Blood Money

Good for the NY York Times to bring spotlight to this. Families benefiting from death of loved one in combat.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/nyregion/22benefits.html?scp=1&sq=U.S.+Military+death+benefits&st=nyt

 

Excellent job done by the Times.

You feel bad for the loved ones left behind. But at the same time, some of the people in the story come off as just plain greedy.

 

I sense the influence of Tom Jolly in this story, if only as a presence in the same newsroom.

 

I'm sorry, but this is so snotty and judgmental. The young woman lost her husband--if she wants to buy a Louis Vuitton wallet and a purple Coach bag, good for her.

Typical snooty Times elitism.

 

I don't get the point of the story. What's the differene between a military family receiving this money, and civilians receiving insurance payouts upon the death of a loved one?

 

I don't think the story questioned the death payout, it just illustrated some of the problems that can arise from them. I didn't get a sense that the families were being placed under a negative spotlight just for receiving the money.

 

I agree with First Down here--and echo 21's thoughts about the Louis Vuitton wallet. She's 25 and she just lost her husband. What's the problem here?

“I thought, ‘Well, this is my husband’s last Christmas gift to me,’ ” said Ms. Avery, 25, a graduate student in psychology who lives in Tennessee, near Fort Campbell, where her husband, First Lt. Garrison C. Avery, was an Army platoon leader.

And as First Down points out, it's the problems that arise when the widow comes into half a million overnight-like hearing from relatives you've never heard of and a complete lack of knowledge of money management.

“I do know that there have been widows who used all the money by paying cash for a house and paying cash for a car,” she said. “If they pay cash for a McMansion, they may not think about all the incidentals like heat and water and phone and cable and taxes and furniture.”

I thought it was a fairly sympathetic article but I'd be interested in Boom's rationale for his thread title "Blood Money"

 

Wasn't oen of the people quoted as saying, "I don't consider it blood money"?

 

That's what I meant about the greedy people. You had the one woman in jail claiming to have a soldier's baby, and you had the one parent complaining about the soldier's widow only being married for a year and receiving the money, and whining "What about his sisters?"