How is foreign aid supposed to work?
I beleive it can if it includes the transfer of technologies and know-how that would advance health and education in the pooreer countries. The manufactoring of hospital supplies and medications being a reevant example here.

But why are these countries consistently poor? If Germany and Japan can reconstruct in a decade or so- with help from Marshall aid- why has Africa stagnated?

We well know what Kisenger wrote about the need for Africa's population to be culled-is there some like here?.

Another way would be to remove restrictions on their export of locally produced materials.

Dr Nick, I think that David Osterfeld, Associate Professor of Political Science at St. Joseph's College in Indiana said it better than I could:

"The total net transfer of capital, private and public, from the West to the Third World between 1950 and 1985 amounted to the staggering sum of over $2 trillion in 1985 prices. Private investment accounted for about 25 percent of this total, but its share has fallen from about 40 percent in the 1950s to only about 16 percent in the 1980s. The $2 trillion . . . was enough to purchase not only all the companies on the New York Stock Exchange but, in addition, the entire American farm system. What has this massive transfer accomplished?"

"In practically every case, the influx of "aid" has been immediately followed by the emergence of a massive, unproductive, parasitic government bureaucracy whose very existence undercuts the recipients' ability for sustained economic growth".

So Nick, that's $2,000,000,000,000. Nick, why not get the African accountant to tell us where some of that has gone. I wonder if it's in the same bank as Mr Soeharto's US$ billions.

We have allowed a cargo cult to flourish to such an extent that aid is now factored into the budgets of third world countries. And when it doesn't arrive Kofi puts on his angry face and berates us.

Dr Nick, I wish you people would make up your mind. One topic here at OLO scolds us for not spending enough on preventing or limiting the damage of hurricanes like Katrina while your topic chides us for not throwing money at third world countries.

Throwing money at the problem only makes it worse.In 1970 the world pop was 3 billion.It will soon be 9 billion.Producing more food and handouts will produce more people and more misery.How about some effort put into pop control?

I believe Australia is standing between the lines when it comes to delivering Aid. The greatest crime is not just Howards basking on the global stage alongside the most prominant of world leaders, it is the failure of his government to work harder on contributing to a dynamic strategic approach that could build capacity effectively around the prospect of improvement. Here I point to the lack of Australian intellectual capital (on board) when it comes to touching the pressing areas of funding allocation and finding a way through the technical economic blockages, tied to most forms of debt driven Aid.

I am horrified by the hypocrisy. The safe political utterings before our public which are obvious in their submissive regard toward the influence of the US allied sources.

Underlying world development theories are recent strategies where it is thought that hostilities need to be contained through the building of economic partnerships, and that it is through economics, that the world can control the onslaught of another cold war.

As you cited how Ausaid, the Australian Government’s aid organ, unashamedly holds “advancing the national interest” ahead of “helping developing countries reduce poverty.”, it is not difficult to see how this economic stategy works for the developed, and the developing regions at the dire expense of under-developed regions, where the need is greatest and in many cases are central regions reflecting the highest degree of corruption and civil unrest.

I unfortunately agree; "John Howard does not understand world poverty. His contribution is one designed to best serve his own government’s conservative policy. His view of alleviating world poverty as a mere aspiration means that, at best, it will remain a vain hope".

For a poor country... (we must be~ we have a multi-layered taxation system with GST,fuel, PAYE,stamp duty, etc to fund so called short-falls in our budget at State & Fed Level) we send a lot of money overseas! Why are we so hard on those at home? Those very same people who are raising the money ~ the billions the Govt. is sending for overseas aid ~ are not entitled to pensions, but must be self funded retirees..

M.Brown of Craigieburn wrote in the Herald Sun Letters.. on 22/9/05:

John Howard has announced that he will double Austrailia's foreign aid.
Perhaps he would like to explain why my husband and I who are self funded retirees, are only allowed to earn $6000 each year free of taxation, despite the fact that we are now taxed GST on most items previously tax free.
Australia's population could do with a lot less taxation - and more personal aid.

I can only agree! Charity Begins At Home ~ if we can afford to send billions overseas ~ we need to be a) paying less tax b) receiving more benefit from the taxes we pay. If governments here can send billions overseas - we do not need to have Superannuation - the Govt can pay us as they used to do. We are being ripped off! Go the dole-bludgers! They may have worked something out, that most of the tax-paying mugs here haven't! You DON'T Get What You Pay For!

Excerpt from Article for this forum:

Howard announced a one billion dollar increase in our aid budget over five years, raising the bar from its current level of 0.28 percent of Gross Domestic Product.

Tell me more Ms DeVille? The target is .07% and ... it is the lack of innovation towards intellectual capital on solving the technical side of the economic problem - ie: markets, debt, things like the VAT interest, that makes me truely sad.

Nick Coatsworth returned from the Congo earlier this year with some sense of hope. I don't know why. He would have emerged from a society which is functionally desperate by any indicators applying in Australlian society. Indicators numerous and well known to all who watch news bulletins and have concern.
While we in socially-progressive Australia seem to have difficulties in achieving adequacy of education, training, and health care for our children, with an average of 1.7 children per woman, how reasonable were Coatsworth's hopes for the Congo? A place where each of its women, the prime providers for children, has to stretch her inadequate resources over four times the number that are dependent upon her better-served Australian counterpart.
What hope, when almost half of the population are below, or just reaching, 15 - about the age of puberty? How can the administration of such a country arrange adequate governance with such a proportion of dependents, whether they are the mothers or the children themselves? How, when they are demonstrably failing to cope presently, might they be expected to cope better while the present mix of population is unlikely to rapidly change; nor being given assistance to change, or minimise increase; while they are on target to double in just one more generation?
How blind, a putative Master of International Public Health with a humanitarian focus, to author an article on such a distressing subject - yet fail to give any mention to the factor of population pressure and its continuing increase. No acknowledgement at all of its recognition by the international conference in Cairo in 1994, nor the massive resiling from responsibilities taken on there: Responsibilities to assist developing nations to contain their own populations within numbers for which they could provide.
Was it blindness, or some perverse pleasure in ensuring a continuance of need for the practice of triage?

Let us ask; "why can't Australia" make progress on it own under-developed infrastructure. Be it the "chaos" within the TAX system or on the obvious socio-economic issues that are associated with uneven development indices, as a result of having an unequally distribution of national wealth. The strain, of not facing the predicament, will mean we transfer the problem over decades, to future generaltions, at home and abroad.

Why are we allowing governments to rip the guts out of community?

Why are we not able to embrace openly the knowledge we have about the changing population trends, and build a reciprocal socio-economic and cultural framework, that is inclusive of all civilians? One that encourages gain from - building capacity round livelihood indices, to counter-act the deficiencies, which presently point us, to the causal elements of increasing social ill, and add (a clumsy) burden to the budget deficit .

I see the problem is not a lack of knowledge, it is about attitude, about who we are among ourselves, (our values and beliefs) as a nation of people, and who we are as a nation in relation to other nations, on issue of "collective responsiblities" of "moral obligation" - and governance? (Local, State,National and International organisation!)

I do not believe that we can not solve our own problems in Australia, and I do not believe we can not help solve the problems of starvation, corruptions, Vat Tax and debt interest and market chaos overseas.

I believe the problem is technical. The need is hampered by the denial to address need, be it on our own door step or abroad