.Americans give 15 cents per day per person in official development assistance to poor countries. The average American spends four times that on soft drinks daily.
In 2003, the latest year for which figures are available, we increased such assistance by one-fifth, for President Bush has actually been much better about helping poor countries than President Clinton was. But as a share of our economy, our contribution still left us ranked dead last among 22 top donor countries.
We gave 15 cents for every $100 of national income to poor countries. Denmark gave 84 cents, the Netherlands gave 80 cents, Belgium gave 60 cents, France gave 41 cents, and Greece gave 21 cents (that was the lowest share, beside our own).
It is sometimes said that Americans make up for low official aid with private charitable donations. Nope. By OECD calculations, private donations add 6 cents a day to the official U.S. figure - meaning that we still give only 21 cents a day per person.
Well, that does seem to be in keeping with our professed christian moral values. My memory is a little rusty, and I may be paraphrasing here, but did not Jesus sayeth in the Gospels, shrugging his shoulders: "The poor - fuck 'em."
And Kristoff also reiterates the point Knip made here, that while the tsunami is tragic, the world is full of tragedy that we just ignore, even though much (or at least some) of this suffering could be alleviated with a little compassion and charity:
The 150,000 or so fatalities from the tsunami are well within the margin of error for estimates of the number of deaths every year from malaria. Probably two million people die annually of malaria, most of them children and most in Africa, or maybe it's three million - we don't even know.
But the bottom line is that this month and every month, more people will die of malaria (165,000 or more) and AIDS (240,000) than died in the tsunamis, and almost as many will die because of diarrhea ( 140,000).