Japan: Should you send money?

The next time you feel the urge to donate following a natural disaster, said Felix Salmon in Reuters.com, “please don’t.” In the days following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, people throughout the world reached for their wallets. That impulse is admirable, but it’s misguided. Japan is wealthy enough to take care of its own needy citizens, and by earmarking donations for relief agencies like Save the Children and Global Giving, you require them to spend it only in Japan. That almost guarantees they will “leave large piles of money unspent in one place, while facing urgent needs in other places.” That’s exactly what happened following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, said Annie Lowrey in Slate.com. So much money poured in from donors earmarked only for reconstruction that in Sri Lanka, agencies were forced to build “mini mansions” to use it up. So yes, give generously, but “give without restrictions,” so the experts can best figure out how and where to spend it.

Sorry, but that’s a bit chilly for me, said Paul Vallely in the London Independent. After seeing the series of horrific catastrophes suffered by the Japanese, I don’t care that it’s a relatively affluent country. No country in the world can sustain an earthquake, a tsunami, and a nuclear crisis without being overwhelmed. Foreign aid agencies are providing such needed services as blankets and hot meals for those left homeless, and psychological counseling for the traumatized. So spare me the cynical “cost-benefit analysis” that says Japan isn’t worthy of our charity. “It is the natural impulse of most people to want to help, out of a sense of basic human solidarity.”

Actually, that impulse has been “oddly subdued,” at least in the U.S., said Oren Dorell in USA Today. In the first week after the disaster, Americans donated $49 million to Japan, compared with $296 million pledged in the week following the Haitian earthquake. Our “fickle and idiosyncratic” giving has a lot to do with the pictures we see on TV—in this case, a stoic and self-sufficient nation battling adversity, instead of the chaotic squalor of Haiti. Rather than depend on empathetic impulses, said Howard Steven Friedman in HuffingtonPost.com, why not give regularly to effective, well-run relief organizations like the Red Cross, AmeriCares, and Doctors Without Borders? That way, they’ll be prepared to rush in with money, supplies, and human services as soon as the next disaster strikes.

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