I'm getting real tired of the mainstream press and other countries telling the United States that we are stingy over the amount of support we are giving and bringing to the Tsunami victims. Granted, the irrelevant and ever-more annoying United Nations is backpeddling from their comments, but many are continuing this lament just the same.
The fact of the matter is, the United States and our people are the most generous people in the world. We gave billions to aid around the world last year and will do so again this year. Japan, Britain, Spain and France join us in giving millions to the current relief effort. What I want to know is where is the aid from Muslim countries? The extremely wealth Saudi family is giving a mere $10 million in aid. And the population of victims is a largely muslim demographic! Where is the aid from Libya? How about Sudan? These cheap traitors aren't even helping their own kind.
Meanwhile, it is the compassionate United States and our allies, the very ones who were targeted by extremist muslims, that continue to provide real aid to the needy.
To the rest of the world that says we are stingy. Stick it in your collective ear.
It's Del.icio.us!
Furl It!
January 5, 2005 11:07 AM
Whether we are stingy are not depends on what we are comparing to. Compared to other countries, maybe not. However, consider that the aid promised by the Bush administration is 1/2 of 1% of what the administration has asked for its operations in Iraq for the coming year.
January 9, 2005 09:45 PM
There is an argument to be made that the United States is open to trade and migration far more than most OECD countries, and that the country spends a lot more on military operations. Nonetheless, the original ‘stingy’ argument applied to aid, and here there is no doubt that the US, even combining public and private organizations, is stingy. See here.
February 4, 2005 03:08 AM
Honestly, I'd also like to see people get the source and the context of the stingy allegation correct. The mainstream press simply repeated what a UN Aid worker alleged, which was that when comparing amounts of giving *proportionally*, the large, wealthy, industrialized countries (not only the U.S.) often end up looking stingy by comparison.
Also, if you look at the two top recipients of U.S. foreign aid, they're countries that can clearly hold their own economically: Israel and Egypt. I'll also second the comment about the aid vs. Iraq spending (that's not including any other military spending).
This doesn't, however, change the fact that quantitatively the U.S. gives more than any other nation, but the point of the aid worker's comment is that among the richest countries, all we could muster to start was around $30 million. Granted, we've upped the ante since then, but it is sad to think we're jumping at the chance to leave Indonesia before the March deadline when we keep getting a more and more vague Iraq exit strategy (especially considering the fact that Iraq has cost us significantly more than all foreign aid combined).
But I digress... the point is, the mainstream press just beat a dead, out-of-context horse. If you want to find a medium that would openly criticize the U.S. as stingy, you'll have to go to the marginalized "independent" press, but is that really better than the "mainstream" press you dislike so thoroughly?