. I still feel like there may be a missing component which is that what might be fast to build now will slow down the overall development effort later on. I think that time gap is one of the big things that stakeholders fail to think about. They're thinking "what can we get out the door now?" and not further down to what impact that will have on getting other things out the door a few months from now.
Great post!