Foreign Aid Essay

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As time progresses humankind seeks to better itself. We strive to make life easier, faster, and more efficient. Currently we have telescopes that can see objects light years away, satellites that can track you around the planet, cars that adjust the seat and steering wheel to separate drivers, and computers that fit in your hand and perform a million calculations a second. But not everyone in this world has this technology. In parts of the world there are people who are still advancing, they are hundreds of years behind the technological leaders of this world. They only have the simple hand tools we discarded decades ago. They might have cars and trucks but those are technologies developed elsewhere. These people are falling behind in the world and appear to be falling faster. The people in the country are hungry and in need of jobs but we cannot be responsible for their welfare. We cannot make them dependant on our handouts they need to become educated and learn to support themselves within their borders. United States foreign aid is a bad thing because it hurts their economies, creates over-population, and we spend money that could be used closer to home.

United States aid hurts Third World countries because we blanket them in security and their economic problems remain hidden. Their failing economic system will not collapse as long as we keep feeding them money. The point of foreign aid is to help the country "get back on its feet", and they never will if they never fix their broken economic system. The country can sit and ignore the underlying problems because they no longer have to worry about the screwed up system they have, as long as the United States keeps pumping the money in they wont have to worry. This will trap the United States into unending aid. We will never turn our back on a country in need, and if they start to fail because we withdraw our money we will just reinstate it. "Between 1945 and 1983 the U.S. gave away $321 billion in foreign assistance, concessional loans, military aid, and humanitarian assistance." (Cato Policy Report, 1991) The Clinton administration task force admitted that, "Despite decades of foreign assistance, most of Africa and parts of Latin America, Asia and the Middle East are economically worse off today than they were 20 years ago." (Conservative Chronicle, 1994) United States financial aid does not help the problem it stabilizes it until it's withdrawn.

Another factor of foreign aid that hurts the aided country is over-population. The biggest cause of over population is sending foreign countries supplies of food. The land can only support so many people and their technology does not allow for surplus. Naturally when you run out of food the population will cease to grow. Adding food to a country increases the amount of people that can live in the country. Because there is more available food the population will grow thereby crowding the country causing a scarcity of resources such as clean water, growing room for food, and jobs. When the availability of food increases people become less dependent on their private farms. This can allow them the opportunity to move into the cities causing over-crowding and increasing the size of slums. If the United States continues to give food to these countries the population will continue to grow thus increasing the demand for food. What needs to occur is farmers in the country need to increase the amount of food the farms yield so they can support themselves. To quote Mr. Slattery, "If you give a man a fish he's not hungry for a day, if you teach a man to fish he will never be hungry again."

A final reason why we shouldn't aid Third world countries is, if the government would stop sending supplies and money to foreign countries there would be less money within the country. Money that we could use to use therefor allowing us to get out of our deficit, create jobs, and give more money to the poor people of our country. The amount of food that exported to needy countries can be used to stop starvation in our country. We have this enormous surplus of food that can be used just as well here as abroad. The people in starving countries need to learn how to maximize their food production and create the surplus needed to allow them time to educate themselves. Free handouts affect the country that is giving and receiving. We lose food that can be given to our needy and it helps inflate their population. "Government expenditures on foreign aid as a proportion of the GDP grew from nineteen percent in 1961 to thirty-five percent in 1985." (Cato Policy Report, 1991)

On the flip side there are some reasons why we should aid other countries in need. Foreign aid remains an extension of the American character. It is human nature to help others in need. Americans feel compassion for poverty stricken people, and they want to try and raise the living status of "less-fortunate" people to a level similar to their own. Look...

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