If we weren't so stingy, we'd be broke. Disaster relief
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
From info linked here: Krauthammer: U.S. Gives 60 Percent of Global Food Aid apparently originated here: Krauthammer: U.S. Gives 60 Percent of Global Food Aid
Some choice notes:
Columnist Charles Krauthammer blasted U.N. officials and other America-bashers Sunday morning for trying to paint the U.S.'s foreign aid contribution as "stingy" in the wake of the Asia tsunami disaster - especially since the facts prove exactly the opposite.
"We are six percent, or less, of the world's population," Krauthammer told his fellow "Fox News Sunday" panelists. "We give almost half [of the global foreign aid]. ... We give 60 percent of all the food aid on the planet."
...
The conservative columnist was responding to "FNS" panelist Ceci Connolly, who suggested that U.S. aid contributions were stingy in comparison to the nearly $1 billion of federal relief that poured into the state of Florida during last year's hurricane epidemic, which killed a mere 100 Americans.
Using Connolly's math, a contribution proportionate to the 120,000 deaths reported so far in the tsunami crisis would compel the U.S. to donate $1.2 trillion in disaster relief to the affected countries.
While I'm all for doing the right thing, and contributing what we can afford and helping our fellow man, that number is just staggering.
By that math, we should be giving these countries decades worth of their own GDP in order to help recover from this natural disaster?
I wish everyone on earth a better life, I really do, but many of the people affected by this tragedy lived lives of squalor. As Christian Childrens Fund, UNICEF and others tell us, just pennies a day would provide the basics for many of these people, yet, using the math that produced the numbers shown, we'd be giving 120,000 - 200,000 victims (or their governments) $1.2 - $2 trillion?!
How much is that per individual?!?! If I did the math right, $10,000 per person?!? For someone whose life savings up to that point had been (assuming here) something in the neighborhood of $100 - $1000?!?
That would just be in direct aid no less. Never mind the continued contributions that are flowing, and would continue to flow.
The numbers just boggle my mind.
As a comparison, by the way, consider the numbers found in this article: What price sacrifice? Increase in 'death gratuity' considered, that discusses the current death gratuity that is paid to surviving family members of U.S. soldiers that die in service. Currently that payment is $12,000 -- an amount that is pitifully low, but is the current amount paid for someone that has given their live in service to their country. Are we to truly believe that we, the U.S. citizens, should be paying just as much for the lives of villagers in third world nations as we do our own service people?!
I guess if we're really part of the great big global community, we must have to do such things so we can please those that would just on hating us with their next breath.
Some choice notes:
Columnist Charles Krauthammer blasted U.N. officials and other America-bashers Sunday morning for trying to paint the U.S.'s foreign aid contribution as "stingy" in the wake of the Asia tsunami disaster - especially since the facts prove exactly the opposite.
"We are six percent, or less, of the world's population," Krauthammer told his fellow "Fox News Sunday" panelists. "We give almost half [of the global foreign aid]. ... We give 60 percent of all the food aid on the planet."
...
The conservative columnist was responding to "FNS" panelist Ceci Connolly, who suggested that U.S. aid contributions were stingy in comparison to the nearly $1 billion of federal relief that poured into the state of Florida during last year's hurricane epidemic, which killed a mere 100 Americans.
Using Connolly's math, a contribution proportionate to the 120,000 deaths reported so far in the tsunami crisis would compel the U.S. to donate $1.2 trillion in disaster relief to the affected countries.
While I'm all for doing the right thing, and contributing what we can afford and helping our fellow man, that number is just staggering.
By that math, we should be giving these countries decades worth of their own GDP in order to help recover from this natural disaster?
I wish everyone on earth a better life, I really do, but many of the people affected by this tragedy lived lives of squalor. As Christian Childrens Fund, UNICEF and others tell us, just pennies a day would provide the basics for many of these people, yet, using the math that produced the numbers shown, we'd be giving 120,000 - 200,000 victims (or their governments) $1.2 - $2 trillion?!
How much is that per individual?!?! If I did the math right, $10,000 per person?!? For someone whose life savings up to that point had been (assuming here) something in the neighborhood of $100 - $1000?!?
That would just be in direct aid no less. Never mind the continued contributions that are flowing, and would continue to flow.
The numbers just boggle my mind.
As a comparison, by the way, consider the numbers found in this article: What price sacrifice? Increase in 'death gratuity' considered, that discusses the current death gratuity that is paid to surviving family members of U.S. soldiers that die in service. Currently that payment is $12,000 -- an amount that is pitifully low, but is the current amount paid for someone that has given their live in service to their country. Are we to truly believe that we, the U.S. citizens, should be paying just as much for the lives of villagers in third world nations as we do our own service people?!
I guess if we're really part of the great big global community, we must have to do such things so we can please those that would just on hating us with their next breath.
PolMach Forums
other world situations don't receive the money needed while ones such as this receive more than the amount asked for. Hopefully some of the $5 billion (which equates to $1000 per each of the 5 million affected according to UN, and this is too much considering they make $2 there) will be spent on a tsunami early warning system to be implemented in the Indian Ocean.