A new book
From the Times:
“Never before had a government offered individuals millions of dollars in tax-free compensation for a tragic loss,” Mr. Feinberg writes. “And never before had government funds been so unregulated. There was no earmarked congressional appropriation limiting the size of awards or constraining my discretion. My budget was unlimited; the payouts would be determined only by my personal judgment and experience.” In the end, Mr. Feinberg would award more than $7 billion to 5,560 victims and family members.
He points out my pet peeve about how the money was handed out. The wives of firemen got a whole lot less than the wives of stockbrokers. They determined the worth of a life based on earning potential. Feinberg now believes that this was a mistake.
Apt. 11d 
I was under the impression that the families of firemen were extremely well-compensated due to directed donations.
I’m more bothered by the wide gulf between what we gave the WTC victims and the usual compensation to families of firemen who die fighting “ordinary” fires and the victims of other terrorist acts–Oklahoma City, the earlier WTC bombing. Why are their families less needy and deserving of support? And what about the families of soldiers killed in action?
LikeLike
It might have been (no, let me say was) a mistake from an ethical point of view. Looking at it from a practical standpoint, though, if all the families of those stockbrokers and executives hadn’t been compensated based on earning potential then they probably would have opted out of the fund and filed a huge class action suit against the airlines. Given that avoiding this was the whole point of the fund, it probably had to happen this way.
Don’t put me down for an endorsement of this. The whole idea that one life deserves more compensation than another turns my stomach, but given our warped system it was probably going to happen one way or another.
LikeLike
You people need to get out more in the real world. If a relative of yours is ever killed in an accident that you feel was avoidable and a “wrongfull death” suit is filed you will find that there is a well-developed industry of long-standing which computes the “human life value” using, among other things, future earnings potential, imputed interest, inflation off-sets, present value, social security off-sets, etc. All of this, along with the “pain and suffering” quotient, is added to come up with a figure. Happens all the time daily in court-rooms all over America. There are standard sets of charts/graphs (today its on a soft-ware pkg.) where you just plug in the data and voila!: the base-line amount presented to the jury for consideration.
The upshot/moral of the 9/11 affair–or any other accident/disaster, for that matter–is that, if the survivors loved ones had been adaquately insured (for those who could afford it) instead of spending the insurance premiums needed on more ephemeral wordly desires instead–their surviving loved ones wouldn’t have had to depend upon “the kindness of strangers.”
LikeLike