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Governments spending money poorly has to do with poor governance, not necessarily people being uncaring. I don't want to support foreign wars, but lo and behold

by rattray 12y ago

Governments spending money poorly has to do with poor governance, not necessarily people being uncaring. I don't want to support foreign wars, but lo and behold, my government spends half its budget blowing up civilians! I also think there's a big difference between "caring" in the abstract and "doing something". It's a shame that more people don't part with more of their money for other people, it's true. But even the stingy likely wish others well, at the very least. Maybe people don't care "enough", or maybe people are too lazy to donate, but it's there. Your take on that quote is very literally "glass one-third empty". It says we spend as much building new infrastructure as we do feeding our pets! I love little Rosie!! You can't accuse someone of not caring about something if they spend as much on that thing as their pet. Relatedly, it may be a bummer that we don't donate more, but the US at least still donates 2% of its GDP every year. That's not nothing.

idlewords 12y ago
The US donates 0.2% of GDP. The top four recipients of that aid are Afghanistan, Israel, Iraq and Egypt. You can imagine what they spend it on. We also give aid to the West Bank and Gaza, so we're working both the supply and demand side there.
- IkmoIkmo 12y ago
  The people of the US donate about 2% a year to various charitable causes, that's where his figure comes from, it's separate from what the government does. That includes a lot of internal stuff like people giving to their local church. Such charity is respectable, too, it helps e.g. the homeless Americans living on the streets, but it's separate from international aid. The US's international development budget is only 0.2% which in my opinion is a disgrace. It's defense spending by comparison is 3.8%, more than an order of magnitude larger. That's for 2013, for 2012 for example it was 4.4%, in the sixties it was nearly 10%, and the 45-year average is about 5.5%. It makes that 0.2% look pretty puny. As for the recipients, indeed military aid is larger than US Aid aid (the governmental agency of the US that does humanitarian/economic development) by a few billion. And so it's no surprise that foreign aid is very much tied to national security interests, which themselves are tied to US economic interests, making the 0.2% not a very benevolent figure beyond the fact that it's relatively small. You mentioned Israel/Palestine, interestingly the WB/Gaza are the only group in the list of 25 top recipients that receive no military aid at all, only economic aid. For perspective, Palestine receives 20x more economic aid than Israel from the US. And Israel receives 6x more military assistance than Palestine receives economic aid. It's a bit of a weird situation indeed, as every few years the one army destroys infrastructure of the other territory, the US for part of that army, and then pays for the rebuilding of the infrastructure. Leaving politics outside of this, it's weird indeed, if I were a martian looking down from my spaceship, I'd have taken humans for quite silly creatures! Also in this top 25 list of aid recipients, not a single country receives more economic aid than military aid. Every single country receives more military aid, often by a large margin. Except Palestine and Sudan (which receives as much military as economic aid). Interesting factoid: remittance from the US (e.g. relatively poor Mexicans sending money back home to friends and family) surpasses the totality of all American military aid and US Aid, each, and, every, single, year.

by rattray 12y ago

idlewords 12y ago

The US donates 0.2% of GDP. The top four recipients of that aid are Afghanistan, Israel, Iraq and Egypt. You can imagine what they spend it on. We also give aid to the West Bank and Gaza, so we're working both the supply and demand side there.

IkmoIkmo 12y ago
The people of the US donate about 2% a year to various charitable causes, that's where his figure comes from, it's separate from what the government does. That includes a lot of internal stuff like people giving to their local church. Such charity is respectable, too, it helps e.g. the homeless Americans living on the streets, but it's separate from international aid. The US's international development budget is only 0.2% which in my opinion is a disgrace. It's defense spending by comparison is 3.8%, more than an order of magnitude larger. That's for 2013, for 2012 for example it was 4.4%, in the sixties it was nearly 10%, and the 45-year average is about 5.5%. It makes that 0.2% look pretty puny. As for the recipients, indeed military aid is larger than US Aid aid (the governmental agency of the US that does humanitarian/economic development) by a few billion. And so it's no surprise that foreign aid is very much tied to national security interests, which themselves are tied to US economic interests, making the 0.2% not a very benevolent figure beyond the fact that it's relatively small. You mentioned Israel/Palestine, interestingly the WB/Gaza are the only group in the list of 25 top recipients that receive no military aid at all, only economic aid. For perspective, Palestine receives 20x more economic aid than Israel from the US. And Israel receives 6x more military assistance than Palestine receives economic aid. It's a bit of a weird situation indeed, as every few years the one army destroys infrastructure of the other territory, the US for part of that army, and then pays for the rebuilding of the infrastructure. Leaving politics outside of this, it's weird indeed, if I were a martian looking down from my spaceship, I'd have taken humans for quite silly creatures! Also in this top 25 list of aid recipients, not a single country receives more economic aid than military aid. Every single country receives more military aid, often by a large margin. Except Palestine and Sudan (which receives as much military as economic aid). Interesting factoid: remittance from the US (e.g. relatively poor Mexicans sending money back home to friends and family) surpasses the totality of all American military aid and US Aid, each, and, every, single, year.