America the GENEROUS

Traveller:

What old sources? Most of what I have given is for 2004.

MT:

Who insulted who first? I show “distorting the statistics again” and “quit patting yourself on the back because no one buys your enthusiasm” and then suggest that you are once again back to your old bash America first routine. Why is it that your comments basically suggesting that I am lying or deliberately manipulating statistics are acceptable but mine are not? Takes two to play nicely.

This is from 1999 but please note that patterns have not changed much in terms of how this money is given.

[quote]Charitable giving is common, reflecting various

Fred,

Please stop or you’ll be persecuted by Liberal Left again. Oh no!!

The US does give a lot of aid in $$, just less so as a % of GDP. As you say, most of the aid from the US is from private sources, just as it is domestically. (Don’t forget all of those nice concert halls, museums…etc) in NYC or Philadelphia that come completely from private (robber baron) money. This means that some of the aid comes with strings attached, and some doesn’t.

I actually find it a bit frightening that a private citizen like Gates controls such a large chunk of foreign aid.

Please reread this statement again. It is NOT just in terms of total amounts but also per capita.

[quote]Charitable giving is common, reflecting various

Good point, Elegua, regarding the schools, concert halls etc. built on private donations in the US.

Why do you find it frightening that people like Bill and Melinda Gates give so much to charity though?

Because in general the gov. has less strings attached (to the recipient) than aid than gvien by private agencies. Private citizens can do whatever they want with thier aid whereas the gov. has to pay attention to all these rules about what kind of aid can and can’t be given, where the aid is sourced, what restictions are placed on the aid. Plus there is a lot of oversight on gov. aid.

I do not agree with quasi-gov. aid through private parties. That is where the trouble begins because much private aid has some kind of agenda.

[quote=“fred smith”]Please reread this statement again. It is NOT just in terms of total amounts but also per capita.

[quote]Charitable giving is common, reflecting various

The link was already provided above Traveller. I merely repeated on paragraph to show Elequa that it was the largest donor both in total amound and in PER CAPITA giving. See above. The link is there. Scroll up four or five posts.

[quote]America has been sending less money abroad to poorer countries recently relative to its own gross domestic product, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

U.S. development aid – including funds doled out for strategic reasons – will come to 0.12 percent of GDP this year, down from an average of 0.2 percent in the 1980s (see figure).

Moreover, both the administration’s proposed budget for fiscal 2001 and Congress’ own emerging plans would reduce the level to a 50-year low.

According to figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. in recent years has ranked next to last among 21 industrialized donor countries in per capita outlays.[/quote]
ncpa.org/pd/budget/pd060100f.html

cbpp.org/4-25-00bud.htm

Incidentally, donations such as those by Ted Turner (to make up for the US breaching its committment to the UN) or Bill Gates (the worlds richest man), as referred to by Fred the distortionist, are obviously rare exceptions. When people refer to increased capital flow by private individuals from rich countries to poor countries, they are mostly speaking of investments (ie people trying to make money off of those countries) not charity. Obviously, the countries that need aid the worst (such as sub-sahara Africa) are not appealing to investors and don’t get the money. Those are the countries that need governmental aid, but government aid is given based on the needs of the donor, not the recipient, which is why one of (or the) largest recipient of foreign aid from the US is Israel, hardly a poor, charity case. Moreover, “aid” usually consist of weapons, not agricultural, educational or medical assistance; and what aid the US gives usually has so many strings attached (requiring expensive purchases from the US, for example) that it may be more of a burden than a benefit. So, Fred, I’m still not fooled by your blatant lies, but it seems that you are.

Who cares?

And in any case, if all this money really was spent on food there’d be no hunger in the world. So it’s clear these statistics are all utter bollocks.

mt, the us gives by far the most total aid(public and private) of any country in the world. us private aid(not investments, but aid) dwarfs every other country in the world:

globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp

it’s interesting that you see a poor country in africa and say “they need government aid”. americans will see the country and say, “they need any kind of aid they can get!”.

private aid is also much more effective since it is not tied to the sort of conditions that you’ve already pointed out hamstring public aid.

Ok, I concede that point Flipper. While the US govt is stingy in giving foreign aid, private aid from the US has been generous. However, I objected to Fred’s title because it appeared that he was falsely claiming the US government is generous with aid when exactly the opposite is true. And, as the source that you linked points out,

[quote]The interest on this section though is on government aid, because that is less specialized than private contributions and it is internationally agreed, and importantly, reflects foreign policy objectives of the donor government in power, which can differ from the generosity of the people of that nation.

Private donations, especially large philanthropic donations and business givings, can be subject to political/ideological or economic end-goals and/or subject to special interest. A vivid example of this is in health issues around the world. Amazingly large donations by foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are impressive, but the underlying causes of the problems are not addressed, which require political solutions. As Rajshri Dasgupta comments:

MT - it’s not a question of stingy or not, but a question of administrative style. Look at domestic US “aid”. You can see the private aid has always historically played a large role. Why should overseas “aid” be any different?

Besides, there is more than one study that shows that foreign aid never quite does what it is supposed to do. If foreign aid truly worked (as the way it is intended), then the World Bank poster child Ghana would be the next luxembourg.

ncpa.org/pd/budget/pd060100f.html

cbpp.org/4-25-00bud.htm

Something more on this, and referring to the very catastrophic situation in the areas hit by the tsunami…

From the CNN website:
cnn.com/2004/US/12/27/un.tsunami/index.html

…In a news conference at U.N. headquarters in New York, Egeland called for a major international response – and went so far as to call the U.S. government and others “stingy” on foreign aid in general.

"The 0.2 percent of U.S. gross national product represented by foreign aid obligations the past two years, however, is among the smallest amounts in the last half-century. The United States is the largest international economic aid donor in dollar terms but is the smallest contributor among the major donor governments when calculated as a percent of gross national income," said the report, which is posted on the U.S. State Department’s Web site…

Fred: “Generous”
UN: “Stingy”
Who to believe?
Fred’s gonna have a field day with this, given his aforementioned “love” :stuck_out_tongue: of the UN. Ha, ha!
OK, Fred, I know you have no love for the UN, but how do you balance your opinion on American generosity with the arguments/facts above?

The numbers are not usable.

UK belongs to EU, but is excluded here. So what is “EU” in this figure? It is not defined.
So is EU:=EU - UK or are other countries excluded as well?

Germany usually paid a lot what EU donates somewhere, so at least we do not have to hide here I think. But probably we are not in this statistic and rather count in Ivory Coast := Ivory Coast + Germany or whatever.

Bob Honest:

You can determine the rough amount. Even if the British amount is counted separately, the US gives more than half. Since we know the total just factor that in. With Japan giving the third largest amount, it is fairly easy to calculate. The fact is that the US gives more than half.

As to MT’s comments, I think that it is interesting. I said no where that my comments were referring to the US government. I said US (period). The fact is that the US as a whole no matter how you want to traitorously doubt it and slice it is still the most generous nation.

You can focus all you want and demand that the US government be the one to give most of the aid but the fact remains that most government aid is usually the most inefficient and most libel to corruption. Ergo, the US because it gives mostly private aid is therefore even providing more effective assistance than the EU and other countries precisely because large amounts are not lost through corruption, bureaucracy and inefficiency in the government sector. Naturally, this person is involved in govt aid programs and would love to pressure the US into giving more but where does it really end up? Paying his US$120,000 salary and his car and driver and business class seats to “conferences” in Paris, Geneva and Rome? Right.

Again, however, I think that we see a pattern here. No matter what subject comes up, MT is the first to rush to bash America and to slice and dice all the statistics to try to make America look bad. YET, all of the statistics posted here show that America is the most generous nation both in terms of total amount given AND per capita. The only area we do not hit NO. 1 on is GOVT aid. Get that through your head. And given that govt aid is so often subject to corruption, inefficiency, bureaucracy ala the UN and France, I really would have to wonder why so many people would demand that this statistic be seen as the ultimate determinant of who is generous and how.

Canada is a perfect example of useless money spent on international development. Look at CIDA as a perfect example. The government in Ottawa should stop funding studies and programs funding

One last thing in response to MT:

The US peacekeeping efforts and transportation provided to other nations’ peacekeeping efforts etc are NOT included in these “govt” statistics. Given that the US is the primary guarantor of peace and security in many places around the world this allows those nations to develop without engaging in costly arms buildups. Witness Europe, East Asia and even now in the Middle East.

Just who was it who allowed 4 million refugees to return to Afghanistan? The UN? The French? The Russians? No. And for all the aid and support that the UN gave all these years, many of those “administrators” are privately gnashing their teeth because their 20 year sinecures with US$80,000 to US$120,000 a year salaries is suddenly gone. Too F***ing bad. Boo hoo.

And who is it that went in to stabilize Haiti? The US and the French.

And who was it that went in to try to stabilize Somalia? The US and why is it that no one has touched that country with a 10 foot pole since? Because they shot our soldiers and looted our aid warehouses. So, what exactly do the Somalis expect?

Finally, I think that the fact that the US was in East Asia allowed Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore to all enjoy unprecedented periods of growth and prosperity which led to democracy in many of these nations. Now, that their standards of living are so high they no longer require aid and are contributing aid themselves to other countries. That is the REPUBLICAN way to approach a problem.

But be sure and tout the glorious accomplishments of your communist friends in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and North Korea where … people continue to suffer because of their corrupt governments and distorted economies. Viva communism. It has obviously worked so well. I wonder when the Left is ever going to apologize to the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians and North Koreans for supporting the governments that have oppressed their people and blocked their progress so that today they remain decades behind their neighbors. Hmmm? Wanna apologize? Do you?

Chewy Corn wrote:

[quote]Seriously, since the Trudeau era, Canada

Now, let’s see what Fox News reports on what the US is “not giving” to see if there might be any bias in the CNN report…

Now, this could be taken two ways, either the US is giving 2/3rds of what the Red Cross is asking of it alone or it is giving 2/3rds of the total that the Red Cross has asked for from all nations. And given that in AID agencies, many times you high ball your figure to cover those nations who do not support you, I think that this is reasonable and fair and hardly “stingy.”

Sounds pretty good so far. What are other nations giving? Hmmm? And remember when the UN “gives” to these projects, most of that money is coming from the US already. See the earlier posts.

So the US is also dispatching costly search and rescue services. Is this being tallied into the total amount of “aid” being given? I doubt it since it never really is. Is it included in the US govt figures? I doubt it since it never really is. So, who else is sending these types of search and rescue missions? Not blaming anyone. Just asking. I would find it hard to believe that nations like Canada and Belgium for example even have these kinds of resources anymore. But prove me wrong. Anyone?

foxnews.com/story/0,2933,142654,00.html