Canada allocates $40M for disaster relief
Quote:Original post by golopart
How much did Bill Gates donate?
The figure I read was $3 million last Monday or Tuesday. He may have donated more since then.
Quote:Original post by nitzan
Last time I checked, there were two US Carrier groups helping out. I havent heard of any other country sending as much aid equipment. How much are two carrier groups and the helicopters they provide worth? 100 Billion Dollars ?
Rather than throw out a wild-exaggerated guess, why don't you dig around for a ball park figure? And try to find a number regarding operating costs, since the US is not going to give away two carrier groups.
Quote:Original post by Justaddwater
ekkk an anon editoral as a reference!
There are other newspapers asking the same question without anonymity: $2bn pledged, but will the world keep its promises?.
Quote:
...
But UN OCHA spokesman, Robert Smith, told the Guardian: "We should be very cautious about these figures. Let's put it this way. Large-scale disasters tend to result in mammoth pledges which... do not always materialise in their entirety. The figures look much higher than they really are. What will end up on the ground will be much less."
Rudolf Muller, also of UN OCHA, said: "There is definitely double accounting going on. A lot of the money will be swallowed up by the military or will have been been diverted from existing loans."
A spokesman for the Overseas Development Institute, Britain's leading aid analysts, said: "The research evidence is that the immediate response to natural disasters involves some new money, but that rehabilitation needs are often met by switching aid money between uses rather than increasing total aid to the countries affected."
The disparity between government promises and the delivery of emergency and rehabilitation aid can be extreme. Iranian government officials working to rebuild Bam, destroyed by an earthquake exactly a year before the Asian tsunami, last week said that of $1.1bn aid promised by foreign countries and organisations only $17.5m had been sent.
...
The article goes on to list other disasters for which pledges were never completely met. On a positive note for the more jingoistic, it looks like the US isn't the only country to not meet it's past pledges.
Quote:Original post by LessBreadQuote:Original post by nitzan
Last time I checked, there were two US Carrier groups helping out. I havent heard of any other country sending as much aid equipment. How much are two carrier groups and the helicopters they provide worth? 100 Billion Dollars ?
Rather than throw out a wild-exaggerated guess, why don't you dig around for a ball park figure? And try to find a number regarding operating costs, since the US is not going to give away two carrier groups.
Here we go: link
Quote:
(17) In 1984 Earl C. Ravenal, a former Pentagon analyst, made the following estimates: A Nimitz-class nuclear carrier would cost $3.8 billion; its complement of aircraft would cost $3 billion. Six escort ships (including an Aegis-equipped cruiser) and a group of attack submarines would cost $4 billion. The cost of replenishment ships and support systems would be $2 billion. The battle group's share of the cost of building and acquiring shore facilities would be $2 billion. And the 30-year life cycle operation and support cost would be $29.6 billion. Those costs add up to $44.4 billion, but for each carrier deployed forward overseas, two others would have to be kept in the rear--one in reserve and one in overhaul. Thus, the 30-year total cost of keeping a one-carrier battle group forward would be $133 billion. Earl C. Ravenal, Defining Defense: The 1985 Military Budget (Washington: Cato Institute, 1984), pp. 12-13.
So... $14.8B for an aircraft carrier group. $1B / year operational costs. And, the US has to maintain two other carrier groups for each carrier group deployed (dont you love overrun military budgets?)
So $14.8B * 3 = $44.4B to deploy 1 Carrier for an entire year. 2 Carriers = $88.8B.
So I guess I was wrong, it only costs $88.8B to deploy those two carriers, and thats only if they stay for an entire year.
The unknowns are of course:
#1. Is it more then $1B/year if the carrier is running around the clock missions?
#2. What are the 2005 numbers after 20 years of inflation? (those numbers are from 1984)
#3. How long are those carriers going to be stationed there? On the news (KTVU Channel 2 in SF) they interviewed some guy from one of the carrier groups and he said that they could be there for days, weeks, or even years.
Edit: apparently inflation from 1984 to 2004 was a staggering 81%. Meaning $1000 in 1984 is now $1871.47. link
So it costs $166B to operate two carrier groups for 1 year in 2004.
Nitzan
[Edited by - nitzan on January 4, 2005 2:32:51 PM]
Quote:Original post by nitzan
Here we go: link
...
So... $14.8B for an aircraft carrier group. $1B / year operational costs. And, the US has to maintain two other carrier groups for each carrier group deployed (dont you love overrun military budgets?)
So $14.8B * 3 = $44.4B to deploy 1 Carrier for an entire year. 2 Carriers = $88.8B.
So I guess I was wrong, it only costs $88.8B to deploy those two carriers, and thats only if they stay for an entire year.
Um, you made the same mistake that you did before. You figured out how much it would cost (in 1984 dollars) to give away two carrier groups. If it costs $1B/year to operate a carrier group, then dispatching 2 carrier groups for 1 year would cost $2 billion (in 1984 dollars) - or $3.75 billion in todays dollar (per your inflation figure).
I doubt that 2 carrier groups will be needed for more than 3-6 months, so cut the number in half - $1.87 billion (if not half of that - $935 million). And given that these carrier groups were already in the Indian Ocean aiding the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, I would think most of the deployment costs were already paid for. So that $1.87 billion is really an extreme upper boundary. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that the cost of dispatching those two carrier groups works out to $315 million (ie $350m - $35m).
australia raised it to 700million.
per capita, sweden and australia still really put the US to shame. not that i care tho.
anyway, if we compare this to iraq, theres one thing i can tell mister bush: any dollar spent here will have orders of magnitude more positive effect than one spent in iraq.
per capita, sweden and australia still really put the US to shame. not that i care tho.
anyway, if we compare this to iraq, theres one thing i can tell mister bush: any dollar spent here will have orders of magnitude more positive effect than one spent in iraq.
Quote:Original post by Eelco
australia raised it to 700million.
what was the population of australia? 18mio?
Does it matter how much people donate? As long as they donate...
Oh wait, I forgot, we're human.. sorry
Oh wait, I forgot, we're human.. sorry
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