Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronin4hire
Japan is the world's third richest country. I don't mean to sound heartless because I'm sorry for the tragedy. But my charity will be going elsewhere to people who needed it before the Earthquake (as it always does).
It's ironic giving charity to a country that is so rich and probably quite thouroughly insured.
It's like giving money to Charlie Sheen if his house blew up.
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FIRST POST REPOSTED:
As a citizen of this Earth I implore that you not waste your money on Japan or New Zealand.
Earthquakes and tsunami are horrible occurences and it is not without sympathy that I make this thread.
But there are far more needy parts of the world than these two and as a New Zealand citizen I believe that our government should not be seeking financial aid from NGO's as we are a developed country that can take care of the costs on our own.
I think the same for Japan. Japan is the third largest economy in the world. You shouldn't be paying the money that you work hard for, to support people that live in a country in which the financial problems they face can be overcome.
NGO's need to either invoice these state governments or stay out if they refuse to pay.
Of course I'm not against material assistance or the offer of expertise, so if you can help in Japan as an engineer or a rescue worker then more power to you. But when it comes to money, Japan and New Zealand are at the top of the world's pecking order being both developed states and they don't need it.
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I would agree with you except for the fact that the lion's share of the aid being sent to Haiti never finds it's way to the poorer Haitian people, it ends up in the pockets of the corrupt "government" and it's friends. Take a look at Haiti today and see where the billions in aid so far collected have been spent. There are countless tents and new shacks, but no real repairs to infrastructure or small businesses.
Hurricane Katrina is a good example of overhead waste and political corruption, enough aid money was spent to buy each and every family displaced a $180,000 home and a new car to boot, but how much did families get? A few thousand dollars in spending money and a crappy $8000 trailer.
The UN is administering the aid mission to Haiti, and as usual is spending a great deal on overhead, but very little in substance elsewhere. Corruption is also rampant in the UN, and I should know, I have been on two missions with the UN in the past.
Japan has sent large amounts of money to aid Haiti, Thailand, Chile, and even New Zealand. My friends and I have scraped together nearly 1 million yen to donate, and I know that the aid organization will not automatically take 40% of that to put into their pockets, and I also know that it won't be spent on cleaning contracts to companies friendly to the local governments, I can trust that it will go to actually help those who need it.
This disaster will cause a reduction of about 10% to Japan's GDP this year, which affects the stock markets, currency markets, and commodity markets, which means that it affects every person living in every industrialized country, and this trickles down to an even stronger negative effect on developing countries.
Every dollar spent to help Japan will be of greater benefit to the world than every $100 sent to Haiti.