Charities and governments can give and give, using the money that was either given voluntarily or taken through taxes, and help with the initial tragedy. Pull the people from the rubble, treat the injured, restore water, electricity, temporary housing and ensure that food can be distributed.
But at what point do we say, “No more?” Do we have to keep giving food and money to the local government and continue to work on rebuilding when they should take over the responsibility of fixing their own country? Too many times the aid is hijacked by corrupt officialsor else the country becomes beholden to foreign supporters and continues to look outside their borders in order to survive.
One proposal I heard was that we should take the Haitians that are here illegally and, before they are deported, provide them with training in carpentry, plumbing, electricity and other skills that are essential to rebuilding the infrastructure of their country. Then send them back to Haiti with supervising foremen and supplies to get them started in the rebuilding. When the projects are well underway, the supervisors would leave and the citizens would take over.
We could even go beyond blue collar training and provide education for nurse practitioners, teachers and civil engineers who would go back to Haiti and take care of citizens and work on improving their future.
It’s the old proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” I’ve given to Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross and other aid organizations but I believe that the best way to help a person is to get them back on their feet, help them on their way and encourage them to support themselves. Is this heartless? I don’t think so. I think it is crueler to keep doing things for people and giving them everything they need to the point where they are not able to fend for themselves.
On the subject of charity, remittances are when someone in a developing country moves to a large city within the country (usually the capital) or move to a wealthy western country, then send some of the money they earn back home.
It happens all the time in places like China. Someone moves to Beijing, gets a job then sends money home. Many illegal immigrants from Mexico tend to do this too.
Anyway, the point is that remittances are actually bigger than foreign aid. There is an effort to increase foreign humanitarian aid to 0.7% of GDP of wealthy nations (about $200 billion a year up from less than half that). However remittances already add up to $300 billion a year.
However those figures are just for people living abroad (an African who moves to France and sends money home as an example). Someone who lives in a rural area, then moves to the capital city and sends money home isn’t included from what I can tell, but my understanding is that is a big source of funds too.
Anyway, point is you have to take remittances into account when you factor in foreign aid and charity. And I don’t know how well they work. My impression is foreign aid is supposed to be for infrastructure (health, transportation, education, agricultural) to help developing nations get on their feet. I don’t know how much of remittances goes to that though. I’m guessing a good deal goes to education fees, health care fees and things like that though (parents trying to pay for their kid’s education and health care, that kind of thing).
I’m not sure delivery is a factor in answering the question. There are some things, like providing security, which governments and not private companies can do. It is quite possible that private organizations like the Red Cross can be more effective than government in providing aid, in that case the taxpayer dollars can go to them.
However I think the answer is both, since money comes from different buckets in a sense. It is not clear how much taxpayers would agree to have their taxes go up for charity, especially since they have no control over the allocation. I think that some part of tax money should be used for charity which furthers national goals, which the money to Haiti does. But people contributing individually are pulling it from a different category from the one that involves paying taxes. So, assuming you think that we need more money to charity in general, you’d get more with the current method of some government charity and some private charity.