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End of poverty. But there is a snag.
April 12th, 2005 at 19:08 Björn Hallberg
Via Agonist. The US is ignoring development issues and spending too much on its own armed forces says world leading economist.
He notes that a growing number of countries, mostly in Europe, are committing more time and money to the problem.
One problem is that the American people are unaware of how little of their money goes to aid. In his book, Sachs says 0.15 percent of U.S. gross national product is spent on aid, compared with a commitment by donor countries to give 0.7 percent.
"The American people think that they give many times more than they do. When was the last time President (George W.) Bush explained this to the American people? Never."
Furthermore …
Labelling countries "corrupt" or otherwise was not always constructive, and was too often used as an excuse not to give.
And …
There are two things that I must add here. The problem is obviously that in order for the US to spend $500 billion on defense, the money has to come from somewhere. And that somewhere is to some extent common resources. So it’s not just a question of money that could be better spent, it’s also a direct deduction from the world’s natural resources and often impoverishing LDCs in order to reach certain ends. The US is far from self-sustaining in that way. They use their overwhelming dominance over certain areas, dollar oil trade for example, to fuel their own economy. In that specific case, countries wanting to trade oil need to buy and stash huge amounts of the currency, even if it hurts their own economy. So because of the position that the US enjoys, we are all taking a hit every time the US goes on a spending spree.
Second of all, it’s apparent for for those that have followed the US closely that its defensive capabilities have more than once left poverty and misery in its wake.
Entry 86 filed under: Africa, Asia, North America. This entry was posted 3 years, 9 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.
