Case Study : ' Bang For Their Buck ' Essay

Ever had that one friend? The one who tries to help, but no matter how hard he tries, he just aggravates the situation. This friend, Steve, insists he is helping, and those around, too, would support that he is indeed helping. But Steve is actually worsening the circumstances. He is like countries who provide foreign aid to less developed countries. Foreign aid, defined as “the international transfer of capital, goods, or services from a country or international organization for the benefit of the recipient country or its population,” can be military, economic, or humanitarian (“Foreign”). It is often granted to less developed countries in order to evoke government reforms or to stimulate economic growth. However, foreign aid neither elicits government reform, nor does it consistently and reliably stimulate economic growth; therefore, the United States should discontinue providing foreign economic aid.

On one side of the issue the supporters of developmental aid believe that the United States is doing more than a great job by offering economic assistance to countries that need help to develop. These individuals are aware of the unfortunate poverty levels in many countries abroad. They believe that it is the duty of the American people to help reduce the poverty levels in countries in which people live with less than a dollar a day. In fact, some supporters believe that the U.S. is not offering enough support to the poorer countries. Many have

Riddell, Roger C. 2007. Does Foreign Aid Really Work? 1st ed. OXFORD: Oxford University Press, USA.

Hardin informs us that the well- intentioned of helping is actually counterproductive. When the United States gives international aid to third world countries, we cause more suffering in the end. The poor country that receives aid is not growing wealthy or

The JSTOR Review by Kristian Hoelscher on the book Dead Aid elaborates how Moyo “half-right” in her critique of foreign aid nonetheless Hoelscher mentions how “her review is unfortunately shallow and lacking nuance” in the areas of acknowledging the successes of aid in Africa. Additionally, another review of JSTOR by S.U. Fwatshak reiterated how “aid could not have been the fundamental reason why Africa poor… African’s problem are rooted in a mosaic of a factors (157).” These two reviews provided to be good sources to shed light on the issues of foreign aid and to counter-balance the Moyo’s critique on aid. Lastly, the book is quite short with only one-hundred and eighty-three pages therefore it seemed so like some concepts needed to be elaborated more but were not. On the other hand, the reason I choose this as a source because it does a suitable job in showing the history of aid, speaking on aid effectiveness, and exemplifying the stagnant economic growth (e.g. ten percent Africans are living in poverty in the 1970s compared to seventy-percent now (Moyo 33)). While, I wished the book concentrated more in a section of Africa, such as Sub-Saharan, it was an insightful and factual

Historically, aid has been viewed as a viable and effective response to natural disasters, post-war reconstruction and economic development. Aid has been successful in providing people with food, water, clothing, and medicines after tsunamis and relocating the newly homeless after hurricanes. After World War II, aid in the form of the Marshall Plan undeniably rescued Europe from the throws of economic fallout. For these reasons, politicians, citizens, famous rock stars and even some businesses have advocated aid as a method to increase economic development. Sadly, the results have been far from what was expected. The Africa Progress Panel reported that a 7 percent growth rate is needed to make any considerable progress in poverty reduction

Since the turn of the century, the world has experienced various events that have rendered millions homeless, starving or even without a country. Such events may range from merciless persecution by a ruthless dictator to a furious tsunami that leaves destruction in its wake. In such incidents, it is human nature to help those affected rebuild their lives and find comfort again. As a result, governments spend billions on foreign aid projects aimed at helping populations rebuild themselves after a tragic event. Despite the funding and resources spent on these projects, their success rate is dismal. Coyne’s book explains the flaws of state-led humanitarianism. Using case studies that range from Afghanistan to Haiti, Coyne successfully argues against state aid proving that continuing with that approach is likely to remain unsuccessful. He further demonstrates that state aid fails to fulfill its mandate because the parties involved are either too arrogant or ignorant to acknowledge fundamental flaws of state-led aid. He says that the influence of agenda driven opinions of blurs the objectives of financial assistance from the beginning. Since governments focus on what they should, rather than what they can do, the goals of the most aid-funded projects in affected nations remain unrealized.

Feldman and Steenbergen bring up irritants about governmental aid programs to inform the readers as to why they are against them in the first place. By including this altering opinion in their argument, the article is now an argument with two opposing sides.

According the US Census Bureau, the United States spent $44.957 billion on foreign aid in 2009, in terms of total foreign assistance. Of that, just over $11 billion was military assistance. The nations that received the most foreign aid were Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel and Pakistan. Some aid went to financial institutions and to aid agencies, and therefore is difficult to classify by country. By regions, Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East were the biggest recipients of foreign aid. The recipients and types of foreign aid are indicative of priorities that the US government has with respect to foreign relations. As many people applaud high levels of foreign aid from the US to poor countries around the world, foreign aid also has its critics. From a domestic perspective, criticisms include the argument that this money would be better used in the United States, and the libertarian argument against all forms of foreign aid in general. It is worth noting that many critics of foreign aid still support aid to support military objectives, which includes the four largest recipient of aid (Traub, 2011). External critics of foreign aid argue that such aid has generally failed to achieve its objectives, for a variety of reasons ranging from rapidly increasing populations to corruption to the promotion of dependency relationships (Bovard, 1986). This paper will analyze US foreign aid in the context of its success and failures and make the case that the United States

An innocent child begs her mother for food, a single tear running down her cheek. The fires of life that once filled the girl’s eyes slowly begin to fade. The mother embraces her child, tells her the pain will be gone within a few moments. As she holds her, she feels the warmth slip away; her little girl’s body becomes engulfed by empty coldness. So much could have been done to save that life, from local government support to foreign aid, yet not enough aid was given. And so, society is posed with the question of “How much aid should wealthy nations provide for developing countries?” This paper will look at the philosophy behind this question by analyzing two articles.

More than 3 million lives have been saved every year through programs relating to foreign aid. In addition to, more than 50 million couples are using family planning because of the aid. Lives are being saved every day because of the little bit of money we take out of our paychecks. If we can as a country can help save lives, then that’s something we should be willing to do. Statistics continue to show that we’re saving lives, not hurting them. For example, “During the decade, under-5 child mortality declined from a mean of 109.2 to 72.4 deaths per 1,000, or 36.8 fewer deaths among those children in the countries that received the most health aid, the researchers found (a 34 percent reduction). In the countries receiving the least, under-5 mortality fell from 31.6 to 23.2 deaths per 1,000, or 8.4 fewer deaths per 1,000 live births (a 26 percent reduction), the researchers reported”(Richter). During this decade, we saved more lives than we caused harm to, therefor foreign aid is being put to a good use and it is being used for exactly what it should be. The more Aid donated to the health and well-being of other countries, the brighter future we can have as a

   Many critics of America's policies on foreign aid claim foreign countries have used America to build themselves up to a position of self-reliance, then refused to make promised or implied concessions to the US, when they no longer see the need to cater to American interests any longer.  The aid is justified partly by a sense of charity and responsibility towards the world, but there were also political

When I chose Brazil as the subject country for examining its foreign aid received, I ran into a bit of a dilemma. Brazil has evolved from being a foreign aid recipient and less developed nation of the past, to become a major foreign aid provider in recent years. This fact places this emerging country in a unique and interesting position as both a donor and recipient as of 2010 records reveal and Brazil’s donor status is on the increase since this new “middle-of-the-road” development status for this intriguing country emerged.

In an article published by The Spectator entitled “Why foreign aid fails – and how to really help Africa,” Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson condemn the current system of foreign aid granting and suggest an alternate, more efficient solution. They support their points by deducing that “extractive institutions,” in which incentives for economic prosperity are few, are the culprit of enduring poverty; by providing examples where foreign aid failed to reduce poverty (Congo, Angola, Syria, and South Africa); by giving testimonies from former British Prime Minister David Cameron and multilateral institutions concerning the effectiveness of foreign aid; and by advising an alternative solution to combating poverty, involving diplomatic relations

As the world enters a globalized age, the interactions between nations become increasingly important. What was once a ‘all for one, one for all’ mentality, with nations acting mostly in their own best interests -barring, of course, the alliances made between nations, often military in nature acting against a common foe- has become a question of the common good. What obligation to help, if any, do countries with well developed economies and militaries have towards those nations in need? Nations that form economic alliances with other nations develop more quickly than they could have on their own, and aid from a greater international power can make a large difference in the economy and livelihood of developing countries. The United States, annually, donates somewhere between $30-50 billion to foreign aid, in an effort to help those nations that find themselves torn by war, disease, poverty, a lack of education, and a myriad of other problems. The question becomes one of what role does the United States play in foreign affairs, particularly that concerning foreign aid, and whether the United States is obligated to play that role, and ‘do its part,’ so to speak, on the global stage. Several factors will be examined to determine the answer, namely; the United States foreign aid budget and what the funds actually do, the comparison between the private and public sectors of foreign aid, the benefits of trade versus aid, and the roles of other developed nations in foreign aid.