Uh, no, America. You can stop patting yourself on the back now.

I hope to have one more post coming before I fly out this weekend, but in the meantime here are some fun and not-at-all-concerning numbers about American perceptions of the US aid budget:

From the American Public Opinion on Foreign Aid Questionnaire: November 30, 2010 (Source: worldpublicopinion.org)

Percentage of federal budget Americans think goes to foreign aid: 27%

Percentage of federal budget Americans think SHOULD go to foreign aid: 13%

Percentage of federal budget that ACTUALLY GOES TO FOREIGN AID: 0.6%

Allow me to submit my own mini-questionnaire: If you are a foreign aid policy analyst looking at these numbers and trying to construct your financial projections in half for next year based solely on the knee-jerk opinions of 848 random Americans, do you:

a) Slash your budget in half ("But America, you said we were giving twice as much as we should be!")
b) Increase your budget by a factor of 20 ("But America, you said we should be giving 13%!")
c) Hide under your desk and cry.

In theory, I guess, this could be seen as good news: way back in 1995, Americans weren't nearly as optimistic about their country's imagined generosity, and perceptions of how much we "should" be giving are certainly higher...

This isn't to say that our aid budget is too small or that America should be giving anything close to 13%. It's mostly just to make fun of how clueless we all are about the amount of good our country actually does in the world, and we should be wary of overestimating it. But if you're looking for some redemption, America, there's always reality TV. (Yeah, you can file that one under "sentences I never thought I'd write with a straight face".)