bolding mine.
Is the claim of Deputy Press Secretary Trent Duffy correct? Does the US contribute more to relief efforts than all other countries combined?
Forgot the link:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/12/20041228-2.html
The head of the Federal agency for relief stated yesterday that the US supplied 40% of the relief funds given by all countries last year. I do not know if that included private funds given by US citizens (which is very high compared to other countries). Then there is the question of foreign aid not being relief funds. The fact is the Mr. Duffy was probably using figures in a way that suited his purpose. Likewise that UN offical from Norway was using figures that suited his purpose. The truth always falls somewhere inbetween. 
It’s true. But as a proportion of population, or particularly of GDP, the US contribution isn’t nearly as impressive.
I think if you include private charities, churches, and organizations that the United States contribution to world causes is truly staggering. I once read a book called The Ladd Report which detailed the specifics of these contributions. Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam although it argued for the decline of much of American society conceded the incredible amount (by almost any standard) of American charitable donations.
I also wonder how our own disasters are figured in to this debate. The funds that were supplied for the hurricanes in Florida were staggering and that is only the tip of the iceburg for domestic disasters. How much assistance do we get? If Norway was hit by a disaster we’d be there to help. I’m really not suggesting that other countries should help us out, but don’t bad-mouth us without taking that into account. Also if we had something happen on the scale of this disaster, I imagine we would get some help.
Like other claims of this sort, I don’t believe them until I know what made up the numerator and denominator.
The claim may be true and it may not. Show me the numbers, the dollar amounts, the organizations, the relief efforts, and over what particular time period.
I am able to do the addition and division to test the claim-- what I need are the numbers to add and divide.
I thought that this was the crux of the argument. The UN (supposedly) uses percentage of GDP as their “yardstick” for measuring giving, while the US measures it in actual dollars given.
So - using completely made-up figures - the UN can “rightfully” call the US “stingy” because America “only” gives 1% of its GDP for foreign disaster aid, yet the US can “rightfully” say that “yes, we only give 1% of our GDP, but that’s a much larger amount of money than the 13% of the Greek GDP that the Greeks give.”
Basically, the argument boils down to “would you rather have 1% of Bill Gates’ wealth, or 20% of an elementary school teacher’s wealth?”
At least, this is how it was explained on CNN last night.
In some areas, the answer is yes, in others, no.
The US is particularly known for generous food aid. During the recent famines in eastern Africa, for example, the US gave somewhere around 55% of the total food aid donated from other nations. The US also provides more than fifty percent of the UN Food Programme’s budget.
In terms of development assistance, the US doesn’t even come close to contributing more than the rest of the world. The US has been averaging around $12 to $15 billion in DA for the last several years. In comparison, France and Japan alone basically match that contribution, to say nothing other of major donors like the Netherlands, the UK, Canada, Germany, and others. If I were to reckon a guess, I’d say that the US contributes somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 percent of all DA.
Those figures do not take into account private giving, which is awfully tough to track. Some figures suggest that private giving in the US may effectively triple the dollars contibuted by the US in DA, and I have no reason to dispute those figures. Organizations such as the Bill Gates Foundation, the Ted Turner organization, and all the various Christian charity groups donate tons and tons of money.
Since there is really no good tracking of private contributions in most other countries, so blanket statements about the US being more generous than other countries really don’t have that much hard data to back it up, even if we do not enter into the debate about comparable wealth, ability to pay, etc.
But, in a larger sense, Americans really don’t seem to have that great a grasp of how much we actually give in foreign aid. I recall seeing a poll not too long ago in which most Americans thought we gave more than $100 billion in foreign aid each year, which is waaaaay off the mark.
It’s even more idiotic than that - it’s like saying “would you rather have one teacher’s wealth, or twenty teachers’ wealth?” Because the US has a bigger population.
I’d like to see how the actual-dollars figure compares between the US and the Eurozone, as they have similar populations and perhaps the most comparable economies.
A quick scan of the OECD’s site shows that Japan and the US are about tied for first place as the biggest contributors, but that the EU taken as a block contributes more than Japan and the US combined.
It’s also useful to remember that military aid is included in Foreign Aid figures - the US’s biggest beneficiaries of aid being Israel and Egypt. Donor countries often impose political and economic conditions on what they give eg. you have to sell us raw materials at low cost, and buy our weapons systems. (I seem to remeber some threads about this a while back…)
Anyhow, point being that Foreign Aid is not all Disaster Relief and it’s difficult to assess what’s really being spent, what it’s being spent on and who’s spending it. Obviously we all want our guys to be the good guys…
Obviously where it matters it makes no difference where it came from, just that it’s enough. But if it isn’t enough, you’ll find most would rather have 20% of Bill Gates’ wealth.
Particularly if Bill was patting himself on the back for handing over 1%.
If you’re going to count private donations of Americans, you have to count private donations of others as well, in which case, internationally, we still lag behind. Most private American donations stay here, seeing as we haven’t managed to tackle poverty and related issues at home yet.
Years ago the OECD (US included) decided that 2% of GDP was an ideal target for charitable donation; the US has never reached that target to my knowledge, although Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Japan and some oil emirates do regularly. UN dues are based upon size of GNP; this is another rule we agreed to when forming the UN and have sometimes lapsed on.
Most American “foreign aid” is indeed military, which more often than not is used against the populations of the recipient nation as opposed to repelling outside invaders. Much of the rest goes to contractors here who work on projects of sometimes questionable value abroad. (A lot of European aid also fits that latter profile.) Few development projects hire local contractors.
Of course we (the US) lead the world in food donations; we overproduce so much of certain foods that we actually pay people not to produce them. Emergency grain donations are better than throwing it away, but we literally have that option as well. The act of dumping a lot of free grain in an agricultural nation has negative long-term effects on its farmers’ ability to get back on their feet, and has the overall effect of continuing our agricultural dominance.
A real “foreign aid” package would include debt forgiveness as a centerpiece; as this would end a good deal of our leverage in structural adjustment and other programs attached to further credit and other “aid,” I don’t expect to see meaningful steps in this direction in our lifetime.
Americans tend to be very generous and well-intentioned as individuals. We’re selfish, bullying piggies as a nation.
but when you consider that the term stingy is the opposite of generous, it does not come down to the amount given, but the ability to give that amount, if you understand what im trying to say. a corporation who gives half a million dollars of its multi billion dollar annual profit is not necessarily as generous as someone who gives 20% of their earnings as a donation, simply because the monetary value is more. they have contributed more yes, but in terms of generosity, they could be doing more. i think thats what the comments were centred around. only using my memory for this example, australia has given around $300 million, and thats just the government alone. we have a population of around 20 million, so thats $15 per person approximately. how much would the US need to give to match that in comparison? thats what generosity is.
p.s. any aid given is being generous, so im not knocking the US at all.
I should have posted for comparison that the US contribution was just raised to $35 million, which we apparently spend in Iraq in about 7 hours.
Well I have several points of the top of my head in reply to the above poster:
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The United States has announced that it will increase aid for Tsunami victims to well over three hundred million dollars.
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GDP may not be the best measure of proper donation levels since less income is taxed in the United States relative to most other nations. I would argue that it is this relatively low level of taxation that has contributed to the relatively high standard of living that most in the United States enjoy by helping to facilitate high gains in productivity.
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I think that when you consider private donations (including religious organizations) that the United States easily leads the world in this category.
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Much of the money spent in Iraq is for economic aid and rebuilding their infrastructure.
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The United States rebuilt Europe with the Marshall plan, and did much the same for Japan. Much of the current economic productivity that these nations enjoy (and the donations they are subsequently able to give to various relief efforts) is due to the fact that they were rebuilt in large part to United States dollars. We are virtually the first nation in the history of the World that spends so much treasure and energy in helping our defeated foes.
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The United States led efforts to roll back non democratic socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Block countries such as Poland, East Germany and others. This was accomplished in part due to our military expenditures in the trillions over the years. The resultant economic prosperity (as compared to their previous situation under hard line socialism) are due to these efforts.
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I am fairly certain that the United States leads the world in debt forgiveness to third world nations over the past fifty years.
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The United States has spent more than a trillion dollars in fighting poverty at home since Johnson’s War on Poverty with mixed results. Even though is not clear that direct, monetary assistance to the poor is the most effective method in fighting poverty.
Roland Deschain writes:
> 3. I think that when you consider private donations (including religious
> organizations) that the United States easily leads the world in this category.
I don’t think of private donations in the U.S. as being very much. On average, each American donates just under 2% of his income to charity. (Poor and struggling working-class Americans actually donate a larger percentage of their income to charity than do middle-class and upper-middle-class Americans.) Just under two-thirds of the money Americans donate to charity goes to churches and schools. So most of that charity is spent on institutions that that person is attending or has attended. So just a bit more than half a percent of each American’s income goes to all other charities, and most of that is spent in the U.S. The amount of American charitable donations that go to foreign causes is rather small.
Well, let’s take all charititable contributions Americans make. I see you mention the poor and middle-class (when did they become synonymous?). I wonder how many families in Sri Lanka would trade places with a poor American family tonight?
I’ll just mention a few organizations that are funded by American charity. Sierra Club, Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, UN (yup, I consider that charity), AIDS medication, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, UNICEF, NAACP, SPLC, ASPCA…before I decimate the hamsters I’ll leave it to your imagination.
General funds type relief orgs: AIDS research (and drugs re:Africa), cardiovascular, cancer, respiratory research (ever see the donations to the A. Lung Assoc., A. Cancer Society, et al?) It will benefit everyone walking tthe Earth.
Break that down to religious charities only in the US. Break down the denomination to Catholics. (Lutheran Social Services spends a shitload as well, but keep in mind their money is on top of what the Church spends.)
With the money Catholics take in, it’s true that it’s also spent on housing for priests, maintenance, utilities, supplies, etc. It’s also, true, spent on many Americans in dire need.
Yet, out of all the charities the Catholics run, there is still an initial $500,000 earmarked for victims.
This is one small (in context very small) contribution of Americans that will be added to the rest of the majority of donors. On top of the money set aside already for aid to needy families in the US.
Frankly I take serious offense to your assertion that Americans aren’t doing their part to help those outside our borders in need. We’re American. We know that we have the wealth to help others.
That’s why we do it.
And, of course, I forgot this was GQ. I hope that wasn’t too harsh. If so, apologies all around.