Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Department of Justice Emails Description An account of the resource The Department of Justice received more than 11,000 e-mails in response to the agency's public solicitation for comments upon its plans to distribute the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 established by Congress to benefit the victims of September 11 and their families. These e-mails have been organized here by date. September 11 Email September 11 Email: Body The basic content, as unstructured text; sometimes containing a signature block at the end. Friday, December 21, 2001 10:20 AM Excessive growth assumptions favor rich at expense of poor December 21, 2001 Special Master Kenneth R. Feinberg C/O Kenneth L. Zwick, Director Office of Management Programs Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice Main Building, Room 3140 950 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20530 Dear Mr. Feinberg As a forensic economist who has often testified on the economic consequences of wrongful death, I applaud your efforts to find a distribution formula that is both fast and fair. Unfortunately these two noble objectives are on a collision course. Your distribution formula is badly flawed because your assumed rates of compensation growth are much too high. The effect of this mistake is twofold. First, of the funds available for distribution, too much is allocated to economic loss and too little to non-economic loss. Second, although the faulty formula proportionately "overcompensates" everyone for economic loss, more of the actual dollar amount is allocated to the highly compensated, at the expense of the less highly compensated. Both of these consequences tend to favor the rich at the expense of the poor. This is true despite your passionately and eloquently stated reluctance to play the role of King Solomon by deciding that some lives are worth more than others. The appended chart documents my argument using one hypothetical worker, age 25, who earns $18,000 a year, and a counterpart earning ten times that amount. The excessive compensation growth assumptions in this admittedly extreme case result in a misallocation to the more highly paid individual of $1,538,723. At the very least, I urge you to revise your growth assumptions so that they are in better accord with economic reality, and with customary courtroom practice. In today¹s environment, a generalized growth rate of 3.5% is probably appropriate, rather than the rates of up to 6.6% in your current formula. It would be better still, I think, to de-emphasize compensation for economic loss, and to correspondingly increase your allocation for "pain and suffering," hewing to your established principle of compensating everyone, rich or poor alike, by an equal but now presumably much higher amount. I note that you are performing this service to your country without compensation, and if I can be helpful to you, I will gladly contribute my services as well. Sincerely, Individual Comment Rapid City, SD September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2001-12-21 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource dojN000399.xml 911DA Item Elements describing a September 11 Digital Archive item. Status The process status of this item. approved Consent Whether September 11 Digital Archive has permission to possess this item. full Posting Whether the contributor gave permission to post this item. yes Copyright Whether the contributor holds copyright to this item. yes Source The source of this item. born-digital Media Type The media type of this item. email Created by Author Whether the author created this item. yes Described by Author Whether the description of this item was submitted by the author. no Date Entered The date this item was entered into the archive. 2001-12-21