IMHO # 2

Yesterday, my media law professor mentioned something which shocked me to the core. She said that following the 9/11 attacks, different compensations were paid to the victims, depending on their annual income. Thus, the high-paid Wall Street executives' families received millions while other families received much less. All 43 workers at the Windows on the World restaurant in the Trade Center were killed and their relatives did not receive any financial help because the victims were in the country illegally or their relatives were afraid to ask for help because they were illegal.

Ken Feinberg was the administrator of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. In that job, he had to put a price tag on the dead. He had to decide what people's pain and their relative's role in society were worth. According to a testimony of Feinberg, families of 2,880 victims received $5,996,261,002.08 in compensation; in addition, 2,680 physical injury victims were paid $1,053,154,534.56 by the 9/11 Fund. The average award for a death claim was $1,267,880.49; the average award for a physical injury claim was $392,968.11. Information on the exact compensation of families of Wall Street executives is very hard to find but most documents state that the number is substantially higher.

The businesses which were affected received an average of 23.3 billion for property damage, according to the 173-page analysis by the Rand Institute for Civil Justice which examined the compensation system. This is 61 % of the overall benefits !?!? Property damage thus has a higher price tag than the loss of human lives.

I understand that the way compensations were distributed depended on the economic hole created by the loss of a person’s life. But it turns out that even in death, Wall Street still stands higher than Main street and rich people's lives apparently seem to have more value than poor people's lives. And in my humble opinion, this is not ok. What happened to the American Creed that "All people are created equal"?