then all those countries would still be poor after the money was spent, and we wouldn't have seen much return on our dollar.
When you can grow perfectly fantastic bud in the US and A? No thanks. Monsanto and ADM would come up with some shit you've never dreamed of if weed was legal.
That's a major oversimplification if I ever saw one. Depends on what exactly you mean by 'poor' , 'us' , 'they' and 'better'. I assume by poor country, you mean a nation which has a low per capita income and the purchasing power of the average citizen is quite low ( relative to other countries of the world). For eg, India is a poor nation by this definition, but the government of India is by no means poor, relatively or on an absolute scale. I assume by 'they' you mean the citizens of the poor nations. And by 'us' you mean the US tax payer. I don't see the big benefit for the US tax payer in this scenario. Suppose the 700b $ goes to the intended recipient, they buy your products, and your corporations make a lot of $$$ ( which obviously would be lesser than the initial 700b$ that the government wanted to bail them out with as some of the money might not be used to buy your products). Then they pay taxes to the government, which in turn the government will have to use for a bailout 2. So you have an enhanced market, a few companies have got business and can re hire their laid off employees. but what next? How are you going to sustain the new markets, especially when the 'poor' there can't afford it repetitively. What gives? Not a long term solution. It is generally agreed that corruption of a government and poverty of the masses are correlated. In most of the 'poor' countries, your 700 billion $ and/or its benefits would never trickle down to the intended recipients. It would stay with the government and the bureaucracy, and it then is simply a case of bribing by the American government to have the country take foreign policy decisions which suit the Americans.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si1lxcwJqI0"]YouTube- Funny Or Die Presents: Playground Politics - Africa (HBO)[/ame]
The United States hardly donate to poor countries unlike Germany and Netherlands donate a lot to poor countries.
You already do, its called Foreign Aid and it does not work. Dambisa Moyo has written a great book called Dead Aid that shows how foreign aid leads to corruption and more poverty. If you truly want to help the poor, trade with them, have them lower their trade barriers and liberalize their economies. Free trade leads to prosperity
Thats how we give foreign aid these days. Gone are the days we send a check or a bag full of American dollars to some tin pot country. We now give them (for example) 100 million in aid. However what that means is they get 100 million U$ dollars in the form of credits. They can buy any US made product they want with the credit. Most countries do the following. 60 % US weapons (if they don't have enough, we lend them the rest) 15 % on Canadian products that are deemed American under NAFTA 10% US vehicles (Ford, Chev and Hummer SUV's for police, army and president) 10 % US food stuffs (all bought at "auction rates". Corn for example and then shipped on US containers ships) . 5% on Microsoft of Apple products to "modernize" the computer systems if they have one. We stopped sending money just before the death rattle of the Soviet Union as they stopped sending money. Believe me when I tell you as a former foreign worker of a US Aid style program. Little if anything actually reaches real people who need it. As an example, Pakistan received a ton of money in US Credits in the 90's. They turned around and bought 450 million in US fighter jets. Then we "froze" the money and never delivered the jets because India protested. To this day we have about 20 brand new jets built in the early 90's sitting on a runway somewhere on Johnson Atoll painted in Pakistani colors. Nobody knows what to do with them so they sit there. We finally gave 2 to Canada and one each to NZ and Australia to train in case................are you ready for this? In case they were stolen and suddenly used to attack Canada, NZ or Australia against an attack by a stolen US plane. We're the laughing stock.