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[Urist McScoopbeard]

America is pretty much the modern-day Roman Empire. We do whatever we want because we can and we figured out early enough that it's better to stay the hegemon then go the imperialist route.

EDIT: Slightly relevant I guess, I just wanted to illustrate that America is neither the good guy nor the bad guy. That concept doesn't really apply to global politics as far as I'm concerned.

[Reelya]

@Rolan7: Sorry but your logic isn't so great there. Yeah, a similar sized and similarly wealthy area of the world gives out triple the humanitarian aid as the USA. Trying to minimize that by grudgingly referring to it as merely "more" (when it's three times the size), or claiming it doesn't count because there are more borders in Europe than North America, or saying that if they are spending all that aid money, it's probably done in a self-serving insular manner. Those are not some great arguments.

Trying to diminish the value of that in a backhanded and unsubstantiated way doesn't really engender sympathy for your claim we should take the USAs aid more seriously.

[Shadowlord]

There's a reason I haven't gotten involved in this debate (I know that I know nothing about it, aside from the general impression that "we" give lots of aid... in the form of weapons... to countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia)

[martinuzz]

Would also be nice and humanitarian if the US could accept a million or two refugees from the many millions that are currently overcrowding middle eastern and Europese refugee sheltering capacities, when they're not too busy drowning in the Mediterrenean.

[mainiac]

Americans accepting the poor oppressed masses?

[Max™]

Humanitarian aid: material, financial, and personnel sent to a crisis area to provide short term assistance and recovery.

Development aid: financial and other assistance provided with the intention of improving the quality of life and such over a long term period for the recipient nation as a whole.

I have no idea where to find values on humanitarian aid, it was just my fact-checking urge that led me to confirm that the development aid is not the same thing, and is arguably more important than short-term aid. Convenient as it is at the time, development aid fosters the ability to handle crises better as well as the health/education/happiness/etc goals it goes towards.

Technically both of the rather meaningless points about "who gives the most" (it isn't a competition) are right: the EU as an entity makes contributions which can be tallied with individual member contributions to vastly outstrip the US aid amounts, but none of said individual contributions match the US contribution by themselves.

[Frumple]

I tried to figure out how much of that was spent on Greece and other very local interests, but I've already spent too much time on this solo.

You can check this page if you still want to see some numbers -- the .pdfs nearer the bottom are probably the easiest to parse, looking at things. Seem to be coming from the same statistics that wiki page used, too, if that makes a difference to you, and there's some pretty nice breakdowns in regards to donors and recipients. Checking the europe specific one, it... kinda' looks like those numbers on the wiki page don't include aid to greece at all (though I may be reading it wrong, definitely -- m'a wee titch out of it at th'mo), and about half of the european developmental aid is split between turkey, serbia, and ukraine. And germany alone has apparently given more to the region than the US, heh, which is interesting.

Another couple interesting tidbits from that before I go back to doing other things, is that it looks like something around 70ish percent of global humanitarian aid is funneling into africa and asia. Looks like most of the spending on the americas is going into south/central parts, to little surprise, but what is surprising is that germany is apparently beating the US in our own damn back yard in regards to raw spending amount, though that may have changed in the year or two since the numbers were gathered.

... honestly, I'm now sort of curious if germany is specifically going around and one-upping our ass somehow. Not enough that I'd rather be checking the rest of those pdfs instead of murdering elves with a chainsword berzerker ghoul, but somewhat.

Though @max, I couldn't quite puzzle out the difference between emergency and developmental aid in practice, either, hah. Searches and whatnot for humanitarian all seem to lead directly back into numbers on development, and looking at some of the historical trend data on the DA seemed to suggest that it the more crisisy stuff is bundled into it. But see chainsword berzerker ghoul, I'm also now fairly tired of looking

[Max™]

The important thing about developmental aid is that it has the ultimate goal of the recipient nation becoming a net provider to other developing nations, passing it along. Humanitarian aid is something you do because you can and there is a need at a given place and time. Developmental aid is something you do because you can and think the general improvement of living conditions for everyone is a good thing.

[Shadowlord]

The "aid" to Greece doesn't really strike me as aid - metaphorically speaking, it's more like really expensive shovels with orders to "keep digging, or we cut you off." Because everyone knows the only way out of a hole is to dig deeper.

[Max™]

Well, while Greece is poor by EU standards, it's not really a prime target anyways. Most of it going to Africa and Asia is exactly what you would expect, there are more countries there trying to climb out of 3rd world status. Greece is, what do you call it if a part of your body starts to fail and it could kill you if you don't treat it?

[Reelya]

Wow, it's a shock that the USA is behind Germany in aid spending in the Americas. My thought on that, is that for the USA, the local "backyard" is a source for cheap labor and resources. US Corporations have a vested interest in keeping the South underdeveloped, because it helps to keep American corporations globally competitive. Gotta put the sweatshops somewhere, right?

[Rolan7]

I tried to figure out how much of that was spent on Greece and other very local interests, but I've already spent too much time on this solo.

You can check this page if you still want to see some numbers -- the .pdfs nearer the bottom are probably the easiest to parse, looking at things. Seem to be coming from the same statistics that wiki page used, too, if that makes a difference to you, and there's some pretty nice breakdowns in regards to donors and recipients. Checking the europe specific one, it... kinda' looks like those numbers on the wiki page don't include aid to greece at all (though I may be reading it wrong, definitely -- m'a wee titch out of it at th'mo), and about half of the european developmental aid is split between turkey, serbia, and ukraine. And germany alone has apparently given more to the region than the US, heh, which is interesting.

Well uh...
Honestly I was expecting to be proven wrong, but instead I'm just confused?  This "at a glance" page relies so heavily on acronyms, which when investigated rely on other acronyms, that I'm seriously haven't trouble parsing it.

Which maybe does confirm me being "casually unaware" I guess.  This seems pretty confusing though!?

Another couple interesting tidbits from that before I go back to doing other things, is that it looks like something around 70ish percent of global humanitarian aid is funneling into africa and asia. Looks like most of the spending on the americas is going into south/central parts, to little surprise, but what is surprising is that germany is apparently beating the US in our own damn back yard in regards to raw spending amount, though that may have changed in the year or two since the numbers were gathered.

That is kinda interesting, actually.  Without making judgements about the USA's decision, it's still interesting.

... honestly, I'm now sort of curious if germany is specifically going around and one-upping our ass somehow. Not enough that I'd rather be checking the rest of those pdfs instead of murdering elves with a chainsword berzerker ghoul, but somewhat.

Probably has more to do with US interests than German ones.
And those elves are really asking for it.

Fakedit:

Wow, it's a shock that the USA is behind Germany in aid spending in the Americas. My thought on that, is that for the USA, the local "backyard" is a source for cheap labor and resources. US Corporations have a vested interest in keeping the South underdeveloped, because it helps to keep American corporations globally competitive. Gotta put the sweatshops somewhere, right?

Yeah this wouldn't surprise me at all.

I'm still in favor of one-time amnesty to undo the VERY profitable situation the rich and corporations have invented, of using illegal foreign labor.
Even if it means excusing a lot of people who were eagerly complicit.
Even if it means making them *full citizens*.  What a reward and bad precedent for breaking our laws, but I think the benefits outweigh the consequences.

[Baffler]

I'm still in favor of one-time amnesty to undo the VERY profitable situation the rich and corporations have invented, of using illegal foreign labor.
Even if it means excusing a lot of people who were eagerly complicit.
Even if it means making them *full citizens*.  What a reward and bad precedent for breaking our laws, but I think the benefits outweigh the consequences.

I see this a lot, but I'm not entirely convinced it won't just cause an increase in illegal entry. Illegal aliens are, almost by definition, not kept track of, so how do you know when you've amnestied them all? You don't, so you have to offer it to anyone who comes by over a certain time period. What I foresee happening is a massive wave of immigration for a long time after as people come to try to get free US citizenship, either hoping we'll do it again or to get in for the first one. If we do, why even have controls on immigration at all? And if we don't, what's different from the situation we had before, except that we've now set a precedent for rewarding people for breaking our laws?

[Frumple]

Wow, it's a shock that the USA is behind Germany in aid spending in the Americas. My thought on that, is that for the USA, the local "backyard" is a source for cheap labor and resources. US Corporations have a vested interest in keeping the South underdeveloped, because it helps to keep American corporations globally competitive. Gotta put the sweatshops somewhere, right?

It's not by terribly much, for what it's worth. Also, ho, found some humanitarian aid numbers! And look lower in the post for much better ones, as I'm not going to take the effort to rearrange this post to put it up here where they probably should be.

... they're much smaller numbers than the developmental aid numbers, and the US is... actually performing at about the same level in a relative sense, near as I can tell skimming over things (point against the report at the top: It's much more floweryand annoying to find raw numbers than in those DA ones). Government spending on humanitarian aid in '14, ferex, was ~6 billion from the US, ~2.3 bn from the UK, ~6.7 if you bundle the top four EU sources (which would include the UK's 2.3) together.

Though... actually, now that I skim a bit further down, it actually looks like they're using the DA numbers I linked to before? Maybe developmental aid and humanitarian aid are the same insofar as data gathering is concerned? Ah, in conjunction with this, apparently, which does seem to be something specifically focused on humanitarian numbers, though how much you trust a UN source and the methodology being used is perhaps up to the reader, aheh. It's a pretty neat site on the face of it, though. If the european commission and the individual european countries are different things, the EU on the net is indeed kinda' kicking our ass, heh.

@rol: Acronym-y wise, most of it you can just sorta' ignore unless you're very interested in the nitty gritty of where the numbers are exactly coming from, so far as I can tell. Just eyeball the donor and recipient bits when you get to actual dollar amounts to get a general feel of things, heh.

[mainiac]

Illegal aliens are, almost by definition, not kept track of, so how do you know when you've amnestied them all?

Same way they did in the past.  Come forward by a set date or you miss out.