I have noted before that US government assistance to the tsunami victims seems to be roughly the same as Canada's, though Canada has approximately 1/10 as many people and roughly 1/10 our GDP. Today's edition of the Guardian publishes some data on private tsunami-related giving; numbers below are in pounds/person:
Norway £7.06
Sweden £6.44
Netherlands £4.90
Australia £2.80
Germany £2.77
Saudi Arabia £2.14
Canada £1.99
Austria £1.67
Britain £1.65
Greece £1.11
United States 58p
France 43p
The United States would drop even further relatively if the data were adjusted to account for its higher GDP/person.
Now let's say you were a right-wing hack. How would you respond to the above data? Hey, here is an idea: rather than measure donations per person, or donations as a % of GDP, why not create a wild ass index that would put America first?
Say hello to the Amazonian Compassion index, courtesy of TechCentralStation, which, according to its creators refutes charges of American stinginess by measuring donations done through amazon.com. Guess which country comes out first?
(via Tim Lambert)
posted by alex @ 1:55 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Hmmm, do you mean this post? I thought he was arguing the opposite, that the US is not bad with disaster relief, but lags far behind in non-emergency foreign aid (though not if you redefine foreign aid to include things like immigration policy)?
wheres my post, hmm? do you want me to leave you for someone with a more frequently updated blog
that would be terrible, but i have nothing ot say :)
it was an empty threat and dont you know it :)
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