US Generosity

I’ve heard many people from all different backgrounds complain about how much money the US spends/wastes on foreign aid. I agree with the nay sayers…to a point. I am very saddened by how much money the US wastes on general aid to Israel, thus helping them enforce their apartheid (another blog issue).

Aside from the Israel issue, I am upset with the amount of money the US spends on foreign aid. However, I am upset with how little–as a percentage of GNI–the US spends on foreign aid. It seems to me that our government, for the most part, only donates money that will benefit the US. Most foreign aid is given to other countries in the form of vouchers to American Companies. This, in effect, does little to stimulate the economies of developing nations. Much to my surprise, we make very few cash deposits–with the exception of the Israel situation. We are, on the other hand, happy to give away our old military equipment to countries that we like (usually we sell the equipment at a discounted price + call it a donation in part).

In the United States we have grown accustomed to an easy lifestyle, that requires us to do very little work ourselves. Even the lowest class people in the US do not suffer in the way billions of people suffer every day in developing nations. I understand that there is much corruption in other countries and simply giving money to those governments is not a viable option. However, I would like to remind everyone that we are not an extremely generous country (as many people think). Its true that we give more than any other country (with many strings attached) in dollars, but we have many more people and much more money than most countries throughout the world.

We were, in America, endowed with a great number of resources that we bought, stole, or embezzled from previous claimants/owners. The least we can do is share those resources with countries that weren’t formed on oil wells and vast fertile grounds. Much of our success has come simply because of our geographic isolation and abundance of domestic resources. We didn’t earn all of it (probably not most of it). Why don’t we give a little more of it away? After all, we seem hell bent on not spending it on our own people–notice how we still fail to have universal healthcare.

Official Development Assistance by country as a percentage of GNI

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development lists countries by the amount of money they give as a percentage of their gross national income. This list is as follows:

• 1.  Sweden – 1.02%
• 2.  Norway – 0.89%
• 3.  Luxembourg – 0.84%
• 4.  Netherlands – 0.81%
• 5.  Denmark – 0.8%
• 6.  Ireland – 0.54%
• 7.  United Kingdom – 0.51%
• 8.  Belgium – 0.5%
• 9.  Austria – 0.47%
• 10.  France – 0.47%
• 11.  Finland– 0.4%
• 12.  Switzerland – 0.39%
• 13.  Germany – 0.36%
• 14.  Spain – 0.32%
• 15.  Australia – 0.3%
• 16.  Canada – 0.29%
• 17.  Iceland – 0.27%
• 18.  New Zealand – 0.27%
• 19.  Japan – 0.25%
• 20.  Portugal – 0.21%
• 21.  Italy – 0.2%
• 22.  Turkey – 0.18%
• 23.  United States – 0.18%
• 24.  Greece – 0.17%
• 25.  Hungary – 0.13%
• 26.  Czech Republic – 0.12%
• 27.  Slovakia – 0.1%
• 28.  Poland – 0.09%
• 29.  South Korea – 0.05%
• 30.  Thailand – 0.04%