Tsunami Stuff

So how "generous" are the governments who have pledged money to help out with the greatest human tragedy outside of war-time? Well, not very generous at all; in fact, every nation that has made a pledge has been relatively mean about it.

There is no point basing such a judgement on the ABSOLUTE amount of money pledged - that tells us nothing at all. As any economist will tell you, a good start is comparing the amount pledged with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) generated by a country. (There are other, better measures too, but this is a fair starting point.)

So, here are the stats. I have ranked the pledge-countries from 'most' to 'least' generous. The stats indicate the percentage of a nation's GDP pledged. No, the decimal places are not in the wrong positions. Yes, that's right, every country, except Qatar, has pledged less than four one thousandths of a percent of their GDP. So let's not go on about how generous we are all being in helping out with the relief effort. Countries spend more money on pets every year than they do on this.

1 Qatar 0.0014253%
2 Sweden 0.0003357%
3 Denmark 0.0003282%
4 Japan 0.0001396%
5 Switzerland 0.0001278%
6 Norway 0.0000963%
7 Australia 0.0000813%
8 Spain 0.0000768%
9 Netherlands 0.0000737%
10 Italy 0.0000613%
11 Portugal 0.0000598%
12 Britain 0.0000576%
13 Libya 0.0000571%
14 Kuwait 0.0000507%
15 Finland 0.0000430%
16 New Zealand 0.0000422%
17 Saudi Arabia 0.0000347%
18 UAE 0.0000347%
19 Canada 0.0000344%
20 France 0.0000338%
21 USA 0.0000318%
22 Singapore 0.0000283%
23 Ireland 0.0000234%
24 Venezuela 0.0000170%
25 Germany 0.0000120%
26 Austria 0.0000111%
27 Algeria 0.0000102%
28 Taiwan 0.0000099%
29 China 0.0000094%
30 South Korea 0.0000058%
31 Slovakia 0.0000032%
32 Slovenia 0.0000030%
33 Turkey 0.0000027%
34 Hungary 0.0000019%
35 Poland 0.0000008%