ITN, you confuse me greatly. Many times I agree with the statements you make, that no person in this country should be hungry, and that we should help our hungry here at home before going out to help the world. Now, that is a natural and common belief, to be interested in one's close family, then community, then country first, and I agree. However, we have spent 79 million dollars for new schools in Iraq. What about the schools in America, that are suffering from the NCLB act that is underfunded by billions? Why throw money at a problem in Iraq that we have over here? Do we owe more to the iraqi children than our own?
So now the "end world hunger" folks are framing their arguments to fit in with the Republicans top ten priorities (all seem to be "fight terrorism")? Sheesh.
The fact is that most of the worst poverty in the world is made that way by absolutely terrible tyrannical governments. Even countries with vast natural wealth have that problem. So what happens when the stupid do-gooders in the Bush administration take on a fool's errand in trying to build a decent government in Iraq? The entire zoo of wishful-thinking leftists in the world rise up to oppose it. Yeah, let's just give everyone a bag lunch, that will sove the problem without annoying the wishful thinkers.
MattR: An answer... yes it would be GREAT if we could spend some of this money on local (domestic) schools here in this nation... but you are confusing federal money with state money... I am not sure where you acquired the data for "79 million dollars for new schools in Iraq" but I'll accept it assuming it was parcelled out of military spending thus far in Iraq... in that case, it was part of the democracy effort ongoing in that nation: infrastructure rehabilitation, but very much under Federal control... whereas what you asking for above is state control; i.e., state financed education. In most cases, I favor cleaning up our own backyard before we volunteer finances to foreign nations. Thus my point above on poverty programs. Does this apply to education too? Yes. Although I understand Iraq to be unique in this respect. As I have said before, the whole point of No Child Left Behind is to measure students (via testing) to assure basic competency and core curricula are archieved by all students; something all schools should do as a matter of course. States pretty much brought this upon themselves through declining test scores. Saying that NCLB is "unfunded" assumes that schools should be failing students... I disagree. It is only poorly performing schools that need to spend exorbitant amounts preparing students to master basic competency exams; but I won't argue this farther in this thread (it should be in Education anyway!) No. But that's a geopolitical question on its face. In Iraq's case, rebuilding their education infrastructure, as with their utility infrastructure, is part of the military mission... similiar to Berlin Airlift after WWII... part of rebuilding/sustaining democracy effort.
How silly of us wishful-thinking leftists. Just a few hundred billion, and pooooffff! poverty as formally known in Iraq is but a sad memory.
Hasn't one of the justifications for foreign aid pretty much always been national security? Even before 9/11?
Good question. Maybe I was too quick to be cynical on that one. and on a slightly different note So is it aid that's needed or just something that gets these countries economy's growing?
Honestly, I hope this is true. We have invested far too much in money and blood to wish for failure. Let's just say I am not optimistic as I have yet to eat anything as a result of Dubya policy. Here is a little recap of where people stood in March 2003. Who was more correct. Richard "The Iraqis will welcome the liberators with open arms" Perele or Gen Wesley "I would have focused on al-Qaida" Clarke? http://slate.msn.com/id/2080099/
While forgiving third world debt sounds great, we do need to ask, who would benefit? Would the benefit go to the people or to the klepocrats who currently run those countries? It is not a simple issue. But I think we need to tie aid to (1) fighting corruption (after all, all the aid to our anti-communist ally Zaire between 1960 and 1990 went into the pockets of Motubu and did nothing to help the people) and (2) build rule of law, so both locals and foreign investors can be secure in their property. Both of these are tied to liberalization and democratization. I think short term, we should focus on aiding countries like Kenya and Ghana who are democratizing. A carrot and stick approach should be followed. No aid to Zimbabwe, lots of help for Botswana, but with the knowledge that eventually, the aid will stop and you will be expected to stand by yourself in a liberalized free trading system.
You have essentially described the role of the World Bank, which I wish I had a little more direct knowledge about, but in the few articles I have read, I understand that Wolfowitz is actually doing a pretty good job there in his first few months. On the issue of debt relief, I once did a paper on debt for nature swaps where primarily central american and south american countries received debt relief in exchange for commitments not to deforest land to generate revenue to pay the debt. It had fairly good results, but that was a while back, so it would be interesting to revisit it today.
Hmmmm.... UK and Canada seem pretty socialist. Poland is definitely way more of a socialist economy than capitalistic. They still have a long ways to go in privatising companies. Maybe the answer is countries with extremely low birth rates.
There are things out there for the hungry that go unused for a lot of reasons. Curious Chicago ever gone hungry where your mother just ran out of peanut butter to feed you and your brothers and sisters. You have no idea what hungry is unless it has happened to you. It is even worse for the parents that have to watch you.
Why would anyone choose the worst examples? There's a reason why i cited Finland, Sweden and Norway, you can add Belgium and reaching Germany (post-reunification germany) levels would be a step forward. The answer lies in the scandinavian socialdemocracies IMO. They have been clearly the best ones in creating a functioning hybrid of capitalism and socialism. If one asks why Finland etc. etc. it's a bit dumb to look for hidden acrobatic answers while ignoring (because of long instilled dogmas) the more obvious answer.
Yeah, but that just increases the Soylent Green supply, thus eliminating the hunger problem. Neat, huh?
I still prefer relatively high suicide rates than absolutely freakingly high homicide rates. - Against suicide, poverty and social injustice - Nice slogan, isn't it?
Actually, while I do not doubt there are more American children growing up in poverty than Norwegians, one thing is the definition of "poverty" in the chart may artifically increase the number of "poor" in countries, like the US, which has a wide income dispersement. This chart defines poverty not basic on a set of criteria (such as inadequacy of health care, lack of access to clean water, clean water, etc) but solely based on an arithmatic formula based on median income.
And a few other points. In the case of the former Soviet bloc countries, economic comparisons with pre-1990 are relatviely meaningless. In the old system, the workers pretended to work, the government pretended to pay and provide bad services, and everyone acted as though everything really was the way the government propaganda broadcasts claimed. I also notice that with the exception of Norway, child poverty has inceased in the non-Anglo Saxon countries. As for Norway, why the decrease? One word -- oil. Without the North Sea oil (and the Norwegians have been much better with spreading the benefits than our loveable Saudi allies), Norway is Britain under Wilson. As for the Swedes, I actually admire that unlike other socialist countries, they seem to have figured out a way to be both socialist and rich. But I still am not voting for the Libertarian Party.
Exactly. Numbers only mean so much. What affect on the US's numbers did immigration have? Why the big jumps in Belgium, German, and POland? And since this one chart shows disposable income, how are they measuring that besides tossing out some of the extremes in going for the median? I still think a big driver here is numbers. Toss that in with economies that aren't doing well in Germany, Belgium and POland and you've got a couple big drivers for the numbers that we see.
You are correct in noting that Scandanavia can not be a realistic model for the United States (for a long list of reasons), but Sardus' point about increased funding for social programs is correct. We can reduce child poverty a great deal.
If we included lack of access to health care, America would look FAR WORSE! I agree that basing it on median income is ridiculous, but everyone knows that child poverty (however one measures it) is a major problem in America.
When this country touts itself as a world leader what do you expect. Many of our policies keep people poor around the world, and now the disparity is growing here at home. Your compulsory draft comment was moronic. And before you ask, I am a disabled Marine Corps vet.
But is 50% of household income a good measure for defining poverty? For example, if the median household income in the US in 45K, that would be 22,5K. Ya, it's not going to be easy with a couple kids on that. But that UNICEF graph (note source!), doesn't at all reflect what programs are available or what help they are getting. It's just saying X% of kids live in a household that makes less than 50% of the median income for the country. It is measuring how many fall under that definition. It doesn't measure their quality of life let alone getting into whether or not that is a good measurement to be used.