Does the Unites States Contribute more to relief efforts than all nations combined?

Great Debates
21

duffer writes:

> . . . the poor and middle-class (when did they become synonymous?) . . .

What? Where did I say that “poor” was synonymous to middle-class? I wrote:

> 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.

How can you possibly read this sentence as me saying that the word “poor” means the same as “middle-class”? I was contrasting the two groups. To be exact, I was contrasting “poor and struggling working-class” versus “middle-class and upper-middle-class”. When you contrast two things, that means that they are different.

And also writes:

> 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.

These are mostly international charities, and those that aren’t have equivalents in other countries. Yes, some Americans give some money to them, but so do people in other countries. And only a small proportion of Americans donate to each of these charities and not that much money given how many Americans there are.

And further writes:

> 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.

Again, although these charities are organized on a national basis, they have equivalents in many foreign countries. Again, only a small proportion of Americans donate to each of these charities and not that much money given how many Americans there are. I didn’t say that Americans don’t give anything, nor did I say that they don’t donate to a wide variety of charities. I said that the total amount they donate to charities isn’t that huge and the amount they give internationally is actually not very large at all. Americans donate less than 2% of their income to charities. Certainly no more than half a percent of American incomes goes to international aid. I suspect the amount is considerably smaller.

22

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the U.S. had personal income of $9,199,007,802,000 in 2003. At 1%, this would mean an outlay of $91,990,078,020. This may not be “enough,” but it is hardly a paltry sum.

What are the figures for corporate matching funds for charitable donations?

23

  1. That hadn’t yet happened when I made my post. This would still, incidentally, make Europe, Australia etc. more generous per population and GDP.

  2. Not quite sure what this has to do with supporting your point, as it seems to argue that Europe is being more generous with less post-tax income.

  3. A lot of that, as you pointed out, is to our domestic churches, which also own property tax-free. This is very different than foreign aid.

4a) No, most of that money is fighting a war. 4b) Precisely who destroyed that infrastructure? 4c) Like most development funds, those contracts are being awarded largely to US companies, meaning they initially and primarily “aid” our private industry with public monies.

  1. Rome anyone? Also, the policy papers of the time made it pretty clear that a) that was the only way we’d have trading partners for exports and b) if something like that didn’t happen, socialism was going to get more popular in Europe quickly. Yes, the US did a good thing there but not entirely selflessly.

  2. What economic prosperity? Life expectancy has dropped 3 years for a Russian male in a decade’s time, to cite one example. That’s freefall. Poverty and ealth disparity have skyrocketed in eastern Europe, Russia especially. See also 4c above; if only we could rid ourselves of our socialism for our rich!

  3. Debt service inflows from interest payments have outstripped the loans themselves many times over. There’s another thread in GQ covering this currently in which I quote some stats.

  4. We fail to provide a minimal safety net for things such as healthcare expenses which place us alone in the industrialized world. This compels a lot of Americans to be generous as individuals when our political leadership and business community is not. Show me multi-generational permanent underclass ghettos and sharecropper shacks in, say, Denamark, and then we’ll talk.

24

Well, the question has been out here for two days with a lot of speculation about why the orginal question might be answered in the affirmative or the negative, but a paucity of hard numbers explaining whether the OP should be answered yes or no.

Of to GD.

[ /Moderator Mode ]

25

From the OECD website

Official Development Assistance (ODA) 2003

ODA in U.S. Dollars (Millions) and ODA as GNP Percentage
per Country 2003

  1. United States 15,791 0.14
  2. Japan 8,911 0.2
  3. France 7,337 0.41
  4. Germany 6,694 0.28
  5. United Kingdom 6,166 0.34
  6. Netherlands 4,059 0.81
    I’m a little mystified as to why this question has to be addressed as an ideological debate when the numbers are readily available.

The numbers clearly show that the US contributes somewhat less than a quarter of total Development aid, as various posters have already stated - so the answer to the OP is a clear and resounding NO.

There are obviously factors such as attribution of funds, annual variation, private donations, currency fluctuations etc. which can skew the picture, but none of these will put the US into the position of contributing “more to relief efforts than all nations combined”.

And now that we’re in GD - to those who believe the US should be a bigger donor, instead of ignoring the numbers - take action - vote for sombody who agrees with you !

26

Actually that’s less than a quarter of OECD aid; if you include oil producing states like the UAE, Brunei and so forth that % is considerably smaller.

27

Since we’re now in GD, I’ve been dying to say this: some liberals have complained-slash-commented that US military spending is the equal of the total military spending of the next dozen countries combined. Then conservatives aruge, “But wait! We spend a measley 3.5% of our GDP on our armed forces. Surely that pittance isn’t too much?”

At other times, liberals complain that we spend an appaulingly low share of our GDP on foreign aid. Conservatives retort that the actual dollar amount is what’s important, and that we are, by that definition, the most generous on earth.

I wish the two sides could just define some terms on these two debates, rather than reversing themselves as circumstances see fit.

28

What’s the confusion?

Liberals have their priorities straight – charity and goodwill is better than building more bombs and guns.
Conservatives take the opposite tack – that bombs beats benefits any day – and keep looking for ways to weasel out of this morally embarrassing position.

29

In terms of relief aid, if one were to include contributions of services it may be technically correct. The US often provides logistical support over and above any straight aid. I imagine that the operational costs of transport aircraft and support personnel can add up fairly quickly (though the delta cost over peacetime operations might be on the small side).

30

While this isn’t the proper place to fully discuss GDP measurements, let me suggest that it’s possible that European GDPs are distorted due to more socialized medicine and other government-run programs that are taken care of by businesses over here.

Even if they ARE counted as part of GDP (which I don’t know if they are,) the price the government charges likely skews the GDP downward, relative to the actual standard of living, since services are available for an artificially low price.

So if GDP is not a true reflection of the standard of living of a country, the US is less stingy than it appears relative to European countries.

31

3.5% of the GDP on the military vs. .14% on foreign aid.
$400 billion on the military vs. 15.8 billion on foreign aid.

I don’t see what’s confusing either. Either way you compare it, it’s roughly 25 times more military spending than foreign aid.

Specific to the tsunami, at the moment the US ($350 million) is not even the largest single contributor (Japan is, at $500 million), much less equal to the donations of the rest of the world combined. Both figures should change, though.

32

But Japan only spends $50 billion in military, so a higher percentage of of their GDP can go to foreign assistance. And since a lot of or “foreign aid” IS our military presence (350,000 troops dispersed internationally), some of our military spending ought not be seen as counter to foreign aid policy.

33

Which I think brings us back to the question of why we have to spend so much on the military in the first place. Isn’t it supposed to get up to $500 billion in the next few years?

34

Total defense and defense-related spending may well exceed half a trillion dollars next year. Last year’s defense budget (including DoE nuclear weapons acticities, military construction, etc) is $420 billion this year, not including the cost of the war (which was in the neighborhood of $70 billion, but awfully hard to track).

The President will submit his budget to Congress in one month. Assuming that the stories are true about an $80 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan, and even with a modest 3% growth in the defense budget, we willbe well past $500 billion next year.

35

As I understand it the 0.14% already includes military aid spending (which together with the “War on Drugs” accounts for the lion’s share of Foreign Aid). This is counted separately from US military as it involves providing weapons to foreign nations.

US troops and infrastructure could of course be invaluable for disaster relief if they were deployed on a large scale.

36

This cheap shot is woefully uncalled for in Great Debates…especially when we are considering donations based on WHOLE COUNTRIES, not mythical partisan countries. The giving is bi-partisan if not multi-partisan. Thus, the confusion lies with you, rjung.

37

I think what Wrath is saying is that some of our military spending itself can be considered “aid”. We have troops in South Korea, for example, to help protect them from the N. Koreans; our troops in Europe helped protect Western Europe from the Soviets, etc. So even though that money isn’t going to a foreign country…it’s part of the military budget, it’s still benefiting the foreign country, and it still is a form of aid.

38

True, but only in absolute terms. If you consider the amount of aid per capita, and then disregard aid necessitated as a direct result of US actions, the figure is much less impressive.

39

“Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truth.”
–Socrates

40

Guess what folks - there are no roads left there, in most of the countries effected. So it’s down to boats and helicopters to get supplies in. Guess what else - most of the boats in the area were destroyed when the waves came. So that leaves helicopters.

The US Navy has dedicated an entire Carrier group’s helicopters to the task of ferrying aid, relief workers, etc into the area. This doesn’t come cheap, and isn’t part of the $350 mil talked about. Neither is any of the other logisitcal support on offer, including C-17 and C-5 aircraft rushing from all over the world into the effected area, loaded with supplies they have picked up from all over Europe, the US, and other parts of Asia.

This support alone, in terms of cost to us that is being footed, tops Japan’s pure financial offer, as all they are giving is money. The only other nation that is coming close in pure helping capability right now is Australia, who had their first ships and helicopters in the area 3 hours after the major earthquakes ended. My understanding is that a second carrier group is on the way to the area as well, after off-loading many of it’s strike aircraft and taking onboard more helicopters in San Diego.

Let’s not get bogged down in partisan crap-flinging and instead keep our eyes on the prize - helping as many people as possible as quickly as possible. It doesn’t matter if we give more percentage-wise than any other nation. The only thing that matters is IS IT ENOUGH?