Skip to main content

Plea to Barack on Foreign Aid

Barack Obama has been my candidate of choice from the beginning. I have outlined a few of the reasons I support him. One I didn't mention is the issue of foreign aid. As I discussed earlier, US government's foreign aid as a % of its GDP is one of the lowest for any developed nation. Economic Aid to Developing Countries - The Stats

To make it worse, much of the aid is given to two sources:
  • Military and economic aid to Israel and Egypt to keep some peace in the Middle East
  • Colombia, Peru and Bolivia to fight drug

The tiny bit that is left goes to countries where the US has foreign policy interests. The aid is used for political leverage.

Here is where Barack Obama comes into the picture. He has said that diplomacy and restoration of American image in the world would be the pillars of his foreign policy. One way to improve America's image in the world is to provide more foreign aid, particularly one that is not directly used for political leveraging. Obama promised to increase US government foreign aid from the ~$25 billion now to $50 billion by 2012. NYT
In a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last April, Mr. Obama proposed doubling foreign aid to a total of $50 billion a year by 2012. In the speech, he also outlined a strategy for ending the war in Iraq.
However, the current economic crisis and the impending $700 billion rescue plan is likely to require cutbacks in some of Obama's promises. Asked what promises he might cut back on, this is what Obama had to say on CBS's Face the Nation

...I think it’s important for us to do those, but I will say that some proposals I’ve made -- for example, I’m a strong supporter of foreign aid.

SCHIEFFER: We really have to go.

OBAMA: We may have to delay that a little bit.

I plea to Senator Obama to do his best to keep this promise because it is important. While the UN is asking developed nations to spend 0.7% of the GDP on foreign aid, the US is lagging at 0.1%. Increasing U.S. foreign aid is definitely a step in the right direction.

The aid could come in many ways. One that would be good for everyone would be the export of green technologies to the poorest nations in the world. China and India can develop and distribute technologies on their own, but there are lots of helpless nations that could benefit from the US's willingness to share these technologies.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Distribution of Wealth in the US

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I heard this statement quite a bit lately particularly in light of the sub-prime mortgage and general housing crisis in the US. The country has enjoyed significant economic prosperity and both Clinton and Bush boasted economic growth under their reign. Unfortunately, the beneficiaries of the economic boom are not people from all economic backgrounds, but rather the top 10%. To make things worse, Bush gave tax cuts mainly targeting the top 10%. Being more of a numbers guy, I always wanted showing the validity of the-rich-get-richer-n-the-poor-get-poorer statement. Thanks to Wikipedia , I have finally found it!! Both the mean and median net worth of families for the bottom 50% of the population has remained absolutely flat while the 75th-90th percentile see a decent growth and the top 10% enjoy the most appreciation on their net worth. So, if you factor in inflation, the-rich-get-richer-n-the-poor-get-poorer probably holds true. The g...
1 comment
Read more

Correlation Between Finger Length and Aggression/Success/Homosexuality

I came across an interesting article on BBC (Finger length 'key to aggression' ) today and The Economist has a similar article ( Neuroeconomics: Digitally enhanced ). They report a positive correlation between the length of mens' ring fingers and their success in high-stress securities trading. Actually, the more correct comparison s between the ratio of the ring to index finger and success/aggression. In women, the ring and index fingers are comparable, however the ring finger is significantly longer than the index finger in men. In this study, the researchers only looked at men's fingers. Apparently the level of testerone in a fetus is exposed to during pregnancy affects length of fingers as well as the level of aggression. More aggressive traders tend to have longer ring fingers and they happen to be more successful, after factoring out the effect of experience. They also reached a similar conclusion when looking at college students. Having a short ring finger...
Post a Comment
Read more

Online Storage Solutions

Problem: I often need to have some files readily available online so that I can access them from any computer. There are many ways to go about solving this problem and each comes with its set of shortcomings: Yahoo! Briefcase - 30MB limit Online storage services like Box.net, Xdrive, MediaMax - usually cost money; signing up is cumbersome Email to myself as an attachment - enough said there It's time to find a home-made solution. The solution I am about to suggest is intended for -- A *NIX user someone with access to a *NIX web server Solution: I am a linux user and I have user level access to a web server. The web server is configured such that the public does not have access to directory structure. So, I would need to write a script that copies my files to the web server and creates an index listing my files. Password protection of the storage would follow after that. Client Side: Use the following script to transfer file to server, make the file readable by public and execu...
Post a Comment
Read more