Quote:
Originally posted by Rikard_OHF:
You'll be suprised how little the USA really spends on keeping alive those people if you compare it to the amount of money now spend to kill them all the future. Most European countries, especially from the EU, spend way more then the USA on charity and the development of third world countries, relative to the money they get from taxes etc.
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How little we spend "if you compare it"? "Relative" to tax income?
What if you don't compare it? What if you don't "relate" it?
We spend it, and it's not "a little". It doesn't mean any less no matter how you
qualify it. "More" is "more" and only "more than more" is more than that.
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EU and others spend more? Silver Cheeta and I had this discussion once in the old version of the war forum, and she offered an interesting site with statistics, and it was interesting in the way she'd offered it, but what was also interesting was the fact that if you divided each nations Gross Domestic Product by it's population, the US came out much more realistically than just looking at a percentage of the GDP.
Per Capita is actually a more fair way to evaluate it when you consider that the US has to spend part of the GDP on each and every person in one way or another. A nation with a smaller population doesn't spend as much on that population as a nation with a larger one. The US also has a larger percentage of unemployed and elderly people to compensate than say Japan.
The US also spends a
huge amount on defense, and like it or not, that has greatly benefited our allies monetarily. Reducing what some spend for defense to a tiny fraction of what they'd have to spend without the US as an ally. The US might seem like an A-hole to people in different countries when we don't follow their "wants", but when they need us, that huge defense budget seems like a godsend.
If I remember correctly, from that old survey, breaking down the nations GDPs per capita showed that Switzerland is the stingiest country when it comes to aid.