• This topic has 30 replies, 16 voices, and was last updated 8 years ago by JoeG.
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  • A maths challenge (probably quite easy – foreign aid content)
  • spooky_b329
    Full Member

    UK Foreign Aid budget is 10.3 Billion.
    Foreign Aid costs the average tax payer (26k pa) £52 a year.

    We’ve sent £5 million to the Nepal Quake.

    How many pence (or fractions of) have I contributed towards the rescue effort?

    Bonus points;
    Show your workings
    How much would someone earning 50k/75/100k contributed?

    Edit: We are talking the ‘modern’ billion, being a thousand million.

    bearnecessities
    Full Member

    None, if he could.

    spooky_b329
    Full Member

    Exactly!

    (without getting into details, I was surprised (pleasantly) that without getting into converting currencies, it looks like the UK has allocated a significantly larger sum of cash than any other country)

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    Spin
    Free Member

    You’ve not given us all the figures we need.

    edit – Sorry, you have.

    tinribz
    Free Member
    spooky_b329
    Full Member

    What other figures do we need? I have? 😕

    Drac
    Full Member

    29,300,000 ÷ 5,000,000 = £5.86

    spooky_b329
    Full Member

    Is that right Drac? Wouldn’t £5 roughly equate to a billion?

    spooky_b329
    Full Member

    5.86/1000 = 0.00586 pence?

    The size of the numbers confuse me, perhaps it is £5.86?

    Drac
    Full Member

    Oops wrong way around.

    It should have been amount dived by tax payers.

    5,000,000 ÷ 29300000 = 17p

    convert
    Full Member

    25p give or take for the average tax payer.

    £5m = just under 0.5% of our aid budget going by your figures. 0.48% of £52 is 25p

    Edit – Of course someone on £26k is not a net contributor to the economy so has not actually sent anything 😉

    Edit again – arse – spin is right – out by a factor of 10 with my billions.

    bearnecessities
    Full Member

    Bonus points for how many fluid ounces of [insert whiskey of choice] it equates to?

    spooky_b329
    Full Member

    That would be a shade over 17 pence, sounds more realistic I think.

    spooky_b329
    Full Member

    Votes for 17 v 25p please 🙂

    spooky_b329
    Full Member

    Maybe I’ll just round it to 20 pence

    nickdavies
    Full Member

    You’ve asked how much you are contributing not how much the average tax payer is.. Need to know your salary and tax code etc if you want it done properly!

    Or is it one of those trick questions? 😆

    Spin
    Free Member

    2.5p

    jon1973
    Free Member

    Please give the answer in terms that everyone can understand…. How many walnut whips?

    spooky_b329
    Full Member

    Mr average will do for me as anything above that is overtime!

    bearnecessities
    Full Member

    How many walnut whips

    Sorry, you can only break a walnut whip into 3 main pieces. Maybe you could measure it as a percentage of the whip?

    Or, how many:

    gwaelod
    Free Member

    Lots of the fittest, strongest and best Nepalese have laid down their life for the UK.

    spooky_b329
    Full Member

    So we have two ‘agrees’ for 2.5p now I noticed Converts edit.

    Good enough for me 🙂

    Spin
    Free Member

    Total aid budget is 10,300,000,000.
    5,000,000 given to Nepal

    5,000,000 divided by 10,300,000,000 gives the proportion of the total budget spent on Nepal as 0.00048543689. Multiply this by 52 to give the proportion for the average taxpayer.

    The main assumption is that by ‘Foreign Aid costs the average tax payer (26k pa) £52 a year’ you mean ‘the average contribution of all tax payers to foreign aid is £52’. The two are not the same.

    Edit – I think. I’m only a Geography teacher.

    theotherjonv
    Full Member

    Total aid budget is 10.3 billion = 10,300 million, call it 10,000 million for ease.

    Nepal chunk is 5 million.

    Nepal as a proportion therefore is 5/10,000 = 0.05%

    If the average tax payer gives £52 to the total budget, the share he gives to the Nepal chunk is also 0.05% = 2.6p

    You also asked what someone earning 50K, 75K and 100K would contribute.

    In simple terms (ignoring BiK, tax credits, etc.), someone earning 26K would pay about £3K in tax. (11K x 0% and 15K x 20%)

    Someone earning 50K would pay about 9.2K (11K x 0% + 32K x 20% + 7K x 40%). Three times as much tax therefore 3x as much given to Nepal = 7.8p

    75K -> 19.2K in tax, hence 16.6p

    100K -> 29.2K in tax, hence 25.2p

    ninfan
    Free Member

    Nothing, because government spending is already in deficit, therefore an additional 5 million would be borrowed money anyway.

    muddy@rseguy
    Full Member

    Actually it looks like it is £3m in rapid response funding to aid groups that are on the ground (so they can get people into the disaster zone in Nepal and operate in the short term) and £2m to the Red Cross. AFAIK the money so far committed by the government has come out of an existing allocated fund in the foreign aid budget that is set up for these kind of events.

    According to the (rather bizarre and poorly written) election leaflet from UKIP that was posted through my door today, this sort of thing is a waste of money and should be stopped.

    Blimey, Farage must really need that 15-25p….maybe he urgently needs to buy an apple or park in metered parking spot for 15minutes?

    spooky_b329
    Full Member

    Thanks Guys, and Guy 🙂

    JonV, give yourself a pat on the back 😆

    cbike
    Free Member

    Top it up here – http://www.dec.org.uk/

    I sent 25% of this weeks wage which was £25.

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    The main assumption is that by ‘Foreign Aid costs the average tax payer (26k pa) £52 a year’ you mean ‘the average contribution of all tax payers to foreign aid is £52’. The two are not the same.

    What @Spin says. Sorry to be a geek but this is a perfect example where “averages” get misused. The average wage earner (commonly quoted figure of £25k) doesn’t pay the average amount of tax / contribution to the aid budget. This is due to differential tax bands and impact of the personal allowance

    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    UK Foreign Aid budget is 10.3 Billion.
    Foreign Aid costs the average tax payer (26k pa) £52 a year.

    Be wary of government spending divided up by ‘taxpayers’. Governments have lots of sources of income – corporation tax, VAT, licences, cutie, leviess etc. Income tax accounts for less than a third of the governments income

    We’ve sent £5 million to the Nepal Quake.

    Have we actually ‘sent’ it – often the figure is a pledge to spend up to the publicised figure. Its impossible to estimate what the actual costs of action is in the immediate aftermath of an event like this. So the pledge is to help until no more help is needed or until the ceiling of the pledge is met (or until no ones looking any more). In places like Haiti on a tiny fraction of the sums pledged were actually handed over

    JoeG
    Free Member

    In places like Haiti on a tiny fraction of the sums pledged were actually handed over

    It wasn’t that the pledged donors were lying; but Hatian bureaucracy and/or corruption meant that only a small fraction of what was intended got done. I can’t blame aid organizations for being unwilling to pay bribes!

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