The population of the United Kingdom is 60 million. I'm sure the vast majority of those 60 million people can afford to part with ten pounds. If 60 million people donate 10 pounds then that's 0.6 billion pounds collected, which at the current exchange rate is over a billion dollars.
The population of the United States is around 300 million. Again. most of those people can afford to part with ten dollars. If everyone in the US donates 10 dollars that would be 3 billion dollars total.
So our running total is now 4 billion dollars US
Canada's population is 32 million people. With every Canadian donating 10 Canadian dollars then that's 0.32 billion Canadian dollars, or at the current exchange rate, a quarter of a billion US dollars.
4.25 Billion US dollars.
Japan has a population exceeding 125 million people. A thousand yes is worth around about 10 US dollars, so a donation of 1000 yen from everyone in Japan would equate to 1 and a quarter billion dollars.
5 and a half billion dollars.
And so far our governments have donated a paltry few million here an there to the people of the countries devastated by the tsunami.
The figures clearly show that if we all pull our weight we can do far better than our governments have so far.
(Population figures taken from wikipedia.org, exchange rates from xe.com)
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Anonymous2005-01-03 17:56 (sage)
I understand the human need to help the less fortuante but consider the following:
1. 3rd world people need less money to be satisfied, 10 dollars is more than one of them earns a month.
2. 3rd world inhabitants contribute next to nothing to the global economy (meaning them being alive affects you in no way).
3. They reproduce irresponsibly (no child wants to be born to poor people nor do 10 children) aiding them only hurts the world more by allowing them to surivive and reproduce sucessfully thereby creating an even larger generation of desperate people.
4. Yes it would suck if we were born there, but we weren't thank allah.
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Anonymous2005-01-03 20:31
Who cares about the tsunami victims when there are millions starving all over the world?
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Anonymous2005-01-03 21:29
2. 3rd world inhabitants contribute next to nothing to the global economy (meaning them being alive affects you in no way).
so?
3. They reproduce irresponsibly
You're thinking of Africa, not Asia.
4. Yes it would suck if we were born there, but we weren't thank allah.
troll
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Anonymous2005-01-03 22:02
>>2, please kindly burn in hell motherfucker. Ever heard of human decency?
http://www.nakagawa.ca/ascorbic/tsunami/
Here's a page I put together showing how much money countries have donated to the cause. The most generous donation I've seen yet is Qatar's at $10 million USD, from a country of only 840 thousand people. Take a look, leave a comment, plzkthx.
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Asmodi2005-01-04 20:22
Oh, and for reference, only two countries have donated more than $10 USD per capita: Denmark and Qatar.
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Anonymous2005-01-04 21:43
Qatar isn't a fair reference, most of its inhabitants are temporary foreign workers and the rest are uber rich oil sheiks.
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Asmodi2005-01-04 22:04
Elaborate, plz. CBS News reported $10 million coming from the gov't of Qatar, not the people, or inhabitants. The CIA World Factbook also says Qatar's GDP is a mere $17.54 bn. Is this data faulty, or am I missing something?
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Anonymous2005-01-04 22:21
>most of those people can afford to part with ten dollars.
how many of those people are unemployed? how many owe hundreds of thousands of dollars to credit card companies? if you can afford to part with ten dollars, be sure to send some of it to me.
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Anonymous2005-01-05 14:13
Why does the government think it can take our money and give it away anyway? I have no problem with people too rich to know better giving away money, but it sucks that we are all forced to do so as part of our taxes. I've been to south-east Asia before and the whole place is fucking corrupt. Sending money there is like sticking cheese it in a rat hole, it's only going to make things worse instead of solve the chronic problems making the region what it is.
I did get a good laugh out of the whole thing upon reading in the New York Times the other day that we are funding psychiatrists to provide long term mental care, though. Can you imagine people so out of touch that they waste money on psychiatrists when people are lacking food, shelter, and a means to earn a living (fishing boats, etc.)? If donations were a personal affair at least you could demand your money not be wasted on idiocy like that and/or choose the smarter groups get it.
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Kay2005-01-05 14:41
>>27 Giving money to corrupt governments is not the same as giving money to international NGA'S, though. Also in the issue Western governments/NGA's have, naturally, more influence on where the money goes.
Well, I myself donated 20€, my mother 100€, though the chancellor said Germany will give ~0.5 billion dollars which even seems too much. o_O
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Anonymous2005-01-05 22:33
Sending anything is sending money to some degree, since it's the local government's job to supply relief and not ours. Well except for sending the psychiatric help, that's just sending a cruel joke. Anyway, after the Florida hurricanes here the government started looking for ways to discourage people from rebuilding in dangerous coastal areas, largely because it had to foot such a huge bill in recovery.
Similarly if some of those corrupt governments weren't getting propped up they would probably take more proactive action. More likely they would do very little, get a lot of people pissed off, which might just contribute to getting a better government in place. So, no, sending material aid and support via UNICEF and whatnot to these countries is not any better than sending money they didn't earn.