Yet another reason to get angry with Bill...

[Harold]

What many miss in this picture is that the US tax code encourages 
personal contributions to not-for-profit organizations like the Red 
Cross, Catholic aid organizations, etc. My small church also has an 
international aid fund that most of us donate to.

This becomes much more efficient as the government typically spends more 
than one dollar to get a dollar to where you want it. Not for profits 
must have annual audits and are typically 80% or better efficient, due 
to volunteer workers administering them.

The US Government encourages this giving through tax incentives and 
private giving in the US is much higher than most governments. If I were 
to dig for the statistics, we might find that this private giving is 
higher than quite a few governments put together.

An American perspective.

Harold

?Harold Sawyer
www.SawyerSphere.net
www.centralconnecticutwcg.org

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Eric Dunbar wrote:
> On 19/03/06, Shawn McMahon <smcmahon at eiv.com> wrote:
>   
>> On Sat, Mar 18, 2006 at 11:29:25PM -0500, Eric Dunbar said:
>>     
>>> Anyway, this isn't a forum to discuss aid per se -- merely what can be
>>> done with it ;-).
>>>       
>> Ah, yes; the classic "take a shot at the US and then declare a
>> moritorium on defending it" strategy.
>>     
>
> It's pretty easy to take pot shots at North American aid budgets in
> general but a few others who rank amongst the wealthiest countries in
> the world are pathetic as well (the US is THE WORST in the developed
> world with a pitiful aid budget of 0.15% of GNI and Canada, Australia
> and Japan are barely any better at 0.20-0.25% -- these countries are
> shamed compared with countries like the Netherlands, Belgium and
> Denmark who are willing to do something about the world's problem all
> hovering at 0.80% of GNI). The other problem with US aid (less of a
> problem in the EU) is that it is primarily "tied" aid so 0.15%, THE
> WORST rate in the world drops even further (tied = it has to be
> "delivered" by some US company or non-profit).
>
> PS You can't let southern or even parts of N Europe off the hook
> either for their dismal performance in aid. And, when you throw in the
> _destructive_ farming subsidies that the EU and US participate in and
> the incredible tariffs these supposed "free trade" nations throw up
> against food imports from the developing world you end up exacerbating
> the problems of the developing world. And, then again, they all like
> to "dump" food onto the developing world as "aid" (which does the
> opposite -- cheap hyper-subsidised potatoes from Idaho or milk from
> France destroy domestic production capacity [don't know if France is
> party to dumping but they do have a propensity for subsidising their
> farmers for all the wrong reasons... production should not be
> subsidised... ecological services should]).
>
> Anyway, you can construe this as an attack on the US if you want, but,
> parts of Europe are doing only marginally more than the US at best.
>
> And, how did this come to be on a Linux list? I guess through a
> circuitous route the presence of a cheap laptop in the developing
> nation could fall under the rubric of "aid".
>
>