Bush introduced this in his SotU speech, and now the US is committed to giving $15B to fight AIDS in Africa. I’d like to challenge that action. On the face of it, this might seem like some wonderful humanitarian gesture and it seems that few people, if any, are questioning it. How dare someone criticize such a noble act?
So why is it a good thing for our country’s government to take money from its citizens to give to another country’s citizens? There is absolutely no impediment to US citizens or charity groups to raise money voluntarily for this purpose. How many people who cheered this have ever given money to fight AIDS in Africa on their own? In fact, when the government preempts that choice, does it not discourage people from giving money to charity? Why bother, when the government has already taken care of it?
Lots of foreign aid, like what the US gives to Israel and Egypt, is couched in national security rhetoric. I don’t particularly buy that rhetoric, but at least in that instance there is some justification, however weak that might be. Talk of world stability being threatened by AIDS is pretty hollow. As sad as it is that people are dying in Africa of AIDS, I’d wager that at least as many people have died there due to political corruption and gross mismanagement by those in power (the real reason for poverty and large scale health problems on that continent). Does the US popluace truly feel threatened by the fact that an AIDS epidemic is present in Africa?
I’ve always seen this type of activity as our government losing sight of what it is chartered to do; i.e., preventing it’s citizens from doing harm to each other and preventing foreign powers from doing harm to the country. Forcing it’s citizens to do good, however noble that good may be, is outside the province of our government’s authority. While there are plenty of other examples one could use, I picked the Africa AIDS example because it seems to get universal, uncritical approval, and yet is exactly the kind of thing that private citizens are perfectly capable of dealing with if they are inclined to do so.
There is a gap between approving of government funds and giving out of personal pocket. If you asked 100 people in say Canada if they gave money to medical charities, maybe only 20 would say yes but if you ask them if they approve of socialize healthcare maybe 80 would say yes. Thats unscientific, but i tend to think the principle is sound. People will go along with a decision made for them rather than go out and do it independently. In both instances they approve of giving money.
Also, most tax paying americans support increasing aid to africa.
The average american is willing to pay $20 in tax dollars to an African. with 300 million americans that is $6 billion a year in aid taxpayers are willing to give out.
79% think that US aid to africa should increase or stay the same.
Also, this issue is in our national interest. AIDS will ravage africa if people don’t try to fight it. This could indirectly affect the economy by taking millions of farmers and potential industrial workers out of the picture and making them dependent on medical aid from a government that is barely able to survive in the first place. And if history has taught us anything, radical problems tend to lead to radical political solutions. Africa could become a hotbed of terrorism, fascism or neo communism in 20 or 30 years if their problems are allowed to fester uncontrollably.
It’s also in our national interest simply because as long as it’s an epidemic over there it’s also going to be an epidemic over here. If I can fly from here to there (or from there to here) in twelve hours, diseases can spread from here to there (or there to here) in twelve hours.
There are several justifications for international aid by government beyond private charity:
Information: Individuals may not be the best informed about what the most efficient methods of helping poor countries or where their dollars will do most good. These are complex issues. The government can hire experts and hopefully allocate the money more efficiently.
Collective benefits: International aid provides general benefits to the country and therefore it makes to finance it collectively through taxes. These benefits include:
1)Diplomatic leverage: Clearly governments which receive aid from the US will pay more attention to what it wants. This benefits American citizens in general.
2)General goodwill: American initiaves on matters of global health and development improve its image around the world.
3)Preventing failed states: Specific initiatives should be part of a general policy of preventing nations from becoming failed states which descend into anarchy or civil war. Such states could be a potential security risk to the US in that without effective central control they can become havens for terrorists, international criminals etc.
4)Preventing future infectious diseases: Diseases like AIDS and SARS which start in poor countries can spread to the rich world. Clearly the better the quality of health facilities in poor countries the more likely they will be spotted early and contained.
The bottom line is that the US has an interest in making sure that as large a part of the world consists of countries with stable, friendly governments with at least a moderate amount of economic progress. International aid helps both in directly addressing the worst problems in such countries and in gaining political leverage .
IMO the US should spend more on international development assistance up from its current level of just 0.1% of GDP to about 0.5%. It would still be a very small portion of GDP but it would do a massive amount of good.
It’s something that should be happening anyway. My comment, John Mace, is that within a few decades, half the population of the continent may have AIDS. I can see that causing instability, because there is a lot of instability there now as it is - increasing disease will just exacerbate the problems caused by lack of food, water, medicine, and repressive governments.
I want to respond to your post because it tends to encompass what the others have said also. I did some renumbering since you made several points before you started numbering them, so my comments are to the renumber points in the quote, not your actual post.
If there’s one thing that governments have proven time and again to be unable to do is allocate money effectively.
Can be used to justify anything.
True. But I don’t see bribery as a proper funcution of our government.
True. So does private charity. Unclear to me that our gov’t is chartered to pay other people in order to like us.
This is a very good point. Unfortunately we have done nothing that I can see that has improved the political landscape in Africa. Nothing. In fact, with the level of corruption there, I would question our ability to account for the moneys that will end up over there.
Also a good point. AIDS is a particularly poor example of this, though, as it is actually hard to transmit once you understand the transmission mechanism. Unlike SARS or some new Flu, AIDS requires specific actions in order to be transmitted. Virtually everyone in the US is familiar with the fairly simple steps needed to avoid contracting the disease.
I might agree with this if the aid were tied to real, measureable progress in the political arena of a specific country. Just dumping money in to save lives is a function for charities. The human tragedy needs to be address, and they can do that without the interference of our governemnt. Proping up failed regimes by our government does nothing but make matters worse in terms of stability in the world.
I think WillGolfForFood got it right. Sooner or later it’ll get out of hand there, and it’s in our own self-interest to help them since it’ll help us in the long run.
Of course, since a good portion of the rest of the world thinks we owe everyone everything (based entirely on the “What is America doing for the world- how could they sit idly by- the cruel thoughtless Americans” threads), this goes a long way towards appeasing our critics.
On second thought, nah, it really doesn’t. C’est la vie.
And, BTW, AIDS is rampant in India, China and Southeast Asia. Are we giving them money next? The gov’ts there have been ineffective in controlling the spread of AIDS. And there’s a hell of a lot more travel between those areas and the US than there is between Africa and the US. I just don’t see that slowing things down in Africa will have any significant impact on the US.
So, even if I thought it was OK to take money from some people and give to other people, I don’t see that it’s going to affect the US in any significant way in this instance.
About the numbering it perhaps isn’t clear but the 4 numbered points are sub-points for the collective benefits argument. I agree that “collective benefits” is by itself a vague argument which is why I gave four concrete examples.
“If there’s one thing that governments have proven time and again to be unable to do is allocate money effectively.”
We are talking about efficiency relative to private decision-making. I think private decision-making is best on matters close the lives of the people in question. Thus individuals are best at deciding , say, what kind of automobiles they want and it doesn’t make to have the government making those decisions. However they are probably less able to decide how best to spend their dollars on solving complex global issues. The government may do a better job.
“But I don’t see bribery as a proper funcution of our government.”
I don’t think it’s bribery any more than a lot of diplomacy or even domestic politics. The goverment gives monetary incentives to encourage certain actions all the time.
“AIDS is a particularly poor example of this, though, as it is actually hard to transmit once you understand the transmission mechanism”
My arguments were for international aid in general but even with AIDS money it’s not all disease-specific. I would imagine quite a lot would go to help improve health-care facilities in poor areas. This would help give early warning for new diseases.
“I might agree with this if the aid were tied to real, measureable progress in the political arena of a specific country”
I don’t disagree here and I think international aid policy already reflects this to some extent ie better governed poor countries get more aid. I think the best thing that the US can do for poor countries is to help improve the quality of their governments. I think international aid helps this by giving the US more political leverage over those regimes. Also international aid doesn’t have to be humanitarian in nature. You can have aid for training civil servants, judges, policemen etc which directly helps improve the quality of government.
First, when has any government ever stuck strictly to the “province” you stated.
Second, under that “province of government” where is the incentive to help fight any diseases at all? Does it make a difference whether the threat is from one citizen to another or one foreigner to a citizen?
Third, it seems naive to rely on private charity. These people need help one way or another, for their own good and ours. How much was given to fight AIDS in Africa by Americans before Bush announced the 15 billion? I’m pretty sure it was less than 15 billion. What’s wrong with forcing people to do the right thing when the cost to each individual is so low?
I don’t see how these particular 15 billion will help Americans. We are talking about AIDS, not disease in general. AIDS is stupidly easy to avoid, but impossible to cure. Wouldn’t those dollars be better spent developing a vaccine or cure?
Thanks for being the first person to address this angle.
Never. I wish they did. I’m not talking about what is happening, but what should happen. I don’t see where in the constitution we have given the US gov’t the power to force us to do good things.
Nowhere, for the gov’t. The drugs you take for your illnesses and the surgical procedures you undergo were not developed by the government. They were developed primarily by the private sector.
What’s wrong with forcing people to do good? Well, to start, who gets to decide what is “good”? I’d like to make that decision myself. Wouldn’t you?
Actually, the government provides a lot of financial support for research and development of drugs. Also, you have many drugs developed at public universities, and of course private colleges and universities are also funded heavily by federal money. And the private companies are often prone to working hardest on drugs that are quite similair to ones already in existence, meaning that government institutions are where much of the true innovating is happening.
John Mace if you ruled the US, would you abolish public education and health care? I don’t mean to put words in your mouth but that’s the impression I get.
To further respond to the OP, consider this: We took over Afghanistan on the basis that it was harboring terrorists, thus threatening American lives. This I think falls under your idea of what a government should do.
If a government is threatening American lives through being unable to effectively fight AIDS, why isn’t our government just as justified in helping that government fight AIDS as we are in fighting terrorism or any other danger found abroad? In other words, why is the US allowed to spend money on bombs but not hospitals?
To a certain extent it is just more bait & switch from Bush. He makes a big announcement about spending $15 billion fighting AIDS in Africa. The announcement smooths some of the hard feeling with our European allies. But the US Congress hasn’t appropriated one thin dime of these funds yet. They may or may not appropriate the $15 billion over the next 5 or so years.
Even if the money is finally appropriated, I hardly think the US Treasury is going to write a check in the amount of $1 billion to Botswana. More likely our tax dollars would be spent on:
American-manufactured AIDS medications
AIDS research that probably would have been done anyway [with the money being steered to politically connected companies/universities]
new treatments that would not/could not be done here in the United States
So the United States ends up doing good, by doing well.
John, there are very good reasons for doing this from a U.S. interests standpoint.
The Bush administration has correctly realized a very important thing: In an era where anyone with a little willpower and ingenuity can get weapons capable of killing thousands, world stability goes WAY up in importance. You just can’t afford to have an entire continent of desperate people lacking hope. Desperate people do desperate things. So the Bush administration is taking a three-pronged attack to the terrorism problem: Overthrow states that will not reform, pressure other states into reforming, and start to sow conditions that will make it unlikely that other states will follow the path into repression and terror.
Hearts and minds. This is a big, magnanimous gesture. That means something to some people. Not bin laden or other fanatics, and probably not even the most rabid America-haters in Europe. But to those sitting on the fence, those moderate populations in places like Indonesia, India, South Korea, and Canada, it puts the U.S. back on the moral high ground. That leads to political capital which can be spent to the advantage of the United States.
It’s the right thing to do. I believe the U.S. should have intervened in Rwanda, and I supported Clinton’s interventions (most of them, anyway). I don’t believe the rich have a moral obligation to help the poor, but I do believe the rich can be magnanimous. In other words, it’s not a moral imperative, but it IS a virtue.
I hope you’ll join me in saying that we should intervene in the Congo and Zimbabwe: both being more pressing from a humanitarian standpoint than Iran (though none of them hold a candle to North Korea from a security standpoint). These places are out of control in ways far more harmful to the stability of Africa than even the AIDS crisis is.
I knew you’d find some way to blame America for everything, you godless hippie.
Sam: It doesn’t bother you at all that this is essentially forced charity?
A true leader would be able to do this thru the private sector. Bush could use the famous bully pulpit to convince corporate sponsors and private individuals to accomplish this. I guess if I had a 2 trillion dollar budget I could write a check for 15 billion dollars as well. It’s easy to be “magnanimous” with other people’s money.
I understand the strategic angle and the whole PR aspect. I’ll even concede that Bush has a real concern for the people he is trying to help in addition to those two things. I’d like to see a more creative solution than just writing a check with my money.