Obama's Global Poverty Act

notwithstanding this bill, but more a general philosophical question...

if reducing global poverty will never happen (as in the OPs view), should we even try? or should we simply cut off all foreign aid to the extent that we don't actually receive something tangible for it?

let's not ***** around with the middle ground here. if the goal is simply impossible, let's quit trying. if the goal IS attainable, then we can discuss this bill. but if you simply think the goal is impossible, it's not this bill you have a problem with, it's all foreign aid, right?
 
Why do you think we can never reduce poverty in the rest of the world? We may not be able to eliminate it completely, but why can we not reduce it?
 
Why do you think we can never reduce poverty in the rest of the world? We may not be able to eliminate it completely, but why can we not reduce it?
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it doesnt matter, bush will veto it. poverty may be able to be reduced eventually but it won't be by paying money to the UN. all of the nations with extreme poverty have corrupt governments. these corrupt governments will never allow this money to be used efficiently. what's more, the countries with poverty are caused by elements out of our control, their governments control and their own culture. these people are primitive and are happier being so...what are we going to do, build them all condos and some food and have a nice life....?
 
I don't agree with the method, but I do agree with the ideal. poverty cannot be eradicated, but morally I can't be Christlike either. Doesn't stop me from trying. So to must we fight poverty to the ends of the Earth. The question is how. The UN is not the answer.
 
Bad governments are the biggest cause of poverty. If you are oppressed, if people steal from you, if the environment is corrupt, and so on, you can't prosper. The obvious solution is to get rid of bad governments. Perhaps we could identify the most evil dictator each year and remove him from power, either the easy way or the hard way. Each dictator would have a strong incentive to stay off the bottom of the list. It'd probably be a good idea to not make it close. We shouldn't occupy, or try to fix anything. Just remove the worst guy. It'd beat the hell out of some UN plan.
 
Okay, first of all, passing legislation that commits the United States to follow goals set out by the United Nations is not ceding power to the U.N. It is democratically voting to follow measures determined by the U.N. If the goals determined by the U.N. were determined to be not in our best interest then the US could change it. To call this a "global tax on the United States" is unfair and intellectually dishonest.

Second, the millennium development goals state as their number one priority the elimination of EXTREME poverty. Jeffrey Sach's also outlines this in his book "Thje End of Poverty" and argues that while the complete elimination of poverty may not be possible the elimination of extreme poverty - living on less than $1 a day - is very possible and can happen in our lifetimes.

It is a plain fact to me that the world has become smaller. There are no longer oceans separating the globe's citizens; there is no separation. Turn on CNN, open a national Geographic or search google and there's the world, right there in front of your face. There are your neighbors. And as this world becomes increasingly small there is mind numbing growth in the distance between rich and poor. If you are lucky enough to be born in a developed nation, then you have unbelievable access to opportunity, riches unprecedented in the history of civilization If you are born in other parts of the world, you might be greeted with Hunger...or AIDS, or mosquitoes spreading Malaria.

If your neighbor was hungry, would you bring them dinner? Who would say "no" to that? Every citizen on Earth is now our neighbor and we cannot say "no" to them either. Today, we have an opportunity and the resources to confront and eliminate global extreme poverty. As such, we have a moral imperative to do so. There should be no question about increasing our foreign aide.
 
American taxpayers are already subsidizing the world with our global police force (America, **** yeah!). This is a drop in the bucket by comparison. We should easliy be able to accommodate the poor all over the world and prescription drugs for aging baby boomers too. Medicade, SS, world "defense", subsidies to the world's poor - no problem; Joe sixpack won't complain.
 
How many of the people we want to help would be better off living on $1 a day than living in a country with millions of US dollars flowing in? How many of the dollars we spend will be used to take the $1 that the people have now away from them?

All of the talk correlating dollars to poverty seems doomed to not only fail, but also violently backfire. If we want to do something real and positive, lets finish off TB- something concrete that won't fall apart when the next jackass dictator comes to power at guntpoint.
 
Like tropheus, I like the ideal but I am not crazy about the implementation. Of that 65 billion, how much is actually going to be spent on aid and how much of it will go to be spent renovating some UN bigwig's office in New York or Geneva or Paris?
 
so general - are you saying we should cut off ALL foreign aid until we're perfect at home? or are you just using tired old rhetoric?

i'm all for us fixing our own problems, but i think we can also aid others at the same time.

and i'm also against any plan where we help others while at the same time ignoring our own. so if you are advocating increased foreign aid in addition to a larger increase domestically, i'm on board. i doubt that's what you're thinking though, am i right?
 
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