Posted on 06/20/2005 6:32:22 PM PDT by wagglebee
Since World War II, the U.S. has spent $1.2 trillion on foreign aid to 70 countries – and all are worse off than they were in 1980, according to the U.N.
Britain's Tony Blair will ask President Bush to join him in creating a "Marshall Plan for Africa," pouring vast amounts of aid into African countries. But it's doomed to fail, according to Investor's Business Daily (IBD).
The original Marshall plan cost the U.S. $13 billion – equal to about $100 billion in today's dollars – between 1948 and 1951.
But the countries it aided in postwar Europe had scientists, engineers, skilled laborers and other professionals who were able to lift their nations back to prosperity. They also had governments that worked.
In Africa, on the other hand, most countries are "undemocratic, corrupt, lawless and lacking in property rights," says IBD. "Aid is simply wasted – swallowed whole by corrupt bureaucrats and African warlords.
"Study after study shows that many factors affect how countries climb out of poverty. They include democratic government, low levels of taxes and corruption and clear legal protection for the ownership of property. But not aid."
To make its point, IBD cites a mid-1990s U.N. analysis of U.S. and European foreign aid. The U.N. found that the U.S. spent $1.2 trillion on aid, but all 70 countries that received it were worse off than they were in 1980 – and 43 nations were worse off than in 1970.
Tony Blair suggests spending $25 billion in aid, seven times what the U.S. will spend this year.
But IBD stated: "Virtually no evidence exists that aid does much of anything.
"Aid can actually hurt nations that receive it – a Band-Aid when radical surgery is needed."
Agreed.
Well then.. $1.2 trillion is it.
at least, WE meant well. ;)
Hell, according to FAIR Texas alone ponied up $4b in 2004 for education aid to foreigners squatting within the state. Ca. doled out $7b. Those two combined equal $11b in a single year. Those expenditures should be considered foreign aid.
India is making the grade. They got aid, but in food to tide them over and infrastructure improvements, agricultural primarily.
This is a great article. The creation of wealth is a much better policy than the redistribution of wealth.
The so-called "Marshall Plan for Africa" is in reality a Marshall Plan for Switzerland, since that is where all the money will wind up -- in the personal bank accounts of despotic African rulers. Anyone who believes that any of this money will reach any of the suffering millions has rocks in his head.
I agree, imagine what Americans could have done if we had been allowed to keep $1.2 trillion of our own money. I have never understood the logic of our government going into debt so they can give the money to another country.
Joe Average in third world has no hope of ever seeing a dime of this graft. Captains and the Kings!
My guess is we'd probably find only a small handful of countries around the world ready to opt into such a program at first, but as their neighbors saw their freedom and prosperity they'd all clamor to get on board and we'd see a real outbreak of freedom around the globe.
What you're proposing is not all that different from the Marshall Plan after WWII, it worked then and it also strengthened our economy as a result.
<< Tony Blair suggests spending $25 billion in aid, seven times what the U.S. will spend this year. >>
Rubbish.
After paying our taxes Americans will, in 2005, give charities, including those who work only offshore, around a Third of a Trillion Dollars -- up only slightly from the almost Third of a Trillion Dollars we gave to charities in 2004.
The writer of this piece has counted only our feral gummint's foreign-aid squandering, has ignored the Billions poured into such effective aid organizations as the Ex-Im Bank, the World Bank and the IMF -- and has accepted the foreign and domestic America haters' refusal to acknowledge our nation's massive private foreign aid.
All of which causes our total aid to exceed the sum of all of the rest of the world's aid.
It's also significant that Germany received comparatively very little Marshall Plan money! Most of the money went to France and Great Britain, the least destroyed countries in Europe.
Actually, up until 1949 the Allies continued to strip Germany off all industrial equipment, natural resources, patents, scientists etc. and brought Germans to the point of starvation. What couldn't be plundered by Soviets, French or the British (like docks or factory buildings) was blown up.
Now the main significance of the Marshall Plan for Germany was that the Allies acknowledged they had to stop doing that. The loans (to be repaid!!) and grants Germany had access to were used to get the currency and food situation in order, and mainly let Germany rebuild HERSELF. The change of attitude towards Germany of course had to do with the emerging Cold War - but that the Marshall Plan "rebuilt" Germany is a myth. Germans rebuilt Germany, and noone else, once they were allowed to do so, and with astonishing speed: the main Marshall Plan profiteers France and GB were economically left behind within a few years.
Yet to this day post-war Germany and the Marshall Plan get touted as a model for economic reconstruction - while being nothing of that sort.
Don't give'm fish, give'm books how to fish. Show them movies how it's done here (not Hollywierdskies). Tell them if they get off their butts, they could be like US. Tell them to eat their dictators and get some capitalistic free enterprise going.
Amen!
Was't the Marshall plan to make Western countrys strong to counter the USSR?I don't think it was just because the USA was generous.
You are correct. Germany ended food rationing before the so called Allies did.
"Well give $20 US (or, $348,390 in local currency) to every man, woman, and child in your developing country when you manage to overthrow your dictator, and jail (and/or kill) him and his entire extended family."
From the German Marshall Fund website -
"As we have indicated, that Germany was a Marshall Plan recipient in the first place did not make the other participating countries very happy, but taking economic revenge was simply not a viable alternative. In fact, Germany had already received a large amount of U.S. aid before the Marshall Plan was even conceived: starting almost immediately after the end of the war, the Allied-occupied part of the country received U.S. goods through the GARIOA program (Government and Relief in Occupied Areas), and the value of these goods amounted to around $1.7 billion. So the Marshall Plan aid to Germany, which amounted to about $1.4 billion in the first four years, was not that dramatic in itself. Britain, France and Italy all received a larger slice of the cake (see listing below for the distribution of help to the ERP countries). And yet Germany put the aid to better use than any other country, and today, 50 years later, still continues to benefit directly from the ERP counterpart fund, known after 1953 as the ERP Special Fund.
3.
U.S. Economic Assistance
Under the European Recovery Program:
April 3, 1948 - June 30, 1952
(Total Amount in Millions of U.S. Dollars)
United Kingdom 3,189.8
France 2,713.6
Italy 1,508.8
Germany (West 1,390.6
The Netherlands 1,083.5
Greece 706.7
Austria 677.8
Belgium/LuxembourgÝ 559.3
Denmark 273.0
Norway 255.3
Turkey 225.1
IrelandÝ 147.5
SwedenÝ 107.3
PortugalÝ 51.2
IcelandÝ 29.3
Source: USIA
Since Germany did not know until 1953 how much money it was going to have to pay back to the U.S. (and by then its "debts" through the GARIOA program and Marshall aid added up to over $3.3 billion), it was particularly scrupulous in its use of the ERP counterpart funds. It insisted from the beginning that the money could only be given out as loans subject to interest - a revolving system which ensured that the funds would grow rather than shrink. A lending bank was charged with overseeing the program.
As Time Went By ... The ERP Special Fund
In 1953, it was finally established in an agreement signed in London that Germany would have to repay only a third ($1.1 billion) of its debts to the U.S. At this time, the ERP Special Fund already contained DM 6 billion (then equivalent to about $1.5 billion). The money Germany owed the U.S. was paid back in installments (the last check was handed over in June, 1971) and interestingly enough, did not come from the ERP pot, but from the federal budget. The Special Fund, now supervised by the federal economics ministry, kept growing: in 1971, it was over DM 10 billion. Today it has reached more than DM 23 billion. And thanks to the revolving loan system, by the end of 1995, the Fund had made low-interest loans amounting to around DM 140 billion. "
So Germany repaid 1/3 of its aid, not all of it, and the total aid it received ($3.3Billion) whether Marshall fund or not was about the same as France and Britain.
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