and we say we have no friends

[derien]

People are always whining that we help the rest of the world but the rest of the world never helps us. 

Qatar offers $100m to relief fund 

Brief summary:  A stunning number of countries have offered the U.S. huge amounts of aid to deal with the damage from Katrina, but, "As of Friday, the White House had not accepted any offers..."  If I'm understanding the article correctly, quite a few countries are making donations to the Red Cross, anyway. 

Now, eor and I disagree as to how resources can best be defined, but his argument is that the U.S. consumes more than the entire rest of the world put together.  If one looks at this offered aid as them choosing to divert some of the resources which they would normally consume, and giving them to us, and then think about the relative amount we each, in this country, would have to choose to divert from our own needs in order to match the aid they are offering, it should, hypothetically, cause us far less bother. 

(My counter argument is that what we can give should be defined by what we produce, and that what we consume is largely influenced by planned obsolescence, but all that debate gets far to rambly to go into on this post.)

Comments

[zeralot.livejournal.com]

between helping someone and trying to help, politic's just get in way and slow down the whole process. Why must it always be done by the book, since nature doesn't

Qutar?

[jimdes.livejournal.com]

Just what we need, more debt to oil rich countries.

Look at the fine print . . . most of these offers are loans and not actual gifts. If these countries actually wanted to make their dollars go further, I would suggest they make direct donations to The American Red Cross, The United Way, The Salvation Army and other private/pseudo-private institutions that already have the distribution channels available.

Re: Qutar?

[derien.livejournal.com]

I would suggest they make direct donations to The American Red Cross, The United Way, The Salvation Army and other private/pseudo-private institutions that already have the distribution channels available.

Yeah, that's what a lot of them are doing. Did you read the article?

Re: Qutar?

[jimdes.livejournal.com]

Indeed I did/do read . . . I had to just reiterate the point that if they were truely interested in DONATING funds, they would donate them and not loan them. Qatar is just looking for a way to hold us hostage . . if it's not the price of oil, it's high interest.