Private donations at Amazon
Amazon.com is running a donation system on its home page to provide aid to tsunami victims. Since it has pages in different countries, you can see how well it does per country.
http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/my-pay-page/PX3BEL97U9A4I/104-4679654-9766331
Total collected: $13,910,657.00
Number of donations: 171,710
Population of
Approximate per capita donation to RC thru Amazon: $0.0475
http://s1.amazon.com/paypage/P1K4EVLBRBZ771/104-4679654-9766331
Total collected: $62,579.82
Number of donations: 1,023
Population of
Approximate per capita donation to RC thru Amazon: $0.0019
http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/my-pay-page/P3RDR40PV9HS5E/104-4679654-9766331
Total collected: $391,910.39
Number of donations: 7,611
Population of
Approximate per capita donation to RC thru Amazon: $0.0065
http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/my-pay-page/P3USRMAJ8GVL0F/104-4679654-9766331
Total collected: $170,477.00
Number of donations: 3,427
Population of
Approximate per capita donation to RC thru Amazon: $0.0021
http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/my-pay-page/PMS8ISE6626LD/104-4679654-9766331
Total collected: $29,161.50
Number of donations: 795
Population of
Approximate per capita donation to RC thru Amazon: $0.0005
http://s1.amazon.com/exec/varzea/ts/my-pay-page/P3C9345RXUJQOM/104-4679654-9766331
Total collected: $87,818.00
Number of donations: 2,488
Population of
Approximate per capita donation to RC thru Amazon: $0.0007
I don't find the numbers as compelling as you might think. For instance, perhaps people from Germany or France go to amazon.com instead? Or perhaps the number of Internet accounts in those countries is fewer? We don't know.
What we can, however, conclude is that anyone harping on how much GOVERNMENTS are providing to aid other countries is only part of the story.
The US government may have "only" provided $350M (so far) to help victims of the tsunami, that's a drop in the bucket compared to private organizations.
A more fair measurement of how "stingy" different countries are would be to look at their GDP and then look at what % of the GDP the government confiscates for itself. The US government confiscates something like 25% of the GDP of its citizens compared to twice or more in some European countries.
Then add the cost of military expenses in here. Sweden, for instance, is giving a lot of money for its size. Great for them. However, how is that aid actually getting there? At the end of the day, someone actually has to take that money, buy supplies with it, transport it to the region and deliver it to people. And guess how that's being done? The US military.
People were wrong about the US being the world's police. It's also the world's fire department.