Japan pledged up to $500 million in grant aid for tsunami disaster relief on Saturday, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi announced, making the country the largest single donor to victims of the catastrophe. The Japanese announcement came a day after President Bush increased the U.S. pledge tenfold to $350 million. … While Japan's economy has suffered since the 1990s and Tokyo has watched China grow rapidly to rival its influence in Asia, Japan remains world's second largest economy after the United States. Seattle Post Intelligencer
Before America raised its contribution from $35 million to $350 (a shift from, according to The Boston Globe, 12 cents per capita to $1.20), David Weinberger and Danah Boyd posted strong observations on the relative generosity of American aid and on American attitudes to the disaster. As a UK citizen, I read and observe, too, and look forward to this discussion developing and becoming part of the bigger debate going on within America as to its foreign policy generally.
Of course it's not (to echo, for different reasons, one comment to David Weinberger's post) a competition between countries, but the generosity of Japan — outstripping that of every other governmental initiative — is humbling. It is, then, a shock to read these sentiments:
The United States government, however, should not give any money to help the tsunami victims. Why? Because the money is not the government's to give. Every cent the government spends comes from taxation. Every dollar the government hands out as foreign aid has to be extorted from an American taxpayer first. … The reason politicians can get away with doling out money that they have no right to and that does not belong to them is that they have the morality of altruism on their side. According to altruism--the morality that most Americans accept and that politicians exploit for all it's worth--those who have more have the moral obligation to help those who have less. This is why Americans--the wealthiest people on earth--are expected to sacrifice (voluntarily or by force) the wealth they have earned to provide for the needs of those who did not earn it. The Ayn Rand Institute, California
David Galbraith comments on the latter:
The argument being that all money should come from individual donations. … By extension, should all Iraq rebuilding money come from donations from those who were in favor of invasion? Should the invasion itself have been funded from donations? It's a nice thought, perhaps the Iraq war would have never happened if people had to put their money where their mouth is. But democracy ain't like that, you can't hold a referendum for everything. Society is a flawed but necessary and emergent phenomenon. If there were enough followers of Rand, presumably they could declare independence and avoid taxes. But it wouldn't be long before the donation system failed and Randyland started to raise taxes. The creed of extreme libertarianism will always fail by reductio ad absurdum. My main problem with Randys is that they like to think of themselves as members of an elite club of successful rationalists, promoting charity and voluntary donation over tax, not a cult for self-righteous, mediocre people with uncharitable instincts - a 'banality' of evil.
I'd still like to know what worthwhile studies there are that look at the relative "value" of tax-based (governmentally directed) aid programmes versus charitable initiatives made by individuals. As Weinberger says: 'while increasing gov't spending might well decrease private donations - although I'd like to see some evidence about this, since having our gov't take the disaster seriously might also increase private donations - the question is whether doing so would increase overall donations. I'm willing to bet that it would.' Does anyone know of research in this area? Or of tables of giving (to assist Asia at this time) that allow us to sum both governmental aid and individual initiatives?
The Boston Globe article again:
Jeffrey Sachs, an economist at Columbia University and a specialist on aid to developing countries who has worked with the United Nations, said, ''There is a very big difference between American attitudes, which are generous; beliefs, which is that we do a lot; and the reality. . . . The reality is we actually do very little by comparative measures. I think the disaster in Asia is a stark example of this for a lot of Americans. It challenges their perceptions of their own country … There is going to be even more shock when the US government asks for an additional $80 billion in Iraq and the American public juxtaposes that with what was given in one of the worst natural disasters the world has ever seen. This discrepancy between what we think our country does and what it actually does is hurting America's image in the world, especially in the poorest corners of the world" …
The perception that America is the most generous country in the world is one held by a majority of Americans, according to a 2001 poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes based at the University of Maryland. The think tank, which studies public attitudes toward various international topics, found that the average American believes that the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on assistance to developing nations, more than 20 times the actual figure. Even when researchers told those being questioned that foreign aid does not include military assistance to other countries, the average response was that the United States spends 23 percent of its budget on foreign aid. But the relatively low US per capita donation to the tsunami-ravaged region reflects a larger pattern of a decline in official US foreign assistance in recent decades. …
While the United States gives the most foreign development aid in terms of dollars, it ranks lowest among wealthy countries in terms of official development assistance as a percentage of gross national income. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States gave $16.2 billion in development aid in 2003, or an amount equal to 0.15 percent of the US gross national income. Norway, with official development assistance of $2 billion, ranked highest, giving 0.92 percent of its 2003 gross national income. France allotted 0.41 percent of its gross national income to development aid in 2003, according to the organization's figures. …
In terms of private donations to charity, American citizens and corporations give generously -- more than $3 billion a year. But Sachs and other analysts say that amount only slightly changes -- from 0.15 percent to 0.18 percent of GNP -- the relatively low standing of the United States.
Sarah Kline, head of UK and European Union relations for Oxfam UK, said, ''If you want to compare records, overall the best way to do that is to look at what percentage a country spends as a percentage of its [gross domestic product], and in that sense America has always spent less than most of the other developed countries."
