posted
The US response to the Tsunami, the largest natural distaster in modern history, has brought up a growing discrepancy between how we Americans' view our generosity and what we really do.
So far, the US government has pledge $35 million to the relief efforts. The UK has pledged $96 millions and Sweden (a country with a population 3% of the US population and an economy that is 2.2% of the US economy) has pledged $75 million.
This situation might, and hopefully will, change in the coming days and weeks but it disturbs me because it is part of a much bigger picture.
In 2003, the US gave $16.254 billion in foreign aid, approximately 3/4 of which was humanitarian aid. The remainder military aid. That is 80% more than was given by any other nation -- which sounds good until you realize that the US has 2.3 times the populations and a 3 times larger economy than any other wealth nation. In fact, of the 22 wealthiest nations in the world, the US is 22nd (dead last) in the amount of foreign aid given as a % of GDP and 18th in the amount of foreign aid given per capital. If you add in private giving, it does not change the results.
Country $Aid/Person Norway 446 Denmark… 323 Sweden 267 Netherlands 244 Luxembourg 420 Belgium 179 Switzerland 174 France 120 Ireland….. 127 Finland…. 107 UK 104 Germany 82 Japan 70 Spain 49 Australia 61 Canada 62 Austria 62 New Zealand 41 Portugal 30 Greece 34 Italy 42 US 55
Country Foreign Aid (billions) Norway 2.042 Denmark… 1.748 Sweden 2.4 Netherlands 3.981 Luxembourg 0.194 Belgium 1.853 Switzerland 1.299 France 7.253 Ireland….. 0.504 Finland…. 0.558 UK 6.282 Germany 6.784 Japan 8.88 Spain 1.961 Australia 1.219 Canada 2.031 Austria 0.505 New Zealand 0.165 Portugal 0.32 Greece 0.362 Italy 2.433 US 16.254
The big problem that I see here is not that Americans are stingy. Most Americans I know are quite generous. The problem that I see is that our good will does not translate into action. We believe we are the most generous people in the world, and yet give less than half as much per capita than French.
Why does this gap between the way we percieve ourselves and the reality exist and what can we do to change it.
posted
Thanks for pointing out my mistake. I need to proof read my posts more carefully.
To put the US aid pledge in perspective, as of Dec. 29, the US federal emergency management agency (FEMA) approved $391.7 million in aid to Puerto Rico for damage from the Tropical Storm Jeanne.
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quote:President Bush, after days of silence, emerged from his Texas vacation to issue a brief statement. Following a public rebuke and the worldwide reaction of utter contempt, the initial aid offering of the Bush administration was raised from $15 million to $35 million. More is to come, Bush officials promise, as they jockey to have a U.S.-led "coalition" take the leadership of the relief effort away from the United Nations.
Many have commented on the paltry, really disgraceful U.S. aid offer. The U.S. spends approximately $270 million each day for the occupation of Iraq. The cost of one F-22 Raptor fighter jet is $225 million.
The Bush-Cheney Presidential Inaugural Committee intends to raise $40 million in the next few weeks to host its gala parties and the inaugural parade.
This year, the Bush Administration provided a total of $13.6 billion in emergency funding to Florida (it was an election year) in response to the four hurricanes that caused so much destruction in the state. The death, suffering and property destruction was great. More than 100 families lost a loved one. But in the last week more than 100,000 people in South Asia have died. 5 million are now without access to the basic requirements of life - water, food and sanitation. In Indonesia (the largest Muslim country in the world) and in Sri Lanka and India whole villages and towns have been entirely wiped out.
posted
I have a hard time with the whole Iraq idea as it is, and this just accentuates it.
However, we do provide a lot of the transportation for these efforts, right? Is that factored in? And is the American Red Cross funded by the government? Where does the money we pledge go, and maybe that is just a small amount of the things we provide these efforts?
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quote:However, we do provide a lot of the transportation for these efforts, right? Is that factored in?
I don't know the answers to those questions. I suspect that transportation costs are factored in but I don't know.
The American Red Cross is an non-government organization. It does receive some of its funding through federal grants but to the best of my knowledge, the American Red Cross does not participate directly in Internation relief efforts directly -- That would int The International Red Cross.
As for the money we pledge -- do you mean the money we donate individually or the money our government has pledged.
A year ago when the major earthquake hit Iran, countries were quick to pledges around 1 billion in aid. So far less the 2% of the pledged money has actually been given.
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posted
Again, Rabbit, I think you do the U.S. a small disservice by not counting military manpower/transportation and private donations (which are the backbone of most U.S. relief efforts).
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quote:Again, Rabbit, I think you do the U.S. a small disservice by not counting military manpower/transportation and private donations (which are the backbone of most U.S. relief efforts).
The numbers for foreign aid are not mine. They come from "The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development". They have two sets of numbers, one for Official Development Assistance which list the US at 15.791 billion/year and another which includes things like transportation and puts the US at $16.25 billion/year. I used the higher number in my calculations.
If you have information that the OECD, of which the US is a member, has omitted some substantial fraction of the US governments humanitarian aid, please let me know. I have no been able to find any such evidence.
posted
By "We" I mean our government. In other words, do we writ a check, and to whom, or do we provide things?
Tom, I see it as separate, the government and private donors. The stats Rabbit used are comparing governmental donations.
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posted
But you need to include private donations. I believe the U.S. is ahead of many if not most in per-capita charitable donations to foreign causes. Just because those countries choose to accomplish it via government charity doesn't mean our private charity isn't comparable.
posted
Tom, I'm very curious why you automatically assume that I am doing a disservice to the US by leaving something out.
As a US citizen who has always been proud of my nations generosity, I found this numbers to be shocking and disturbing. I have searched, but found no evidence that they are incorrect. I don't think that those numbers reflect the values most Americans hold and I believe that if more Americans were aware of those numbers -- we would not let them stand.
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quote:But you need to include private donations. I believe the U.S. is ahead of many if not most in per-capita charitable donations to foreign causes.
Everyone agrees that getting good statistics on private donations to developing countries is difficult. The best numbers I could find indicate the total US private giving to developing countries was ~ $34 billion dollars. Over half of this amount, $18 billion, is personal remittances, or money sent from US immigrants to family in developing countries, 1.5 billion comes from foundations, 2.8 from businesses, $6.6 from humanitarian NGO's and 3.4 from religious ministries.
If you add this amount to the governments donations, this puts the US at $171/person and .45% of our GDP: a substantial improvement. However, even if their is no private giving at all from the other wealthy nations, this still puts seven countries ahead of us in generosity.
I will continue searching for estimates on private giving in other countries but anyway you look at it -- the US simply isn't a generous as we think we are.
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quote:Do the numbers for the other countries also include private donations from their citizens
No all the numbers I quoted in my original post are official government aid, no private giving is included for any country.
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posted
I would guess (just a guess people! Nothing to back it up) that Americans are equivalent to, but not more generous than, other westerners when it comes to private donations to foreign countries.
I do think the government statistics are worrying, especially when you consider the potential for aid. That is that a government will nearly always be able to donate more than its citizens, no matter how generous they are. This trend, incidentally, is also true in other humanitarian endeavours that the US is part of (the UN GA springs to mind immediately).
However, it should be noted that the US Government has now pledged 350 millionin aid, up from the original 35.
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"A billboard in Times Sqaure counts the cost of the Iraq war starting at $134.5B and increases at a rate of $177M per day, $7.4M per hour and $122,820 per minute." By Anders Krusberg, AP
eep. With those numbers, it is hard to make even 350 million seem significant.
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posted
Is this the Keeping-up-with-the-Jones school of foreign aid?
Does it really matter what other countries give, and how we rank?
We ought to look at the problem and make the aid adequate to the problem. We should be more concerned with Indonesia, south Asia, and East Africa than Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.
posted
The US has approved more money, $391 billion, for aid to victims of a tropical strom in Puerto Rico. We spent $18 billion aiding uninsured victims of huricanes in Florida this year.
The pledges our government is making to aid victims of this disaster are far from generous, still only at $1.20 per person. We can do more and we should.
I have made my own donations privately but I there is something different about what we do as "A People" and what we do as individual people.
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posted
I fully agree that we should give more as A People, and I just think that we should look to Sri Lanka and not Norway to tell us when we have given enough.
I wonder how much the admin considers us A People?
posted
I read that India refused aid, which surprised me. they said they are fine on their own, and are helping quite a bit with Sri Lanka.
Also, the true proof will be in the next months and years. Apparently, Iran is still waiting for promised aid.
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posted
There is a difference, though. We are a democracy, with all of the benefits and burdens that go along with such a government. When we don't give aid, it's about us, and it properly shows a poverty in our character, for we do purport from the outset to be one people.
quote:We ought to look at the problem and make the aid adequate to the problem.
quote:When the world's governments met at the Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, we adopted a programme for action under the auspices of the United Nations -- Agenda 21. Amongst other things, this included an Official Development Assistance (ODA) aid target of 0.7% of gross national product (GNP) for rich nations, roughly 22 members of the OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development), known as the Development Assistance Committee (DAC).
ODA is basically aid from the governments of the wealthy nations, but doesn't include private contributions or private capital flows and investments. The main objective of ODA is to promote development. It is therefore a kind of measure on the priorities that governments themselves put on such matters. (Whether that necessarily reflects their citizen's wishes and priorities is a different matter!) Other aid, such as private capital flows may be for investment purposes, etc.
In regards to global poverty, we have looked at the problem and we are giving far less than we assessed was needed. What's more, we are giving far less than we could easily give based on the performance of other peoples.
When looking at the current dissaster in Southeast Asia, Indonesia and India, we do not even begin to know how great the need is -- but it is certainly far far greater than the needs were in Florida following this years hurricanes that killed ~100.
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quote:Is this the Keeping-up-with-the-Jones school of foreign aid?
No that wasn't my point at all. My motivation in starting this stems from several recent statements by GW and others that the US is "The most generous country in the world". A 2001 poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (U of MD), found that the overwhelming majority of Amricians believe this idea. The average american believes that the US spends 24% of its budget on assistance to developing nations, more than 20 times the actual amount.
My concern is not whether or not we "Keep up with the Jones's" but the enormous discrepancy between how generous we think our country is and how stingy we really are. I think that is a big problem.
If we as American's want to be the most generous nation in the world (and I think we do) I believe its very important that we look at the number and make our actions match our desires.
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posted
Generosity is good no matter how much. What is the point of giving freely if there is some sort of competition involved? --That isn't generosity.
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Personally, I'm pleased that such a large portion of the relief monies are coming from private/corporate donation. It means that we can each feel free to give of ourselves, without thinking that we've already "given at the office" through our tax dollars.
quote:Generosity is good no matter how much. What is the point of giving freely if there is some sort of competition involved? --That isn't generosity.
There is a sense in which it's generosity, and then there is a sense in which the government is shirking it's responsibility. We don't have a choice about whether to give to the victims, we have a duty, and whether we want to neglect our duty is another question.
Ladydove,
I like it when it comes through taxes. It shows that our public officials aren't scared to act as if a sense of duty in the face of tragedy is every bit as American as going to war.
quote:Generosity is good no matter how much. What is the point of giving freely if there is some sort of competition involved? --That isn't generosity.
What is generosity? What makes a gift generous? The dictionary defines generosity as "liberality in giving" but that means little more to me than the original word.
I would propose that a gift can be considered generous if if meets anyone of the following criteria.
1) It is large relative to ones available resources. 2) It is large relative to the needs. 3) It is large relative to what is commonly done or is expected.
The numbers suggest that US foreign aid does not meet any of those criteria. Yet we Americans perceive ourselves to be generous as a nation. Is this because we believe we are giving a larger portion of our resources than we really are? Is it because we be believe the needs are much smaller than they really are? Is it because we b elieve that what is commonly done is much less than it actually is?
Or is it because we don't really want to give generously and are happy believing what we do is "generous" just because we said so.
If it is any of the first three answers, then the numbers and comparisons I've given are extremely relevant because they show that what we give is quite small relative to our resources, to what others give and to what is needed.
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posted
If you don't count private donations then you get skewed numbers because the US has a much lower income tax rate then some of those other "wealthy" nations.
Stop using the Puerto Rico example because we have special obligations to our own territories ans since Florida and Puerto Rico didn't receive any international aid the amount they receive from the American government is obviously going to be disproportionate to international disasters.
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posted
Good point, newfoundlogic. It is interesting to note that when we have a disaster, there is not a barrage of foreign aid coming our way. I know we are wealthy and can(or should) be able to take care of ourselves, but since we do have to, it is not fair to use money spent on ourselves as an example.
Rabbit's point, though, is that we do not give as much as we think we do.
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posted
Personally I believe that for each person in count in the US should give even just something small, like... hey even a dollar. With about 400,000,000+ people, that total could be huge... and it's just a dollar.
Imagine 5, 10, or even 20...
Have you also been looking at what's been being given to charities? Those aren't officially funded by the US government. I dunno if it would be a huge difference. Posts: 1831 | Registered: Jan 2003
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quote:Among the biggest corporate givers are Pfizer Inc, which is donating $10 million in cash and $25 million worth of drugs to relief agencies; The Coca-Cola Co, which is donating $10 million; Exxon Mobil Corp, which is giving $5 million; and Citigroup Inc, which is contributing $3 million. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $3 million.
Merck & Co Inc is giving $3 million in cash while Johnson & Johnson and Abbott Laboratories Inc are each donating $2 million; each of the three are also sending drugs and other health care supplies to the region. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co is donating $1 million in cash and $4 million in antibiotics and antifungal drugs.
I'm going to be cynical, and I hope I'm wrong... but a long while back I remember reading of similar giving -- I think it was about drug companies making donations to Gulf War I. A reporter looked into the donations, and drug companies, to get tax credits, had cleaned out their outdated inventory and shipped a bunch of useless drugs to the Middle East.
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It is easy to be impressed when reading of the large quantities of donated medical supplies and drugs that charities and businesses send to areas devastated by wars, earthquakes and other disasters. These donations usually help to alleviate human suffering but sometimes they cause additional problems.
Here are some examples from the World Health Organization (WHO) of in-kind donations that made bad situations worse:
During its war for independence, Eritrea sent out carefully worded requests for medical supplies needed by its suffering population. In many cases the specific requests were overlooked and large quantities of inappropriate drugs arrived in this distressed country. Those drugs included seven truckloads of expired aspirin tablets, which took workers six months to burn, and 30,000 bottles of expired amino acid infusion that could not be easily disposed of because of its strong smell.
Southern Sudan was devastated by war in 1990. Amidst the rubble and the intensity of the rescue effort, the goods arriving included a shipment of fifty boxes of donated drugs. All were labeled in French, which is not spoken in Sudan, and only twelve boxes contained drugs that were at all usable. Some products were highly inappropriate, such as appetite stimulants and contact lens solution, and other products could have even been dangerous for Sudanese people.
In Lithuania in 1993, eleven women temporarily lost their eyesight because they were accidentally treated with a donated veterinary drug that had been received in packages without product information. Doctors had incorrectly matched the product’s name with leaflets for other products.
And during the Bosnian War in 1992–1996, fifty to sixty percent of all donated medical supplies were inappropriate, according to a recent article by a group of European doctors in The New England Journal of Medicine. The doctors suspect that massive amounts of “drug dumping” occurred in Bosnia, including, medical supplies from World War II and plaster tapes dated 1961. By mid-1996 about 17,000 metric tons (or about 37.5 million pounds) of inappropriate medicines were taking up space in Bosnian warehouses.
Why would so much useless or unusable medicine be distributed? A company might have an excess supply of drugs that are about to expire. Rather than incur the costs of destroying or storing the drugs, it might ship them to a stricken region, thereby avoiding expenses and receiving a tax deduction. It costs about $2,000 to destroy a metric ton of medicine. So the donor's responsible for giving approximately 17,000 tons of inappropriate medicines cited above may have received some hefty tax deductions and saved themselves $34 million in drug destruction costs that must be paid for by the recipient country or humanitarian groups operating in the field. In addition, the authors of the Journal article cite the health and environmental hazards, and the expenses of storing, handling and sorting unneeded or useless medical supplies.
posted
Oh, heavens. I have to do more research on my chosen charity, AmeriCares. It says it is reputable, but still...
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quote:Contributions continue to pour in for the relief effort, and as of 7:00 pm on Thursday evening, December 30 th, the American public had generously pledged $43.7 million to the American Red Cross International Response Fund. Contributions to a relief organization like the American Red Cross will allow the organization to provide immediate relief and long term support through supplies, technical assistance and other support to those in need.
The American people do get mobilized and contribute when necessary - who knows how much has been pledged to other organizations? The Red Cross, while the largest and best known, isn't the only place that is collecting donations for relief efforts.
Can we really factor how much the American people have pledged and given?
Like LadyDove, I'm much more impressed by the efforts of individual Americans choosing to give of the money in their own bank accounts, than by governmental decrees.
Personally, I don't give through large charities, I don't trust any of them.
I give through my church and through Christian charities that I have more personal knowledge of, and can be confident that my money is indeed going where I want it.
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posted
But that statistic of 2% of those who pledged support for the earthquake in Iran worries me. Can we even count money pledged? Perhaps we should count only money that's already been given? Or at least provide both numbers side by side?
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quote:I'm going to be cynical, and I hope I'm wrong
Me too, Plaid. Since that article exposed what I would consider an abuse of the term "charitable giving", let's hope that there are safeguards in place now.
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quote:Hundreds of survivors in Aceh swarmed to the provincial airport on Saturday, drawn by the arrival of Seahawk helicopters from US aircraft carrier, Abraham Lincoln, which is moored off shore, as well as other foreign military aircraft.
In pictures: Aid reaches Aceh Indonesia press on Aceh disaster
The vehicles are reported to be carrying food, water and generators. Back on board the Abraham Lincoln, the Americans say they have the facilities to purify up to 90,000 gallons of water a day.
The Americans are also bringing in 80 trucks from the town of Medan across the provincial border.
"We just got here, we're here to help and we're going to keep working until the mission is done... Where they say they need (aid) we will move it," Captain Larry Burt, commander of US Carrier Air Wing Two, told Reuters news agency.
Funny thing is that none of that, or any of the other ships in the region, or the supplies they hold, are used when calculating the aid that we are giving.
All our ships, trucks, and helicopters in the area (plus many more enroute) are going to be used to help the region, but I don't see an accounting of that anywhere.
That isn't including the private donations or the charitable donations by private donations.
As an American, I am proud of our current response to this tradedy, and I hope it continues. I don't make the mistake of thinking that the goverment is the only, or even the primary, way Americans will choose to channel their funds into the region.
As far as what we spent on the US hurricane damage this year....that is what we have a goverment for, to help ourselves.
posted
The US may have a much larger GDP than European nations, but has much less control over it. Taxes are low in the US compared to Europe. Also, I'd be quick to point out that federal government does not represent me, since there are few things that I think federal government does right.
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quote:I like it when it comes through taxes. It shows that our public officials aren't scared to act as if a sense of duty in the face of tragedy is every bit as American as going to war.
If I truly believed that increasing my taxes would do more to benefit the peoples in need of housing, food, medicine, etc. not only abroad, but in my own backyard, then I'd agree with you. What I believe is that the majority of our elected officials will divide up the tax monies to favor the lobbies that keep their pockets lined and their political machines well oiled.
Though it would be nice to see politicians act from a pure sense of civic duty, I think funding a war is fits more easily into the model of keeping promises to lobbies than funding a humanitarian rescue effort.
Given these assumptions, I prefer to see private donations with many people deciding to give out of their own pockets to the causes they believe in, rather than a few people in the government deciding to pull money out of everyone's pockets to fund the causes that they believe in.
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Granted more could be done. 6 C-130's loaded with supplies (they are planes) 9 P-3 Orions (surveilance planes) The USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Group The USS Bonhomme Richard Expiditionary Group are on thier way over.
With all the ships in the strike group they can make well over 500,000 gallons of water a day. On top of that, the ship's are carrying supplies for the effort.
Of course you sit there and wonder why so much was given to Puerto Rico and Florida ....ummm... aren't they kind of PART of the U.S.?
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If I have fallen into a pit and need help getting out, I'll be more concerned that my neighbors bring a rope that is long enough and strong enough to get me out. I will not care one whit how many of them had to go in together to buy the rope.
I've noticed, however, recently that the criticism of American giving for the disaster has come from the same groups that criticize the US no matter what we do. It is the same group of harpies waiting for some opening.
And yes, the US military is providing huge amounts of aid to the victims, both in manpower and materials. Do you know why it isn't getting coverage from these weeping magpies? Because it is the US military. Yanno, the jackbooted thugs working so that we can keep our feet on the world's necks.
Strangely enough, it isn't the national governments from those areas that are complaining. It's not even their local aid groups. It is the same old whiny pissants that do it every time.
And how much did the rest of the world send to Puerto Rico and Florida? How about San Francisco a few years back during the earthquake?
America, we'll help you even if you could care less whether we live or die.
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posted
I am so thankful for what we in the US are doing, both as individuals and as a country. Good show. Posts: 2919 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
I listened to Colin Powell this morning on CBS. I will miss him so.
I was watching as people threw food off a truck, and people fought each other to get it. My husband said there was no way to create order in that situation, if an armed military presence couldn't do it. I thought, crap, they should send some retired kindergarten teachers over there. They know how to create order out of chaos.
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quote:If I truly believed that increasing my taxes would do more to benefit the peoples in need of housing, food, medicine, etc. not only abroad, but in my own backyard, then I'd agree with you. What I believe is that the majority of our elected officials will divide up the tax monies to favor the lobbies that keep their pockets lined and their political machines well oiled.
Though it would be nice to see politicians act from a pure sense of civic duty, I think funding a war is fits more easily into the model of keeping promises to lobbies than funding a humanitarian rescue effort.
I just don't understand how we decide as a nation who lives and dies and who to invade and who is a threat, and then get persnickety when that same government- made of those same people- sets itself upon helping out disaster victims.
Is it that we don't mind our official's corruption when they are deciding other people's lives, but we do mind their corruption when the officials dole out public money?
And if this is true, what does that say about the quality of our character, that we will suffer graft and incompetence when it comes to bombing people, but not to tsumani relief.
Truthfully, I'm more wary of corporations unloading junk, excess inventory and hats and fanny-packs and calling it a donation in order to claim a tax credit.
I feel comfortable in my worries because it's in the nature of a corporation to be amoral. I do have a higher standard for a moral American government elected by a moral people.
posted
I'm sort of torn on this issue, because I wasn't impressed with the initial U.S. pledge of 15, then 35 million.
And I'd been listening to conservative talk radio all day on Wednesday, and I was even more infuriated by some of the conversations going on there, where people admitted that is just wasn't a big deal to them. It made me afraid that all the U.S. was going to have that attitude. "It's not happening to us. It's an act of nature, not an act of man like 9/11 was, so I'm just not as concerned about it."
I was ready to renounce conservatism after that. But I was equally irritated with left-wingers who immediately jumped on their usual anti-Bush tirades, nitpicking every aspect of Bush's response.
It seemed apparent then that highly-divisive politics were now apart of every aspect of American life, that we couldn't even respond to such an enormous human tragedy without arguing yet again over the merits of George W. Bush.
However, it's been heartening to learn that, despite all this, the U.S. government is pledging more money (and that number will hopefully keep rising, and we had better deliver on that pledge) and American citizens are donating generously to private relief organizations.
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quote:The US may have a much larger GDP than European nations, but has much less control over it. Taxes are low in the US compared to Europe.
If Foreign aid were a significant part of the federal budget, this might be a relevant point, but since Foreign Aid constitutes less than 1% of the budget -- it's hard to imagine that the lower tax rates make a significant difference. What's more, you forget to point out that having a lower tax rate is a choice our country has made. If we choose to have lower taxes rather than aid the extremely poor -- it hardly justifies the claim that we are "generous". What's more, 25 years ago US foreign aid was 0.5% of our GNP -- over three times the current percentage.
quote:Stop using the Puerto Rico example because we have special obligations to our own territories.
Since most of us don't regularly deal with sums on this order of magnitude, some reference point is needed for us to understand whether the US pledges are large or small.
I chose Puerto Rico as example because it was recent and readily available and offers a point of comparison. If Puerto Rico needed $391 million in aid to recover from a tropical storm, it illustrates that the $350 million the US has pledged will not go very far to aid in this disaster. If this we were stretching our resources to do this, it might be considered generous -- but we are not.
I am curious about why you believe that we have a special obligation to our own territories that goes far beyond what we owe to those outside our country. I have been reading a set of philosophical essays on the ethics of aid to the distant needy and have yet to find one convincing argument that would suggest I have a greater ehtical obligation to strangers in Puerto Rico or Florida than I do to strangers in Thailand and Sri Lanka.
Even if we concede that the we have special obligations to our own country men, how much special consideration should we give -- 2 fold, 10 fold, 100 fold. What is the number?
Tropical storm Jeanne killed 2 people in Puerto Rico. The Tsunami has killed over 130,000 by latest estimates. A ratio of 65,000. Do you really believe we owe our own countrymen 65,000 times more consideration than distant needed?
Christ taught that those gifts we give to friends, family and countrymen, gifts for which we might receive reciprocation, do not count for righteousness. It is those gifts we give to strangers, paupers, and enemies, gifts which will never be returned, that are required of the righteous (generous) person.
As a Christian, I believe that it is critical that we compare what we give to strangers to what we give to friends and family not because the two should be equal, but because the ratio of the two is an important indicator of whether or not are pure gifts are generous.
The tropical storm in Puerto Rico was not a major global disaster. In fact, it was not even a major national disaster -- barely making the news this hurricane season. For this disaster, the US did not ask for international aid because we had the resources to handle the needs ourselves, just as India has declined international aid in this disaster.
Less than 10% of the deaths in this disaster were in India. Most of the devastated coastlines were in much smaller, poorer countries with far few resources available to meet the needs. This is a disaster which demands the aid of the world. The US monopolizes nearly 1/3 of all the worlds resources. In crises like this, ethics demand that we use those resources generously to aid the less fortunate. So far, our response has been far less than than is needed and far less than we are able to do.
[ January 02, 2005, 03:25 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:And if this is true, what does that say about the quality of our character, that we will suffer graft and incompetence when it comes to bombing people, but not to tsumani relief.
We suffer the incompetence and graft because it seems to be an integral part of the system. It's a system that needs a major overhaul, but one in which we have glimpsed moments of greatness.
Despite my distaste for Bush, I am actually hopeful that he will do something great in the next four years. Though I have disagreed with nearly every decision he's made, I think that most of those decisions were politically or financially motivated. The second term is the legacy term. Given an opportunity to choose a legacy, I think that he will make decisions that will attempt to prove he was a decent human being who wanted the best for his country in general rather than for special interests.
I didn't have a choice in Bush's decision to go to war. I smart at the thought that I am personally paying to kill people. If we truly had a say over where our tax dollars go, then maybe the money spent would be a reflection of our character. In the meantime, the reflection of our character lies in what we give freely and individually, out of our own pockets, in support of the causes that reflect our values.
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