Australia SHOULD be interested in giving more immediate aid to the tsunami-stricken nations, since the disaster happened in their sphere of influence. I believe Australia is a (the?) major power for that portion of the globe, and they would have serious, immediate reasons to work towards mitigating the situation. For example, do they want refugees? What are the trade implications? Would the Indonesian government take advantage of the Aceh situation to quell the rebellion and cause a humanitarian crisis?
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Originally Posted by Yakk
By September 28th, the American Red Cross alone had raised 1 billion dollars towards Katrina relief. Notice the sum total of American aid to Tsunami damaged nations was less than 2 billion dollars, from all sources.
The US federal government allocated 51.8$ BILLION dollars to Katrina relief.
Dispite your feeling to the contrary, the US response to Katrina and the US response to the Tsunami are in completely different leagues.
Next, let us examine the amount of human suffering in the two events. Human deaths will serve as a proxy for this value. You wouldn't expect the international humanitarian response to a stubbed toe to be the same as the response to an event that killed 100 people -- the scale of the disaster should be taken into account.
The total deaths in Katrina where about 1,000 to 2,000 (via recall). The total deaths from the Tsunami is about 212,000 (via CNN).
So, saying that the Tsunami was a 100 times larger disaster than Katrina isn't all that unreasonable.
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Yakk, I am confused with what you have posted, as quoted above. If I follow your line of reasoning correctly, any country should, if faced with an "internal" disaster and an "external" disaster, automatically give more to the disaster that was greater in scope?
For what reason - purely humanitarian? Because I would argue that the "normal" human reaction in such a situation is to do more for that which affects him or her more directly. I'm not sure that you can argue that the tsunami affected the majority of residents in the US more directly than Hurricane Katrina did.
Tell me, what is the economic impact of the tsunami? According to information (albeit old) on the following link (
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4154277.stm), it seems that reconstruction and economic impact related to the tsunami will cost somewhere under US$20 billion. That figure includes estimates from Indian damage, a burden that India has chosen to shoulder on its own, without foreign aid. Although there was a horrible loss of life, the economies of most of the affected countries were considered to be quite able to rebound with minimal effect.
Now, what is the expected economic impact of Hurricane Katrina on the US? Since you used Wikipedia in your post, I turn to that source here (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economi...ricane_Katrina). Skimming through the entry, we see that it is considered
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"to be the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. Some early estimates exceeded $100 billion, not accounting for potential catastrophic damage inland due to flooding (which would increase the total even more), or damage to the economy caused by potential interruption of oil supply, and exports of commodities such as grain.
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Continuing, other predictions place
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"the minimum insured damage at around $12.5 billion (the insured figure is normally doubled to account for uninsured damages in the final cost)."
Before the hurricane the region supported about one million non-farm jobs, 600,000 of them in New Orleans.
...current damages estimates exceed $80 billion, it is likely that $100 billion was an an underestimation of the total economic impact (usually far greater than total damages), and the economic impact may be as high as $200 billion.
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I don't have the energy (forgive the pun) to delve into what the economic impact of the energy crisis that resulted from the hurricane, but rest assured that we US residents are feeling it even now. I suspect that there was at least a temporary affect on business and industry as a result.
If those numbers and predictions are accurate, then the Hurricane Katrina disaster was not only much more personal for US citizens and donors, but much costlier in terms of overall economic impact. Therefore, one could argue that Katrina was in fact the larger disaster. Of course, that is using a purely monetary scale for measurement, rather than the purely "human death" scale that you chose for your post. Who gets to choose which scale to use? You? The United Nations? The American Red Cross? The International Monetary Fund? Here's some good reasons that the US responded the way it did to Katrina: because our government is obligated to do so, because we have the financial means to do so, and because to do anything less would damage the economic and social fabric of this country.
To get back to the meat of the topic, however, are Americans "stingy"? It is my belief that calling $1.91 billion in total aid "stingy" is insulting, especially when arguments in support of that position are based on a "they make more, so they are obligated to give more" theory. Guess what - we do make more, and we did give more. And, on a global scale, how can we defend ourselves when critics get to pick and choose what aid counts and what aid doesn't count, and whether or not aid tied to results is valid, etc?
This argument is tired, and it is so tired that we here in the States see it in another context: Democrats stating that the wealthy need to be taxed more because "they can afford it", or "they have a moral responsibility". The underlying morality and values for there arguments aren't going to be solved here in a forum debate.