American Foreign aid WHO????

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The USA gave out $22,700,000,000 last year; and that doesn't even count Military aid. Some of it I believe to be justified, but the vast majority is a waste of money.

We provide more money in aid than any other country, but people (i.e. people in other countries) bitch and moan that it doesn't mean that the USA is all that generous because in terms of a percentage of GDP that the USA doesn't give the most.

So fine, I'm in 100% agreement with the statement in the video. Let's stop almost all the foreign aid, both fiscal and military. By cutting out most of the fiscal and military aid, we could save well over $200,000,000 each year from now on. With the added benefit of letting people that don't like the USA, fend for themselves.

We'd see several countries fall into famine and wars. Which I'm okay with.

Yup! I'm all for letting them fend for themselves. When bad things happen the US is there, when shit happens here we're on our own.

Funny, now it's time you grow a conscience?

As I recall, me, or anyone else on this forum, didn't allow all that waste to those countries. You're acting like it's not your guys' fault, but ours!

you guys really think its AID the U.S. is giving?

Gissurjon said:

you guys really think its AID the U.S. is giving?

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I don't give a shit what the money is spent for or called. It's mostly a waste and something that should be stopped now.

DOMS said:

I don't give a shit what the money is spent for or called. It's mostly a waste and something that should be stopped now.

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The American government doesn't give aid out of the goodness of their hearts. They give aid as a form of control. When you control the worlds money, and we mostly do, you hold leverage over nations to get what we want. It is like a parent threatening to cut off a child's alliance if they don't do what the parent says. Plus, very little of the economic aid we give to countries makes it to the people who need it. It goes to funding the political regimes that we think will most likely benefit our foreign policies and overall strategy for maintaining social dominance for the sake of national security. Anybody who doesn't know this is blind to the big picture.


Now, with that being said I agree with what Ted Poe said...sort of. It is pretty dumb to vote for aid as if it were a package deal. But. it is also foolish to think we can stop sending aid to countries like Pakistan while we are militarily occupying them. We could stop aid, but that would also mean we would have to get the fuck out if we didn't want full blown war with them. No, we need to be able to move freely through their country hunting down the never ending supply of insurgents and terrorist, or at least that is our current strategy.

South Korea is a big example. We give them foreign aid and when North Korea comes knocking we send warships to their shore and that costs us money too. When we send goods to their country they tax the hell out of them too.

KelJu said:

The American government doesn't give aid out of the goodness of their hearts. They give aid as a form of control. When you control the worlds money, and we mostly do, you hold leverage over nations to get what we want. It is like a parent threatening to cut off a child's alliance if they don't do what the parent says. Plus, very little of the economic aid we give to countries makes it to the people who need it. It goes to funding the political regimes that we think will most likely benefit our foreign policies and overall strategy for maintaining social dominance for the sake of national security. Anybody who doesn't know this is blind to the big picture.

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you are 100% correct.

what's sad is that Rep Ted Poe doesn't even know how neo-liberalism truly functions and huge part that the military plays outside of the US. with out US military presence over the globe, neo-liberalism isn't going very long it wouldn't have achieved what it has today (not that the achievement has been positive). many nations are already jumping ship from this failed economic model, that's what Chavez is always bitching about, for just cause.

unfortunately many don't understand the relationship between the reduced tax rate on capital and the inherent risk that it causes. the economy would be much more stable if the top earners got paid in more in wages vs capital.

and where has he been for say I don't know the past 3 decades, as if this spending is something new. the only reason why all these things are effecting us so bad now is because the Wall Street and the greedy US banking system tanked the global economy. This is exactly why the IMF and world bank is moving away from the dollar as the only reserve currency.

the current USAID budget isn't much more than it used to be, but you have to adjust it for inflation, which is cumulative. in 2004 it was 10B once you adjust it for inflation, you just about get 47B +/-. for this we can thank the FRB, controlling inflation is one of it's main objectives since it controls the currency supply.

regarding military spending. a good portion of those monies are used so foreign governments can buy arms from US weapons manufactures. the whole set up is completely FUBAR.

DOMS said:

I don't give a shit what the money is spent for or called. It's mostly a waste and something that should be stopped now.

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well you made the point that people of those countries bitch and moan and that the U.S. wasnt all that generous. My point is that ofcourse they bitch, they aint getting it and the U.S. isnt being generous at all because its all done with political gains in mind.

what its called is important because as long as its called aid there will be people that think there actually some helping going on.

Bankers on Wall Street, Foreign countries, and the Military Industrial Complex.

Keep working hard, Americans. They depends on your earning and your taxes.

Big Smoothy said:

Bankers on Wall Street, Foreign countries, and the Military Industrial Complex.

Keep working hard, Americans. They depends on your earning and your taxes.

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Smoothy, people don't understand that we are at ground zero for neo-liberal economics, it all started here and the U.K and spread out from there.

^ Agree, LAM.

And you mentioned USAID. USAID is a very corrupt and political organization.

I worked with people 10 years ago that were former employees of USAID in a foreign country. I worked with them in that same foreign country.

USAID is an "aid" organization. As Gissurjohn notes, it's not really 'aid.'

It's giving hundreds of million and billions of dollars of US taxpayer money to regimes, leaders, and sometimes countries - if they support US economic (oil) policy, foreign policy and of course Neo-liberal policy.

A case in point: the Republic of Georgia about 10 years ago.

There was intense competition for the oil pipeline that would run through Georgia. US companies and the Russian were competing very hard to the deal.

USAID was there to "help" Georgian farmers, teachers, communities, what have you.

In a common scam, USAID gives millions of dollars to cattle rancher/farmers to buy cows. These cows will provide milk and protein and beef for the people with a high percentage of poverty.

The money is given. It's investigated. Documents are stamped.

The cows are never really bought - that's a lie - they just claim to buy thousands of cows with the USAID money - but the cows died of a disease in transit.

Hence, money given, but no cows.

Some politico-cronies just took the money.

A journalist reported this (Jeffrey Silverman) and he was told by the US Embassy (that works hand in had with USAID) to shut up.

how much is china forking out? In particularly to Africa?

Big Smoothy said:

It's giving hundreds of million and billions of dollars of US taxpayer money to regimes, leaders, and sometimes countries - if they support US economic (oil) policy, foreign policy and of course Neo-liberal policy.

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exactly!

and that's why having a balanced budget in any OECD country let alone the US aka. neo-lib central is nothing more than a fairy tale. all we needed to do was to sustain it's growth to the same amount equal to real GDP growth but the last POTUS screwed that all up. it's going to take a good 15 years to pay off 8 years of Bush tax cuts.

another thing that people don't realize when looking at federal budget numbers, the deficit, etc. you must account for inflation and you also have to realize that the USD is fiat, it's basically worthless. so when looking at all these "high" numbers of billions and trillions, etc. you have to take into account that most of it is due to inflation, which is the price paid to have the ability to print as much paper money as you need to supply the world market for it. once adjusted for inflation you realize the illusion.

the causes of why taxes on both wages and capital have been decreased to record lows are also different. one can't afford to pay federal taxes on 1980's wages and the other wants to pay less taxes on capital as that now comprises 30% of the income of the top 1%, so they have more to invest.

the reduction of entitlements in the federal budget is nothing more than a very short term fix and really nothing but a political talking point. because after that then what's next? because the original problem hasn't been solved. as the dollar falls and/is joined by other currency's for use as reserves in central banks, etc. the US is going to be hit hard economically. either way the dollar is going to have to be joined by other currency's we just can't supply enough and we abused the power. globalization has opened up markets all over the globe, far too much for just one currency from one country. another crisis here will just expedite that process. China and OPEC are both still holding high amounts of US t-notes so their confidence is still high.

the paper titled "Foreign Direct Investment and Growth" makes it easy to understand how the US uses capital deposited in US accounts for FDI when dollars are purchased by foreign govs for use in the world market. Basically the US gets free capital to invest overseas but the returns on those investments are limited.

even though he's a total POS Bernard Maddoff was right, the US is really nothing but a giant ponzi scheme at this point.

For the large amount of so called Foreign aid the United States of America gives out every year they get 5 fold of that back from the same nations they gave it to. How, by exploiting them and using their land, people and natural resources.

America giving pout Foreign aid, LMAO.

Zaphod said:

Yup! I'm all for letting them fend for themselves. When bad things happen the US is there, when shit happens here we're on our own.

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you are completely missing the big picture.

But to address your statement (as if it had anything to do with the truth) the notion of helping is that you help someone who needs help and historically the U.S. has been pretty well of money wise.

Plus the U.S. is getting plenty of help from China in the form of loans, and please dont come back with "yea but the U.S. is giving these countries the money" because they're not.