BulletWounD
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How can anyone say with a straight face, that a "new world order" was NOW createdIf anything, they just let China in
Tao Te Ching 76 said:A newborn is soft and tender,
A crone, hard and stiff.
Plants and animals, in life, are supple and succulent;
In death, withered and dry.
So softness and tenderness are attributes of life,
And hardness and stiffness, attributes of death.
Just as a sapless tree will split and decay
So an inflexible force will meet defeat;
The hard and mighty lie beneath the ground
While the tender and weak dance on the breeze above.
Overall wealth is not a zero sum game.
How and when did the people of impovrished nations acquire a right to the wealth of the American people -- specifically, mine?
Hardly. I owe these people nothing.By providing them with natural resources at unjustly low prices.Foreign aid is a form of reparation for the way in which the third world loses out in global trade, not charity.
Foreign aid is charity.By providing them with natural resources at unjustly low prices.Foreign aid is a form of reparation for the way in which the third world loses out in global trade, not charity.
Yeah someone please tell me what I or my wife have ever done to anyone in those countries. If you can tell me how I personaly screwed them over than I will be happy to give to them. If not I would pefer to keep my money for myself thank you very much.
Foreign aid is charity.
celticlord said:If third world countries want to engage in global trade, let them focus their energies on developing such goods as they can export profitably. In short, they should trade. Then they would not "lose out" on global trade.
Spreading the wealth is essential to help the poorest nations escape poverty. Once they've built their economy up to a certain point, they will no longer require outside economic aid.
It's worked quite well in most places where foreign aid has actually been committed. The problem with Africa isn't that foreign assistance hasn't worked, it's that developed nations have been much more stingy with their foreign aid money to Africa than they were to most Asian countries.
Do they have commodities such as oil and minerals?The problem is that they can't develop any goods without some assistance. As I mentioned earlier, their workforce is completely unmarketable if it's constantly dying from easily-preventable diseases and has a fourth-grade education. Their agriculture is completely unmarketable if they constantly ruin their environment and practice unsustainable development. And they can never hope to provide these things as long as their population continues to explode because they don't have access to condoms.
And how many countries have built their economies up on the basis of foreign aid? Precious few. I live in one of the VERY few countries that could actually HONESTLY make the claim.
Do they have commodities such as oil and minerals?
Do they have resources such as timber?
celticlord said:If they are as worthless as you describe, how can they ever hope to trade?
If they are not worthless, why not build their global trade around what resources they have that are of value?
Pretty much every successful country can honestly make that claim, with the possible exceptions of the US and the UK. And I would question how much even those are exceptions.
Do they have commodities such as oil and minerals?
Do they have resources such as timber?
If they are as worthless as you describe, how can they ever hope to trade?
If they are not worthless, why not build their global trade around what resources they have that are of value?
Yeah someone please tell me what I or my wife have ever done to anyone in those countries. If you can tell me how I personaly screwed them over than I will be happy to give to them. If not I would pefer to keep my money for myself thank you very much.
In other words, they don't need to be countries.Countries need to reach a certain base level of development before they can really develop their economies on their own.
They practice unsustainable development and have a sickly/uneducated work force. They can never hope to develop their economy as long as those problems remain. Foreign aid can go a long way to preventing these problems.
In other words, they don't need to be countries.
If they want sustainable development, let them practice sustainable development.
celticlord said:If they want an educated work force, let them build schools and have the literate teach the illiterate.
celticlord said:None of the problems you describe require foreign aid to remedy--and the glittering non-success of foreign aid efforts to date suggests that foreign aid merely compounds these problems.
Corrupt government on the one hand failing to lead a disunited people on the other.Do you really think it's that simple? Do you think their governments can just decide one day that they're going to start practicing sustainable development, and everyone will live happily ever after?
Did you stop to consider WHY unsustainable development occurs in the first place?
Men without money but still possessing hammer, saw, and a bit of lumber can build schools.With what money?
Those were efforts to rebuilt the shattered infrastructures of otherwise functioning economies and societies, after the particular cataclysm of WWII. They have more in common with Iraq than with Africa.Foreign aid has been an immense success everywhere it's been committed. The Marshall Plan in Western Europe. Macarthur's occupation of Japan.
Pitiful? $600 Billion over 45 years hardly qualifies as pitiful. In dollars donated and the time devoted, foreign aid to Africa has been considerable.You can't judge foreign assistance in Africa to be a failure based on the pitiful amounts of assistance provided thus far. That would be like spending five minutes trying to teach a kid to read, before concluding that education was hopeless and that all children are forever doomed to illiteracy.
Corrupt government on the one hand failing to lead a disunited people on the other.
celticlord said:Men without money but still possessing hammer, saw, and a bit of lumber can build schools.
celticlord said:Those were efforts to rebuilt the shattered infrastructures of otherwise functioning economies and societies, after the particular cataclysm of WWII. They have more in common with Iraq than with Africa.
celticlord said:Pitiful? $600 Billion over 45 years hardly qualifies as pitiful. In dollars donated and the time devoted, foreign aid to Africa has been considerable.
That's close...but even among African governments/societies that generally behave themselves, there is a lot of unsustainable development and environmental degradation.
Poverty causes these problems (e.g. people slashing-and-burning forests in a desperate attempt to clear enough farmland to not starve). And these problems, in turn, cause even more poverty (e.g. a lack of timber to sell and a lack of farmland due to overuse).
If it was that simple, one would think that Western governments would've adopted that education policy for themselves by now. That's not the way an economy works. You never get something for nothing; building schools and hiring teachers cost money.
Depends how you define functioning economies I guess. Korea was as poor as some parts of Africa prior to US developmental assistance. It succeeded largely because of a huge influx of cash that Africa never received. Israel is another good example; prior to independence, Israel was nearly as poor as most of its neighbors. But Israel received development assistance (more than every African nation combined), which has helped make Israel an economic powerhouse in the region.
$600 billion over 45 years is only $13 billion annually. Africa has a population of 922 million. This works out to about $14 per African per year.
However its also worth bearing in mind that this isnt necessarily a zero sum game. If we could help third world countries develop their agriculture through things like irrigation [or dare i say it: GM crops] then its easy to see how we could benefit in light of the ever rising price of food.
So how much of other people's money should Africans use per year to spend their way to prosperity?$600 billion over 45 years is only $13 billion annually. Africa has a population of 922 million. This works out to about $14 per African per year.
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