[Stirner]

Interesting "a pox on both your houses" approach to theories of international development. Claims that empirical data show that neither foreign aid or strict free market approach work reliably in fostering growth and reductions in poverty.

[ncountylee]

No, but AIDS helps.

[lilylangtree]

Look at the US. Welfare perpetuates welfare. Aid as a one-time measure like a natural disaster helps until people can get back on their feet economically . However, cont'd aid to a country that has no future economically will never work. That's like pouring money down a limitless drain.

[kublia khan]

"The poor will always be with you" Jesus

[JamesP81]

I like his quote: different stroke for different folks

Everyone is different. While I think he may short changing the value of free market economics in reducing poverty, it is true that culture plays a huge role. People everywhere think differently and find themselves in different situations. It merely follows that different solutions will be needed.

[Dead Corpse]

Work Creates Wealth. If you don't work, you will never be wealthy. If you work for someone else, they will get wealthy and you will get paid. Hopefully, you are smart enough to negotiate a good trade for your labors. Governments, are good at only one thing, taking wealth away from those who earn it. In "good" governments, this is to help pay for public infrastructure that can be used during wartime to ensure the military can get around if the SHTF. Lately, since the Depression, is has become more and more about vote buying schemes and some ephemeral "social justice". Ie; "ungood" government.

People these days are confusing the government protected corporate raiders for real capitalists. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Of course, all the socialists want is an end to capitalism in any of its variants and themselves put in charge as the natural arbiters of who gets what with a little something extra for themselves.

[marron]

WE'RE rich because they're poor. No proposition is more central to the left-wing view of the world than the idea that the rich West survives in its comfort because it exploits the poor in the Third World.

Another is the idea that poverty causes crime, when it is crime that causes poverty. Or the idea that poverty causes social disfunction, broken families, vice, when it is social disfunction and broken families that cause poverty.

This is certainly the case in the US, where structural poverty largely a non-issue.

There are three kinds of poverty. If you were parachuted into a virgin forest, you would be rich in assets but since they are yet undeveloped you may miss a few meals and find yourself living in whatever hovel you can scratch together with your bare hands. Thats one kind, and it still exists in undeveloped regions of the world.

The second kind is caused by the lack of legal clarity. This is the kind found throughout most of the developed Third World. Clear and predictable laws, honest courts, protection of individuals and their property will resolve this kind of poverty, but it seems impossible because the predominant political philosophies and moral culture keeps them locked in a rather toxic status quo.

The third kind is the kind we largely see in the US, caused as I said earlier by crime, social disfunction, broken families, and the cultural nihilism that takes root in these conditions.

The leftist view of poverty is a cartoon sketch of a problem they do not understand. They don't understand where wealth comes from so they can never understand how to resolve poverty.

[Clint Williams]

Want to help me? DON'T help me! [must read]

[CyberAnt]

If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day.
If you teach a man to fish, you feed him forever.

[teenyelliott]

Give a man some money, and he can by crack today.

Teach a man to make money, and he can buy crack for a lifetime.