One World Now by Peter Singer

Author:Peter Singer [Singer, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2016-07-02T04:00:00+00:00

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Human Equality: Theory and Practice

An avalanche, a flood—these were the terms used to describe the response to public appeals for the victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon of September 11, 2001. Three months after the disaster the total stood at $1.3 billion. Of this, according to a New York Times survey, $353 million was exclusively for the families of about 400 police officers, firefighters, and other uniformed personnel who died trying to save others. That came to $880,000 for each family. The families of the firefighters killed would have been adequately provided for even if there had been no donations at all. Their spouses received New York state pensions equal to the lost salaries, and their children are entitled to full scholarships to state universities. The federal government gave an additional $250,000 to families of police officers and firefighters killed on duty.1 That families received close to a million dollars in cash on top of these considerable benefits may well leave us thinking that something has gone awry. But there was more to come. The American Red Cross received more than $564 million in donations and had trouble finding needy recipients for so much money. It therefore set aside nearly half the funds for future needs, including possible future victims of terrorist attacks. When that fact became public, a wave of criticism forced the organization to spend all the money on victims of the 9/11 attacks. To do so it abandoned any attempt to examine whether potential recipients needed help. Instead it drew a line across lower Manhattan and offered anyone living below that line the equivalent of three months’ rent (or, if they owned their own apartment, three months’ mortgage and maintenance payments) plus money for utilities and groceries, if they claimed they had been affected by the destruction of the World Trade Center. Most of the residents of the area below the line were not displaced or evacuated, but they were offered mortgage and rent assistance nevertheless. One woman was told she could have the cost of her psychiatric treatment reimbursed, even though she said she had been seeing her psychiatrist before September 11. Red Cross volunteers set up card tables in the lobbies of expensive apartment buildings in Tribeca, where financial analysts, lawyers, and rock stars live, to inform residents of the offer. The higher your rent, the more money you got. The Red Cross acknowledged that money was going to people who did not need it. According to a spokesperson, “In a program of this sort, we’re not going to make judgments on people’s needs.”2

As the terrorists were planning the attack, the United Nations Children’s Fund was getting ready to issue its 2002 report, The State of the World’s Children.3 According to the report, released to the media on September 13, 2001, more than ten million children under the age of five died each year from such preventable causes as malnutrition, unsafe water, and the lack of even the most basic health care.

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