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The Forum > Article Comments > Save lives or save money? > Comments

Save lives or save money? : Comments

By Maree Nutt, published 21/5/2012

Today, the eradication of extreme poverty is still thought to be impossible, possibly because rich countries like ours consider support for poor nations a discretionary luxury.

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In many countries 'curing' poverty is largely a matter of obtaining a democratic government and establishing free trade and the rule of law. But this cannot be done simply by handing even more money to the current kleptocratic rulers. It requires either wholesale invasion and regime change -- and that usually doesn't work out too well -- or a slow and enlightened application of political and democratic pressure. Throwing money at successful thieves and swindlers will just encourage others to go into the same trade.

A sensible first step would be to deny access to the UN -- or any other international body -- to all non-democratic regimes.
Posted by Jon J, Monday, 21 May 2012 7:43:36 AM
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I also am disappointed that the Gillard government has opted to slow down on its foreign aid commitment.
However I would also remind Marie Nutt that poverty would largely be alleviated in the Third World if various 'government officials' did not siphon off much of the aid intended for poverty alleviation.
The recent publication 'Dead Aid' by Dambisa Moyo is very enlightening on this subject.
Posted by nswnotill, Monday, 21 May 2012 9:00:44 AM
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Jon J has it right. Poverty is brought most often brought about by corruption. It is no co-incidence that the least corrupt countries are also some of the wealthiest.

We aren't wealthy because we are 'lucky' we are wealthy because we have a more rigorous system of laws, governance and justice and a democratic system.

Corruption Index: http://www.transparency.org/country

High Corruption goes with poverty, low life expectancy and high crime rate.

Simply injecting money into a corrupt system is not the answer.
Posted by Atman, Monday, 21 May 2012 11:20:45 AM
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Despite the difficult operating environment, Australia has a proud record of delivering highly effective aid and development assistance in the Asia Pacific. It is very disappointing that PM Gillard and Treasurer Wayne Swan chose not to honor their commitment to increase overseas aid to 0.5% of gross national income. In their political calculations they must have assumed that Australian's public and the political establishment do not care that much if the aid budget if reduced.
The truth is that most Australians and the rest of the world expect our government to reach the 0.7% target as has been done by affluent countries in Scandinavia and elsewhere. How can Australia hope to get a seat at the UN Security Council later this year when it is undermining its own credentials. Australia must make poverty reduction a top priority if we want to see sustainable peace and stability in the world. Otherwise we will continue to run around extinguishing bush fires which we could have prevented in the first place.
Posted by Macedonian advocacy, Monday, 21 May 2012 11:28:43 AM
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I must agree with the bulk of the posters that although the Gillard Government could have increased aid, the solution to poverty does not involve increased aid as such. In fact, due to the apparent failure of multi-billions of dollars poured into very poor countries over the years, the whole issue of spending on aid is now being kicked around quite a bit. One school of thought, put forward by some Africans is that aid should be cut entirely.

Not many people would agree with that approach, but it should give the author an idea of where the debate is heading.
Posted by Curmudgeon, Monday, 21 May 2012 11:41:43 AM
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I recently watched a documentary about poverty in the Phillipines.
A thirty seven year old woman was in hospital, delivering her
eighth child. Her husband had no job and they simply cannot feed
all those kids. She desperately wanted her tubes tied, but was
denied this procedure. Religion in the Phillipines interferes
with the poor receiving family planning.

It does not matter how much money we throw at foreign aid. Until
we start to address some of these root causes of poverty, it is
frankly nothing but peeing in the breeze.

What we need to do is make sure that they 4 billion already donated,
is spent a bit more wisely. Include family planning and spend
less on overpaid consultants.
Posted by Yabby, Monday, 21 May 2012 12:09:27 PM
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The real difficulty facing humanity is not the "eradication of extreme poverty", it's the eradication of extreme wealth.
Posted by Squeers, Monday, 21 May 2012 2:25:00 PM
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Just wondered, Marie, is anyone stopping you from giving money to those poorest of the poor?

It seems that you find it pretty acceptable to dip your hand in other people's pockets and fetch the money from there...
Posted by Yuyutsu, Monday, 21 May 2012 7:05:33 PM
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These articles on foreign aid really make me laugh. Any money spent on foreign aid will have to be borrowed by the government. Any foreign exchange spent will have to be borrowed from the Chinese. Why should we have to borrow money from the Chinese to give to the third world? The thought of spending money to get a seat at the UN really sends me into hysterics. It is almost as good as reading human rights reports on Australia penned by such distinguished UN members as North Korea, Syria and Lybia.

As mentioned by others, the world population explosion nullifies any portion of aid not already siphoned off by the dictators.

Hopefully the republicans will win the presidential election and pull the US out of the UN, and by cutting off its funding send it into bankruptcy. The thought of all those UN fat cats in a soup kitchen queue really turns me on. The coming world depression (entirely the work of the european political elite) will help us sort out all these spoungers and return to some sort of reality.
Posted by plerdsus, Monday, 21 May 2012 8:00:08 PM
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The author might have nice motives but ignores that poverty is spiritual and physical. Billions have been poured into indigenous projects in Australia and yet communities still live worse than many South African shanties. More money as a mantra is also used to improve education, health services etc etc. Unfortunately it ain't that simple.
Posted by runner, Monday, 21 May 2012 8:18:10 PM
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http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=13635#236097

We are, here's us here.
http://help-cambodia.blogspot.com/

We fund all of our expenses from our savings and only use the donations (from friends, anyone want to be a "friend") to help out.

I would hope I can speak with some credence as we are here, doing the business, not advocating Government throw money at it. I can readily assure many that a lot of the Aid money Governments spend is a COMPLETE waste.

I think this is where Government should be looking, "ferreting" out via their Embassies (if they ever stepped out of their air-conditioned Lexus that are endemic with Government and NGO workers here) and helping out some of the superb work many local ex-pats (with their indigenous helpers) in the developing countries do, apply a modicum of fiscal propriety to where the money goes and that's it. We can't even collect our mail without being extorted to hand over a bribe before we get it, how much of the Millions in Government Aid goes to lifestyle funding by the corrupt locals here ?

Welfare can be extremely dangerous and corrupting, both in the developed World and in the developing World, so we give nothing away for free, it has to be worked for. We know that not everyone is equal, so we try and identify those we can help and help them, that is, those who want to help themselves but lack the means, we don't want money to help everyone as everyone can't be helped, something some people refuse to recognise.

No, we're not a registered charity, the Aus. Governments crazy bureaucracy makes it near impossible, so we may run foul of the law. We hope by being completely open and allowing every one to follow every donation and view where it is spent we will win the day (cough). It is always ironic to us that the Corby family can raise Millions from the public (and be secret about the funds) to help an Aussie drug mule and yet deserving people segregated by a geopolitical boundary are not helped and barely survive.
Posted by Valley Guy, Friday, 25 May 2012 9:21:40 PM
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Western countries have already wasted enough money trying in vain to lift the Third World, mainly Africa, out of its abject poverty. If it was not for the West's enduring sense of white guilt, we Westerners would have come to the conclusion long ago that pumping billions into Africa and other Third World basketcases in an effort to eliminate poverty is a largely futile exercise.

Whether we like it or not, national wealth - as measured by GDP per capita - is strongly influenced by the attributes of a country's population, namely intelligence. There is a definite correlation between a nation's GDP per capita and its national average IQ. And as long as there are significant differences in average IQ between different nations and peoples, there will continue to be global inequality.

As Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen found in their book "IQ and Global Inequality", higher national IQ correlates significantly with a number of factors, such as higher GDP per capita, higher adult literacy rate, higher gross tertiary education enrollment ratio, higher life expectancy at birth, higher level of democratization, higher Human Development Index, higher Gender-related Development Index, higher economic growth rate, lower Gini index of inequality in income or consumption, lower population below the $2 a day international poverty line, lower measures of undernourishment, lower maternal mortality ratio, lower infant mortality rate, higher Corruption Perceptions Index, higher Economic Freedom of the World ratings, higher Index of Economic Freedom ratings, and more narrow population pyramid (MU Index).

The take home message here - as harsh as it sounds - is that we must face the fact of differences in potential for development; differences that are unlikely to ever disappear completely. The gap between the rich and poor nations will not be erased easily, and no amount of Western aid will ever be enough to totally eradicate poverty.
Posted by drab, Friday, 1 June 2012 3:16:20 AM
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