Foreign Aid - Or, the hand that feeds is feeding the wrong people.

In the past 70 years or so, the United States has managed to create an atmosphere, globally and locally, of entitlement. The worst part is, we’ve managed to create such an atmosphere, while still remaining the “bad guy” in the eyes of far too many. I won’t get into state and federal entitlement programs in this post, that’s a completely separate post altogether. Instead I wanted to talk about US foreign policy, foreign aid (i.e. the global bribery program) and how it needs to be changed in such a dramatic way, that it would never happen without total government overhaul.

The debate about foreign aid, typically between conservatives and liberals, tends to go something like this. The liberals will tell you we give too little, that compared to GDP (which is indeed the standard benchmark for comparison of foreign aid) the US fails to come close to helping the less fortunate nearly as much as other countries. Measured purely based on government provided aid to foreign countries, this is undisputable. What the conservatives will tell you is that when foreign aid is looked at strictly as a number, and GDP is left out of the equation, the US far outstrips the rest of the developed world in aid provided to foreign government. When looked at strictly as a number, this is also undisputable.

In addition, there are two other things to look at, that the politicians and spin doctors always fail to talk about. The first is non-government aid. This includes private aid from corporate and individual sources. When included in the figures, for all countries, private aid pushes the US ahead of all other countries when compared to GDP. So while other countries kick and scream saying we are selfish and don’t give, they could argue their case in reference to our government, but the citizens, the people, of the US prove to be the most giving on the planet. In addition to private aid, non-government aid can also (debatably) include what is called remittance i.e. the money given by US immigrants to their families living outside the US. Political scholars will tell you this does not count as it is just family helping family. Economic scholars will tell you it does indeed count, because this money is earned here in the US, and then leaves our economy, to be circulated in another. I happen to agree with the latter, because if the money isn’t helping our economy, but it’s helping someone elses, it’s a form of aid to that country.

The second factor, brought up by anyone who looks at the numbers, and always glossed over by anyone who makes the numbers, is where the money goes. Because military aid is counted in the overall number, Afghanistan and Iraq are, obviously, the top recipients of us foreign aid currently. But if we look beyond that, the top 5 recipients are: Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, Sudan and “Palestine” (i.e. Gaza and the West Bank).  Of those, only Sudan can well and truly be considered a third world country, a developing nation. Palestine isn’t even really a country. And the other three are blatantly developed nations, 2 of them are nuclear powers! This isn’t foreign aid, I prefer to call it foreign bribery. The nations in question have at some point, all been a threat to global peace. Three of them amongst themselves. And what do we get for our money? Egypt is peaceful, no doubt, and if anything the muslims in the region are right when they say the (pre-revolution) government is more or less owned by the US. Israel does, in my opinion, show great restraint in not completely decimating some of it’s neighbors which knowingly harbor terrorists that constantly attack Israel. The Palestinians on the other hand… who are we giving the money to in the first place? These people can’t even come to a conclusive decision on who’s running the show, and whoever is running things, is doing a terrible job, as it is a literal breeding ground for terrorists. Pakistan still rattles its sabers at India, there are still border clashes, the Kashmir region is still in dispute, and to top it off, they harbor al qaeda and Taliban terrorists within their borders. Sudan is a good recipient, but their infrastructure and leadership is in such shambles, that the aid rarely reaches the people who truly need it.

Also troubling, is the fact that Jordan (again, peace keeping bribe money), Colombia (war on drugs money, that’s going well, isn’t it?) and Russia are on the list of top 20 recipients. I’m baffled by Russia… they are definitely not a third world country, and still remain a world power after the breakup of the USSR (for those under 30, the USSR is the old nemesis of the US during the cold war, for 40 years it was the second most dominant nation on the planet militarily, and was purported to have a nuclear arsenal as extensive as the US, when the USSR was dissolved in 1991, the Russian Federation is the country that assumed the powers and responsibilities of the USSR on a global scale, including their seat on the UN Security council, it was later discovered their nuclear power had been grossly overestimated, though still considerable).

The remaining countries on the list are primarily developing nations in South America and Africa well deserving of a little assistance. Unfortunately, as multiple organizations have tried to point out over the years, while private assistance (volunteer services, doctors without borders, missionaries etc) is usually given directly to those in need, US government assistance (and that of other governments as well), in the form of cash, food, building materials, or elsewise, rarely reaches those that need it, and what does, is greatly diminished by the extravagant costs involved in getting the aid into the right hands.

I think it’s time for a drastic change. Let me toss out some statistics real quick here (yes, I’m aware of Mark Twains quote “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics” but sometimes, seeing the raw numbers helps draw a picture when used properly instead of to twist the truth. In the US, currently 10% of the population live below the poverty line, and 10% of those are homeless. Approximately 14.7% of the US does not receive enough food. Yet we export literally billions of tons of food products to foreign countries and provide them with billions of dollars in aid.

Currently, internally provided aid is a morass of red tape and discombobulated laws. So I suggest the following. First, I would recommend a cessation of all foreign aid. If Egypt, Israel, Pakistan & Russia can’t behave themselves on threat alone, then a demonstration of seriousness should be in order. We’ve become the parents who threaten but never follow through, instead we toss the children a few bucks to insure halfhearted good behavior. A good spanking is in order to prove the threat is not idle. As for Colombia, well, I’ll talk about the war on drugs another time, but I’d suggest something similar, i.e., “we’re not giving you any more money, get your shit together and stop the export of cocaine, or we’re going to set your country on fire” That should do it. This would free up approximately 37 billion dollars.

OMG YOU HEARTLESS BASTARD WHAT ABOUT ALL THE STARVING CHILDREN IN *insert poor country of your choice here*

Sadly, the aid our government provides to countries that actually need it does little to no good because it rarely gets into the right hands. In more “stable” countries, it winds up in the hands of corrupt government officials who use the aid in whatever form it may be (food, materials, medicine, cash) to increase their own powerbase, and as everyone knows, you increase your powerbase through the rich and powerful, not by giving to the poor and hungry (well, at least right up until the poor and hungry take up arms and shove a mouthful of cake down your gullet just prior to removing your head, but that lesson NEVER seems to take hold no matter how many time the scenario has played out over the centuries). In less stable countries, the aid ends up in the hands of some lowlife warlord who uses it to provide for his own private army, which are more often than not the whole reason people need aid in the first place!

So I say let that we take that 37 billion dollars a year, in addition to all the money we currently spend on entitlement programs (again, trying to restrain myself, I’ll dish out a whole boatload of thoughts on that another time) and use it to create real change.

First, we need stability. Which means housing. And I don’t mean government housing projects like the ones we already have all over the US that breed crime like rotten meat breeds maggots. This is THE perfect time. There are homes all over the US that sit empty, no one is getting any money for them, the banks can’t process them fast enough. You want true economic stimulation? Buy the homes from the banks, or from the families that are about to foreclose on the house, at a fair, but low per dollar cost. Tis puts money back into the economy. Now move families in trouble into the homes. They don’t own it, but maybe a rent to own plan with restrictions can be put into play. Now the kids are (hopefully) in a better neighborhood, and instead of being surrounded by a ghetto and the crime that goes with it, they get the benefit of less violent, less crime oriented upbringing. Of course, I wouldn’t just start handing out homes without stipulations.

Second, we need re-education. Employment numbers would be used to determine the most “in need” industry in the area, and mom and/or dad would be re-educated to function in that industry. Once training is complete, you go to work or you lose the home, no more benefits. You don’t want to work, well, your kids are taken away, your name is blacklisted, and you’re booted back on the street, with help never to be offered again. Seems harsh, but if my tax dollars are paying for it, I don’t see the point in a whole lot of “extra chances”.

The system perpetuates itself. The children, given a better education and raised in a home with working parents instead of parents who collect every dime from every program they can, would be far more likely to have some self-worth, and a desire to contribute themselves. It wouldn’t make an overnight difference, hell, it would take years just to get a program like this going properly. But that’s the problem, in this day and age, everyone wants the quick fix, the now. No one is patient enough to let a new way work itself out.

Once we work out our own internal problems, then I would suggest finding a way to provide REAL support to third world countries that helps them develop, rather than throwing food and money at them and hoping things will just work out. We’ve been doing that for years, and I’m still seeing the same starving in Africa commercials now that I was seeing in the 80’s, so it ain’t working.

I honestly don’t consider this to be some wild new idea. It seems like logical common sense to me, “help yourself, so that you might better help others”. And while this post might not be as revolutionary as some might expect, the truth is, that a system like this can never be implemented in the current state of our bureaucracy. Without a total government overhaul, something like this is just a pipe dream.