[extropy-chat] Still Stingy

[Olga Bourlin]

I wonder how much more (or how much less?) would people voluntarily donate
if the USA didn't collect any taxes at all?  (Sometimes I just hate to think
...).

"The 150,000 or so fatalities from the tsunami are well within the margin of
error for estimates of the number of deaths every year from malaria.
Probably two million people die annually of malaria, most of them children
and most in Africa, or maybe it's three million - we don't even know.

But the bottom line is that this month and every month, more people will die
of malaria (165,000 or more) and AIDS (240,000) than died in the tsunamis,
and almost as many will die because of diarrhea ( 140,000).

And that's where we're stingy.

Americans give 15 cents per day per person in official development
assistance to poor countries. The average American spends four times that on
soft drinks daily."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/05/opinion/05kris.html?oref=login&hp

Olga