Do you have figures for private donations in those countries? Then what are you talking about?

And say Swedish private sector donations are lower than ours. Maybe that's because they pay higher taxes, and their government gives out the aid from that?

Damn countries with a fraction of our population not having a navy like ours! And stupid Austria, Luxembourg and Switzerland don't have any navy at all! The nerve!

And do you really think a few helos here and there are relevant enough to include in the graph?

Mega facepalm. No, it's the % GDP that actually matters, for obvious reasons - otherwise you're just criticizing other countries for not being as rich as we are.

Nope, sorry, it's the total amount that matters. A % of GDP is meaningless for the person GETTING the aid. The % thing is nothing more than an arbitrary way of saying your e-peen is bigger.

Again, for the people in need of aid, the amount is ALL that matters. If you don't get as much as you need, it's no solace that it's a higher % of the donor nation's GDP.

As for it coming out of your higher taxes, duh, exactly. The list is saying that money given after being taken by higher taxes is valued, and money given voluntarily is less valued (in fact, not valued at all). To the people getting aid, they don't care. So 27B$ from the USA, and 35B$ from the people of the USA, but less than half counts.

And yeah, my statement about the Navy absolutely penalizes countries without worldwide navies, that was the point. A helo costs maybe $4000/hr to operate. So if you call our donated aid flights only worth that, it's chump change, you are correct... but the only reason those helos are there is 60+ years of having the largest navy one earth. No massive USN, and there is no pittance of aid contributed by those helos at all, because they are parked (the handful that exist) at some home base in the US (ie: useless for world aid). What seems like so little is in fact only there because of the entire infrastructure of having that navy. Seems like nothing til you are starving or freezing and a helo comes out of the sky with blankets and food—then it's priceless.

My point was that in monetizing a list like that, you need to weight contributions that are not strictly monetary. I'm willing to discuss how much we all think having aid moments away from everywhere on Earth is actually worth—though I think looking at it from the eyes of the Tsunami victim in Japan (or Banda Aceh) is important. IMHO, it's an insurance with a huge premium, but a relatively small payout. Sorta like paying for the fire department. So far in my life I've never needed the FD. Not even as a kid did we. Nor has my wife. So 3 family's taxes (all on the higher end of taxation) and no payout. Say we had a response come this year that cost the FD $5000. Our family's contributions for that small response would have been many, many times that 5k (particularly in constant dollars). The US military is just such "insurance."

Lists like that are designed to paint the US as a bunch of bastards, nothing else, and it's BS.