From Toms Shoes to international adoptions, from solar panels to U.S. agricultural subsidies, drawing from over 200 interviews filmed in 20 countries, Poverty, Inc. unearths an uncomfortable side of charity we can no longer ignore.
Hosannas are being sung to the rocker Bono and G-8 leaders in praise of the recently announced agreement to relieve developing countries — mostly African — of more than $40 billion in debt.
The Christian Science Monitor calls it “a victory for the world’s poorest continent.” World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz declares it to be “a very important, successful outcome.” U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow boasts that it’s “an achievement of historic proportions.” And according to Larry Elliott of The Guardian, it’s “a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”
But it won’t work.
https://archive.triblive.com/news/faulty-band-aid/#ixzz37qOs5WIQ
There were two ways that the recipients used the cash to get ahead. In families led by people who were unable to work, they mainly used the money to hire others to help them farm their land more productively. But the young families — because they were able-bodied — did something that Handa argues is remarkable, and even more promising when it comes to growing Zambia’s economy long term: They became entrepreneurial.
Is aid just an extension of colonial economics?Or a lifeline for imperfect but necessary support systems? Firoze Manji and Pablo Yanguas go head to head on the thorny topic of development assistance.
Within low-income countries, richer people are more likely to emigrate. And as low-income countries economically grow, people are more likely to emigrate.
But we shouldn’t use a fear of migration as a reason to keep poor countries poor. That would ignore the inherent value of poverty reduction, as well as harm donor countries’ own interests in a prosperous, healthy, and stable world. Rather, these facts matter because development policy that is not based on facts never works. Development assistance should engage with human mobility—not to deter it, but to shape it for mutual benefit.
Foreign aid is meant to alleviate suffering and help poor countries develop. But according to William Easterly, a professor of Economics at NYU, it often does the opposite. Instead of helping countries develop, it wastes resources or makes it harder for them to make economic progress. And far from advancing democracy and human rights, it often helps autocrats to stay in power.
In this week’s episode of The Good Fight podcast, Yascha Mounk and William Easterly discuss how political considerations misdirect foreign aid, whether the “development industrial complex” ignores the human rights of the poor, and why foreign aid so often gives a lifeline to authoritarian leaders around the globe.
https://www.persuasion.community/p/-when-foreign-aid-fails-democracy
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