Yeah, it’s hard to say who is being more generous. For example, how much aid actually accomplishes anything? Some nations give to dictators who just steal the money. Others are more scrupulous and make sure the aid gets spent on the people that need it, or on upgrading infrastructure. Other “aid” is just credits to buy the goods of the “Donating” country. Sure, it’s beneficial to both countries, but I wouldn’t call it generous.
Well I could say “tough titty, deal with it”, but I won’t. 
The original OP stated:
“From what I understand, the US doesn’t provide a proportionally large share of foreign aid.”
My argument has been against the idea of “proportionally” in a debate about physical means. It’s as I stated before, “proportionally” doesn’t put food in someone’s mouth or provide shelter or medicine.
Raw dollars do.
“Proportionally” means the Dutch help more people than the US does. That’s nice. It’s also utter horsepoop. They don’t. I have nothing against the Dutch at all, or europe. I just find numbers games of this type disingenuous at best, since they are purposely disregarding reality to make some morality claim.
The reality is that the US by dint of contribution does more, to help more people, in more places, than any nation in europe. In fact, than any other nation on earth.
Europe en toto does more than the US, but then again, that includes aid between EU countries, wheras the US total doesn’t include aid between states. Europe is also significantly larger than the US in population. “Europe” isn’t being defined in any detail anyways. Is Poland part of Europe? What about Hungary? Or Slovakia? or Spain, Greece, and Portugal? Are they or aren’t they? Is it really fair to count german foreign aid to Greece?
You see my point I’m sure. As I said in my first post, these debates are problematic, it’s really more about massaging figures and spin doctoring than any kind of real analysis. Same thing goes with even the source, you can see bias in the way the numbers are presented. And that’s from the SOURCE material!
In short:
Ugh.
Regards,
-Bouncer-
And once again, where did you find that this aid included “aid between EU countries”? What kind of aid between EU countries are you talking about, anyway? There are fundings for specific regions in the EU, but these funds are handled by the EU itself, not by the member countries, hence isn’t included in their foreign aid figures, so I really don’t know what you’re talking about.
You can’t have your cake and eat it. You just stated that only the raw amounts mattered, hence that you could freely compare the global amount given by the huge US and the tiny Netherlands. Now, you’re stating the contrary : that since the EU has a larger population, you can’t use the raw amounts for comparison.
The European Union could be used. The list of countries belonging to it is relatively well defined.
For reference. The Nationmaster database ranks countries on
Aid recieved as a percentage of GDP as well as a color-coded map showing where the various recipients of aid reside.
Economic Aid contributed per country in absolute dollars
Economic aid contribitued per country on a dollars per capita basis.
All of these numbers have dates and are clearly defined if you read the notes at the bottom of the pages. The numbers may be useful as well as the perspective the rankings offer.
Enjoy,
Steven