Blackmarket Pop-Tarts?
“Haiti Doesn’t Need Your Old T-Shirt,”
I’ll never let go of ‘Golden Boy’.
You might not believe what some people try to give to our local Salvation Army. Used, worn out and broken appliances, urine stained and torn mattresses and box springs, broken tables and chairs, worn out and dirty clothing. It gets rejected and people take offense.
You see, there’s a fee when people take this stuff to the dump and they think they can give it to charity, avoid the fee and perhaps take a deduction too, win-win.
Nope, lose-lose.
Besides, when you send durable goods instead of cash, the bureaucrats at all levels of government don’t get their cut, which is really the issue in most of these countries. Hard to bribe somebody with 150 fake Chicago Bears SuperBowl championship T-shirts.
Garage sale yoga mats make for a good gun bench pad.
In his book “Africa Unchained”, George Ayittey argues that foreign aid has helped keep most parts of Africa from being able to economically advance out of poverty.
These "people" are dangerous scum and need to be removed.
Page after page of non-stop bitching that they don’t want stuff, they want cash. Well, after looking over the photo essay, I’m more jaded than ever. I agree with the notion that flooding these places with free stuff is destroying their economies. Same with cash. They need to start expending even a little effort at bootstrapping themselves.
Haiti is a shameful example of a bunch of recipients waiting to, well, receive. They can’t have my yoga mat, or my old t-shirts either. I’m sure they’d rather wear their bin Laden ones, as they were pictured doing when we were shipping tsunami relief to Indonesia a few years back.
OTOH, I have a few old TVs they can have, if they’ll pay the shipping....
I lost all thought of helping Haiti when a government official there tried to tax donations and the people themselves were unwilling to haul aid to the rest of the nation. Too entitled and lazy.
I've recently begun a program where I'm sending blankets to children in Chechnya.
Specifically, they're infected with weaponized smallpox, “Pox for Tots” I call it.
Are these folks telling me there are better ways to help kids... or at least make me feel virtuous.
This is a good article. It points out how we have to be careful with how we give aid — even things like clothes can ruin the long-term prospects for the country to bring itself out of poverty on its own.