Foreign Aid

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HEAR! HEAR!

We will always need "foreign aid' whilst we live in a capitalist world, the only way out of this mess is to share the resources of the planet, in a more equitable and fair manner.

We live on a bountiful planet and yet many live in unimaginable poverty and starve just because they had the misfortune to be born in the wrong country.

You can harp on about foreign aid, third world debt etc. ad nauseum, nothing will change until we change the system.

You are confusing the USA with God.

Of course she is because the US is the land of the brave and the land of the free

Oh and she believes all the simplistic propaganda that is offered

AG, for once we agree.

Less than 1% of the US budget is foreign aid.

A majority of the 'foreign aid' that the US gives is military. And most of it goes to a few countries (Iraq, Israel, Egypt).

Much of the actual foreign aid that is non-military is loans, and these loans require that the poor country buy products made in the US (tractors, vaccines, seeds and pesticides, etc). So those loans generate jobs in Peoria and create a dependency on the US, where each dollar of aid leads to several dollars of purchases down the road. Plus, we often expect the loans to be repaid.

Very little of the foreign aid is food or emergency relief. Its good that the US does do some of that, but please don't pretend it is a huge amount of money compared to the US standards, or compared to the problems around the world.

Western governments giving third world countries aid is like some someone shooting someone else in the stomach but having the good grace to call an ambulance.

maybe because we're the reason they starve?

Evidence, please? I mean Zimbabwe, just for example, completely gutted their own agricultural system so they could stick it to the white man. Not *such* a good idea, in retrospect.

Not that most poor Americans are in any danger of starving of course. Them po' people is FAT.

No, it's not a joke.

ever heard about colonialism?

and don't blame it all on Europe, it's where the lot of you came from after all

Right, that caused problems, but it's not like people never starved before. Just look at the population of Africa; for the 100 years prior to 1850 Africa's population is estimated to have undergone only moderate growth from 106-111 million. More so than the rest of the world, though, it completely exploded during the 20th century, jumping from an estimated 130 million around 1900 to something like 800 million in the early 2000s. Now, this may not be the most detailed survey in the history of history, but a sixfold increase doesn't seem to jibe too well with the idea that western colonialism destroyed their ability to feed themselves, mind you furthermore that 85% of the population growth from 1900-2000 took place in the last 50 years. The fact that there are famines cannot be denied, but I really can't see as you can put the blame squarely on the West for hungry Africans.