Who Deserves the 9/11 Cash Pile?A moral philosopher on misplaced generosity.
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2001, at 4:11 PM ET
An "avalanche," a "flood"—these terms have been used to describe not natural disasters but the money flowing to victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. At the time of writing, the total given to public appeals has reached $1.3 billion. Of this, according to a New York Times survey, $353 million has been raised exclusively for the families of about 400 police officers, firefighters, and other uniformed personnel who died trying to save others. That comes to $880,000 for each family. Families of victims who were not in uniform will receive much less, because the remaining funds must be spread over a much larger number of people, including those who have lost their jobs because of the attacks.
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StumbleUponQuestions of justice immediately arise. At a New Jersey support meeting for the families of those killed on Sept. 11, a "screaming match" broke out when a widow of a Port Authority police officer argued that her family deserved more charity than other families because her husband had died saving others. That argument was hotly contested by the widow of a financial executive, who insisted that all casualties deserved equal treatment. The New York Times quoted Mary Ellen Salamone as saying that she was "heartbroken about the inequities—that people could value the lives of those men more than they would value the lives of our men."
It makes sense for the community to reward the families of those who die while bravely trying to save others, for doing so both recognizes and encourages acts of great benefit to the community. This is not a matter of equity or distributive justice but sound social policy. How big the difference between the reward for these and the "civilian" victims ought to be is another question. It could be argued that the families of the firefighters killed would have been adequately provided for even if there had been no donations at all. Their spouses will receive New York state pensions equal to the lost salaries, and their children will be entitled to full scholarships to state universities. The federal government is giving an additional $250,000 to families of police officers and firefighters killed on duty. For families to receive close to a million dollars in cash on top of all that may well leave us thinking that something has gone awry.
As it happens, just as the terrorists were putting their criminal plans into practice, the United Nations Children's Fund was getting ready to issue its 2002 report, The State of the World's Children. (For a summary, see this page; click here for the full report.) According to the UNICEF report, released to the media on Sept. 13, more than 10 million children under 5 die each year from preventable causes such as malnutrition, unsafe water, and the lack of even the most basic health care. Since Sept. 11, 2001, was probably just another day for most of the world's desperately poor people, we can expect that more than 27,000 children under 5 died from these causes on that day. If we include humans of all ages dying from causes related to extreme poverty, the daily figure would easily pass 100,000. (Based on the estimate of 40 million deaths mentioned in President Clinton’s speech of Sept. 29, 1999, on canceling the debts of the poorest nations.)
Such figures do not diminish the tragedy of Sept. 11, but they put the debate over how to divide up the largess among the families of uniformed and civilian victims of the attacks into perspective. They force us to ask: How can we justify giving such huge sums to the families of the firefighters and police when we do so little for people in other countries whose needs are much more desperate?
We often hear it said that "America is the most generous nation on earth." But when it comes to foreign aid, America is the most stingy nation on earth. Many years ago, the United Nations set a target for development aid of 0.7 percent of Gross National Product. A handful of developed nations—Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden—meet or surpass this very modest target of giving 70 cents in every $100 dollars that their economy produces to the developing nations. Most nations fail to reach it, but no developed nation fails so miserably as the United States, which in 1999, the last year for which figures are available, gave 0.1 percent of GNP, or 10 cents in every $100, just one-seventh of the U.N. target. That is far less in actual U.S. dollars than Japan gives—about $9 billion for the United States, as compared with over $15 billion for Japan—although the U.S. economy is roughly twice the size of Japan's. And even that miserly figure isn't really aid to the most needy, as much of it is strategically targeted for political purposes. The largest single recipient of U.S. official development assistance is Egypt, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is tiny, but gets more aid from the United States than India does. (These figures come from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, as of July 23, 2001.)
Some will say it is misleading to focus on official aid, because the United States is a country that distrusts government more than most other nations do. If private aid sources were also included, would the United States not turn out to be more generous in its aid to other nations? Yes, a higher proportion of the total aid given by the United States is nongovernmental aid than is the case for other nations. But nongovernmental aid everywhere is dwarfed by government aid, and that is true in the United States too. So, adding in the nongovernmental aid is insufficient either to get the United States off the very bottom of the list of developed countries or to make the total sum given, in actual dollars, match the amount given by Japan.
Americans are fond of talking of their belief in human equality, but it seems that their circle of concern drops off sharply once it gets to the boundary of their own nation. The sums donated to the victims of Sept. 11 show this once again. We would be a better nation if our generosity was more closely related to need and less closely tied to whether someone is a fellow citizen, or a victim of terrorism, or even a hero.
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Notes From The Fray Editor:
Michael Gordon says that Israel is the recipient of the most U.S. aid. No-one else cared: the vast majority of posters wanted to make it clear that they give their money where they want, America is better than anywhere else, and charity begins at home. An interesting number of posters said "How dare you say who deserves money!" before telling us who they thought deserved money.
Comments:
Since no one can place a $$ value on human life, there should be a standardized sum of money given out for each life lost. There should also be a 'heroic' award for those who lost their lives in the disaster. After all, no one would've have blamed them if any of them had saved themselves. With whatever funds are left over, it should be divided up equally and dispersed to the survivors, beginning with those who were hospitalized, evicted, etc.
I don't think there will ever be formula to satisfy everyone, but disaster relief was not intended serve everyone's needs. It is only a tide-over, a hand up to begin life anew in a difficult situation. It is not life-insurance.
--RodeoGirl
(To find or answer this post, click here.)
I was interested, and rather surprised, to find that there is a Slate writer who Fray posters respond to with even more vitriol than they typically reserve for that other liberal Poster Child, Robert Wright.
It seems to me that most replies miss Singer's point entirely. He has not said that the money that has been donated to 9/11 victims should be given to someone else. He has not said that we should not give charity to fellow Americans. What he has said is that we give far more to well publicized victims who are close to home than we give to many others who receive less or no publicity, particularly if they are far away in some place we wouldn't visit anyway.
There are two reasons for making charitable contributions: to reduce suffering and to make givers feel better. If our primary justification is on making ourselves feel better, then the act of giving itself is all that's important, and it really doesn't matter who we give to.
But if we really want to reduce suffering, Singer's thesis is that we'll get more value for our donations by spreading it further, rather than heaping it on a relatively few recipients who by circumstance happen to be at the center of our attention.
Is that so unreasonable?
--Dilettante
(To find or answer this post, click here.)
The one statement of Professor Singer's with which I agree completely is this: "For families to receive close to a million dollars in cash on top of all [their other compensation] may well leave us thinking that something has gone awry." However, the responsibility for what went awry does not belong with the victims but with the donors. Everybody had good intentions in the aftermath of September 11 but we simply funneled too much money at too few people. As mistaken as this may have been in retrospect, these are exactly the people at whom we were targeting money when we wrote our checks and it is a little late in the game now to say, "Sorry, but you can only have as much as we now think is fair." It was our mistake, so it is our loss and their gain. Could the money perhaps be better used to feed hungry children around the world? Sure. Is this whole thing kind of unfair? Sure. Charity is always inherently unfair in some ways. You cannot consciously chose to donate to one worthy cause without consciously or unconsciously choosing not to donate to other causes just as worthy. If there was justice in charity, we would just throw dollar bills into the air and God or some other higher power would magically make them float down into the hands of those who really needed them the most at that moment.
A few of us are now a lot richer and the rest of us are hopefully now a lot smarter. One final thought, lest we become too bitter at the 6,000+ families that have benefited so profitably from our generosity. I am one of the lucky people who did not lose a close friend or family member on September 11. Neither do I personally know someone with a loss. I do not think I even know someone who knows someone. I can honestly say I would forfeit a million dollars for that good luck every day for the rest of my life. But, hey!, that's just my value system.
--The Bell
(To find or answer this post, click here.)
(12/13)