Quote:
Originally Posted by Ak Mike
Without commenting on anything else said by msmith, at #466 she said that Americans are more generous, giving more in charity. There were responses that other countries give more per capita in foreign aid. The two things are completely different, although it is quite interesting that some people conflate individuals making voluntary contributions of their disposable income to charity, with politicians using taxpayer money to fund foreign aid projects, many of which are for the primary benefit of donor-country businesses.
Foreign aid has been called "money given by poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries."
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To take this observation a bit farther, the blog post (with numbers) that was linked to earlier in this thread was considering
government foreign aid. But Americans give far more charity to other countries as private individuals than the sum total of the U.S. Gov't's foreign aid budget. (Reference missing. I had one, but I've misplaced it.) The charity given as private individuals may be what prior posters were talking about.
It's a cultural difference between the US and Europe (at least). Most Americans don't worry (much) about what aid the govt is giving out -- if we want aid to go somewhere, we find an appropriate charity and give them some money. By comparison (caveat: possibly speaking out of my *ss here) I have been told that in Europe there is more of a "already paid for that in my taxes" attitude (remember that caveat earlier in the sentence, though).
Not claiming any specific superiority here, by the way. It's a different approach to giving out aid. Not necessarily better, just different.
Xenophon