Some Statistics You Rarely Hear About…

Of course, you have heard, or read (there is an email circulating), the list of statistics showing that, based on their numbers in the world, Americans allegedly own a disproportionate amount of riches, produce a disordinate amount of pollution, and are generally responsible for all of the inequalities in the world…

Speaking of "stinginess", the charge which was hurled at Uncle Sam after the tsunami struck in the Indian Ocean, Ann Coulter provides us with a statistic that is rarely heard around the world:

Americans make up about 5% of the world's population and give about 35% of the aid. …

At a minimum, in order to discount the largesse of the United States, one must carefully exclude gigantic categories of aid, such as military aid, food aid, trade policies, refugee policies, religious aid, private charities and individual giving.

And don't Americans also pay almost one quarter of the UN's budget (22%, to be exact)?

It turns out that, according to the Rockefeller Foundation's Center for Global Development, Uncle Sam ranks far below countries such as Denmark, Norway, and France in what is called "peacekeeping", and this, although

The U.S. did not merely write a check to help the oppressed people of Afghanistan and Iraq: The U.S. did most of the fighting and liberating as well as a significant share of the dying.

In addition to being

the country that dispatched the Taliban and Saddam Hussein [it is the country that,] before that, ensured that the above countries [Denmark, Norway, and France] would not be speaking German or Russian

So much for statistics…