Perceptions on Foreign Aid

Related to my previous topic on Americans' perception of income inequality, here's a graph on Americans' perceptions on foreign aid. Many yammer about how we should spend less on foreign aid, but in reality, we spend WAAAAAY below what they think we should spend.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/12/american_misperceptions_of_for.html

Foreign aid has been a false rallying cry for decades. Any time the federal budget is the subject, some clown rails about all the money we send to "them furriners." But the real huge cost is defense, of course, and entitlement programs.

What do you think about this? Do you think America spends too much, too little, or just enough on foreign aid? What about the countries being given aid to? Foreign aid given by America often serves as a means to get what we want, and it comes with long, thick, strings attached. Is it truly beneficial to the recipients?

Honestly, I think we're spending too much. We don't even have enough money to fix all the shit we have going on here in the 'States, especially in the field of education among other things, but everyone high up shits our money down the crapper for political posturing. Go figure.

And a question for those who think we spend too little: Where is the common sense of spending more in a deficit? The more money we throw out the door, it's WE who suffer more from it. 5 seconds of warm fuzzy charity goodness with a lifetime of increased taxes afterwards.

I'm afraid you're mistaken. Foreign Aid is not just "political gesturing" or being a goody-goody two-shoes.
It's a very effective form of foreign intervention to gather good will and support and can preempt the forming of failed states and help stabilize a region where resources of national importance may be exported to you.

...and it's also a lot cheaper than direct military intervention.
Granted the former may still be needed from time to time, but by combining it with massive aid, one can stabilize a region and therefore you wouldn't have to commit troops to the lot harder and man-force intensive peace keeping operations.

The same fucking mistake was made in Iraq when Rumsfeld and co. thought that they can just dismantle the Iraqi state and the people on their own will rebuild it for them, presto. Little to no aid was given (ORHA was a joke), and by disbanding the Iraqi army, marginalizing the Iraqi generals and politicians (de-Bathification) who *did* have the expertise to restore order and listening to a hack like Ahmed Chalabi (and making him governor!) they've insured the hate and distrust of the Iraqis and the thousands of jobless and angry soldiers were ready to sign up for the insurgency.

A little aid, a little humility to work with other people would have gone a long way to solve the situation, and the all troops could have been home 2 years ago, and for the last 5 years only a token force would have been needed.

I think we need to be more careful with HOW we spend foreign aid rather than how much we are spending.

But that doesn't mean we should just ignore the amount we're spending, just that it is more important we take care with how we allocate the foreign aid. It is not uncommon for some of the aid we send to countries to end up in the hands of the people who need it least.

And there are times when the type of aid we send is not the type that should be sent. There is a limit that we should spend on a country, as after a while they would start to get dependent and we honestly don't have the resources to take on those types of states as part of our territories.

But the other side is that too little will have virtually no effect and you are essentially wasting the resources.

Compared to the warm and fuzzy feeling you get knowing that even if russia and china joined forces, you'd still be spending over 4 times more on military then they do?

Yaa, i have a question

how does foreign aid connect with military spending, exactly?

I should point out that the biggest proportion of what America spends on foreign aid goes to Israel, either directly or to pay off Jordan and Egypt so they don't blitz Israel. In fact, according to the link below, one-third of the money we spend on "aid" goes to Israel and Egypt, yet neither is a "developing" country, nor have they had any natural disasters, really. We also throw money at Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia for their anti-drug programs (*snorts*).

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/politics/us-foreign-aid.htm

Like people have mentioned above, foreign aid is MUCH less about helping victims of famine, disease and natural disasters and more a tool for Western hegemony.

Edit: and as the link also points out, the poorest nations actually get the LEAST aid from us, while the richest nations get the most. WTF.

The whole point of political gesturing is that it's to gain some sort of support. Good will just happens to fall under that.



I see your point. But doesn't half the problem lie in whether how hospitable the receiving is when it comes to aid?



Ever heard of pork-barrel spending? It's the reason why the general budget in all departments is crazy-insanely high. I assume you're not familiar with it, so I'll just summarize it as "the government likes to spend taxpayers' money on shiny useless things". The defense department just so happens to suffer the most heavily from it.

There's military aid (e.g. sending in the Army Corps of Engineers), but then there's also foreign aid, which is not necessarily tied to military spending. It can be for anti-drug programs, economic aid, educational aid, etc.

I don't get it, most of the money of all departments goes to useless things in America? Then what is the point of even discussing if you're spending to much or to little on something

The point being is that most of America is completely ignorant of pork-barrel spending. Ever heard of $900 toilet seats? A $700 nacho cheese warmer? Spending over $1,000 a week on local high-class restaurants? Yeah, if you think they've spent money on it, chances are, they probably have.

The government is the top of the chain with not a whole lot of bigger fish to watch over it, which is self-explanatory in how they can also get away with it.

That's kind of a different problem than foreign aid--pretty much what happens there is that if you don't use up your budget for the year, you will get a smaller budget for next year. So what happens at the end of the year is that departments will try to waste the money they still have so they don't get a budget cut next year.

Shouldn't we help our own people before other countries... barring a natural disaster ie tsunami or something major. We have people still living on the streets and kids without coats and other stuff needed for survival. Old people needing food since the ss checks are low then the cost of living is high. It sounds mean and disheartening but it should be the nation's problems first before other's . Now if something like storms or a earthquake happen then yes send the troops with rice and tents. Can't fix every bodies problems when we're broke too.

I think we spend too much, and I know the correct estimates. Foreign aid is great and all, but with the United States government it always feels like it comes at a price.

There are some people in our government that really have a "Holier than thou" attitude. Many countries don't even want our help because of our poor attitude. We impose ourselves and our views far too much on every country we've helped. "Hey look at us guys! We're still doing... okay... you should be just like us!"

And some Americans actually wonder why other countries despise us so much. Hell, I despise our foreign policy. -_-