"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Once again we see the overwhelming greed of the American people.

PRIVATE American citizens donated almost 15 times more to the developing world than their European counterparts, research reveals this weekend ahead of the G8 summit. Private US donors also handed over far more aid than the federal government in Washington, revealing that America is much more generous to Africa and poor countries than is claimed by the Make Poverty History and Live 8 campaigns.

Church collections, philanthropists and company-giving amounted to $22bn a year, according to a study by the Hudson Institute think-tank, easily more than the $16.3bn in overseas development sent by the US government. American churches, synagogues and mosques alone gave $7.5bn in 2003 - a figure which exceeds the government totals for France ($7.2bn) and Britain ($6.3bn) - according to numbers from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development which deal a blow to those who claim moral superiority over the US on aid.

Carole Adelman, the author of the Hudson Institute report, has discovered that a further $6.2bn a year is donated by independent US organisations, $2.7bn by US companies and $2.3bn by US universities and colleges, mainly through scholarships, to reach an overall private US donations total of $22bn.

In stark contrast, in separate exploratory work for the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), Adelman found that the maximum EU figure was a mere $1.5bn in private sector donations, 14.6 times less than the comparable US figure.

And why are Americans able to give so much?

But this model ignores the private donations made possible by the lower tax burden in the US of 31.8%, against the eurozone’s 45.6%. Figures for philanthropic donations have been collected for the first time by the Hudson Institute.”

What?  You mean if private citizens are able to keep more of their own money to do with as they wish, more of them will give it to the charities and causes they hold dear?  But… but… this is unthinkable!

I think this highlights a fundamental difference between the American and European people.  Americans are problem solvers by nature.  We are a nation of rugged individualists.  Therefore when an American sees someone starving in Africa he opens his wallet, calls an aid organization (often run by religious groups), and makes a donation.  When a European sees someone starving in Africa he turns to his government to “do something” about the problem.  This attitude is prevalent in so many other areas as well:  self defense, health care, use of property, and so on.  Americans would rather solve problems on an individual basis, whereas Europeans follow their typical collectivized model and expect the government to solve the problem for them.

Also, note the way that Europeans discount the astonishing levels of private giving on the part of the American people, and only compare the amount of aid pledged by individual governments.  “Well, France gives a higher percentage of GDP than the US does.” This is despite the fact that the US is able to give more money than France while giving a smaller percentage of GDP.  And now we find that Americans give 15 times more to charities than Europeans, due to (a) their natural generosity, (b) their tendency towards individual solutions, and (c) a tax system which gives them the means to do so.  Europeans are so used to looking for government solutions to everything that they have totally forgotten the concept of individual people being able to make a huge difference when they act on their own.

It’s also worth noting that this very same attitude, of looking towards the government to change the world, is the one being proffered by bleeding-heart celebrity morons like George Clooney.

George Clooney is spending time in Edinburgh, Scotland after appearing at last night’s final Live 8 concert in the city’s Murrayfield stadium, to put pressure on the G8 leaders to tackle world poverty. The Ocean’s Twelve actor urges the leading political figures, including President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to cancel developing world debt, because their legacy will live on in history. He says, “I’d appeal for the G8 leaders to give more than they are willing to give. All of us agree these eight gentlemen probably would like to go into retirement saying, ‘I’m the one who ended poverty’ because it’s not a bad thing to brag about.”

Again, as I said numerous times before, THIS WILL NOT END POVERTY IN AFRICA.  Anyone who thinks that it will is a simple-minded moron with absolutely no grasp of the issue, which explains why George Clooney said it.  Debt relief is an important step, but simply relieving debt and then pissing more money down the toilet in Africa isn’t going to solve a damn thing. The most important thing that can help Africa is governmental reform on the continent.  Africa needs some Thomas Jeffersons, and all they’ve got is Al Sharptons.  We’ve been pissing money away in Africa for decades.  (Where do you think this “debt” came from?) And yet to Europeans, and their like-minded sheep in the American left, there is no problem that can’t be solved simply by getting government to throw more money at it. 

I’m going to make a prediction.  Twenty years from now Africa will be in more or less exactly the same shape it’s in now.  Whining Europeans will yell about how the American government is to blame because they donate a lower percentage of GDP than compassionate Europe.  Somewhere in the heartland of America, a working class family who really can’t afford to do so will write a check to a charity endorsed by their church group, because of which someone in Africa will get fed.  And George Clooney will still have his $250,000 Porsche and his mansion in Bel Air.