Charity or Empire. Which is best for mankind?

[LoveBucket]

peeled this away from another thread as i was getting in the way of another fight.

just wondering what the national debt for the british ,australia and new zealand are? are any of them operating at a profit? or do they all have a national debt?

I wonder how much america could shave off of the national debt if we would quit giving out all the AID to other country's

I think it is time america start's taking care of herself and fruit the other country's , and it should start with the millions of dollars in AID that is given out each year

hmmm...... isn't it great to be sooo generous?

quoted from:
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions

JOHN PERKINS: Well, the company I worked for was a company named Chas. T. Main in Boston, Massachusetts. We were about 2,000 employees, and I became its chief economist. I ended up having fifty people working for me. But my real job was deal-making. It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan–let's say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador–and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure–a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, “Look, you're not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil.” And today we're going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It's an empire. There's no two ways about it. It’s a huge empire. It's been extremely successful.

http://www.democracynow.org/article..../11/09/1526251

Even if this where true, what does it have to do with the trillions of dollars that the american taxpayer has given to other country's in AID, just to have them spit in our face and burn our flag?

could you give me some examples? i know certain groups resort to flag burning but i'm not really sure if it's the ones who get the aid. .....(added) and is it millions or trillions of dollars in aid? you seem to have upped the ante, so to speak.

so tell me there ole lovebucket, do ya think america is the only country that has corporations that do DIRTY BUSINESS?

nope, we are all at it, i suppose. don't see how that makes it right, though.

I also wonder how many of the stock holders live in other country's besides the USA? You might as well face the fact that this world is being run by corporations, not government's

i agree, but hey kid, this is what mr perkins says... (not me)

"The World Bank provides most of the money that’s used by economic hit men, it and the I.M.F. But when 9/11 struck, I had a change of heart. I knew the story had to be told because what happened at 9/11 is a direct result of what the economic hit men are doing. And the only way that we're going to feel secure in this country again and that we're going to feel good about ourselves is if we use these systems we’ve put into place to create positive change around the world. I really believe we can do that. I believe the World Bank and other institutions can be turned around and do what they were originally intended to do, which is help reconstruct devastated parts of the world. Help -- genuinely help poor people. There are twenty-four thousand people starving to death every day. We can change that."

so, this quote

I think it is time america start's taking care of herself and fruit the other country's , and it should start with the millions of dollars in AID that is given out each year

seems a tad late, as the us (and others) have been fruiting "other countries" for years.

[theent01]

and the percentage of the GDP the US gives in AID is MINISCULE! (0.22% of the GDP http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp ) This puts us as second to worst among developed nations. I don't think it's the aid that's the problem, more like tax cuts for the wealthy and an amazingly costly war.

[KID]

ODA in U.S. Dollars (Millions) ODA as % of GNI
Country 2002 2003 2004 2005 2002 2003 2004 2005


1. Australia 962 1,237 1,460 1,666 0.25 0.25 0.25 0.25
2. Austria 475 503 678 1,552 0.23 0.2 0.23 0.52
3. Belgium 1,061 1,887 1,463 1,975 0.42 0.61 0.41 0.53
4. Canada 2,013 2,209 2,599 3,731 0.28 0.26 0.27 0.34
5. Denmark 1,632 1,747 2,037 2,107 0.96 0.84 0.85 0.81
6. Finland 466 556 655 897 0.35 0.34 0.35 0.47
7. France 5,182 7,337 8,473 10,059 0.36 0.41 0.41 0.47
8. Germany 5,359 6,694 7,534 9,915 0.27 0.28 0.28 0.35
9. Greece 295 356 465 535 0.22 0.21 0.23 0.24
10. Ireland 397 510 607 692 0.41 0.41 0.39 0.41
11. Italy 2,313 2,393 2,462 5,053 0.2 0.16 0.15 0.29
12. Japan 9,220 8,911 8,906 13,101 0.23 0.2 0.19 0.28
13. Luxembourg 143 189 236 264 0.78 0.8 0.83 0.87
14. Netherlands 3,377 4,059 4,204 5,131 0.82 0.81 0.73 0.82
15. New Zealand 124 169 212 274 0.23 0.23 0.23 0.27
16. Norway 1,746 2,043 2,199 2,775 0.91 0.92 0.87 0.93
17. Portugal 282 298 1,031 367 0.24 0.21 0.63 0.21
18. Spain 1,608 2,030 2,437 3,123 0.25 0.25 0.24 0.29
19. Sweden 1,754 2,100 2,722 3,280 0.74 0.7 0.78 0.92
20. Switzerland 933 1,297 1,545 1,771 0.32 0.38 0.41 0.44
21. UK 4,749 6,166 7,883 10,754 0.3 0.34 0.36 0.48
22. USA 12,900 15,791 19,705 27,457 0.12 0.14 0.17 0.


maybe almost 76 billion dollars out of almost 9 trillion of the debt is not enough for us to give away??? ( and thats only over 4 years )

that's 150% more than the uk has given in aid

like I said, sounds like a damn good place to start as far as I am concerned

thank's for the link theent01, just help's me prove my point

[LoveBucket]

i'm sorry kid, but i'm totally missing your point here.

the (incomplete) figures you have pasted above prove what, exactly? it perhaps addresses one your original statements, which was

"I wonder how much america could shave off of the national debt if we would quit giving out all the AID to other country's"

the answer is.. 0.12%,0.14%,0.17% and 0.22% of GNI for years 2002 to 2005. not a lot. in 2005, the usa was narrowly beaten by portugal, as the stingiest aid provider (as a percentage of the U.N. ODA agreed target) in the world.

Note: The U.N. ODA agreed target is 0.7 percent of GNI. Most nations do not meet that target. nations that met or exceeded the target in 2005 are the top 5 on this list:

Net ODA in 2005 as percent of GNI

Norway 0.93
Sweden 0.92
Luxembourg 0.87
Netherlands 0.82
Denmark 0.81
Belgium 0.53
Austria 0.52
UK 0.48
Finland 0.47
France 0.47
Switzerland 0.44
Ireland 0.41
Germany 0.35
Canada 0.34
Italy 0.29
Spain 0.29
Japan 0.28
New Zealand 0.27
Australia 0.25
Greece 0.24
USA 0.22
Portugal 0.21

shame on you portugal

[satan]

Hey if we wanna sort out the US debt we wanna stop getting involved in unwinnable and unjust wars and cut the vast amount wasted on needless, non-functioning and overpriced weapons systems.

[LoveBucket]

kid, the cost of the war in iraq was running at $285,292,478,600 when i checked this site, but the counter is going round kind of quickly. check it out. that's where a lot of the tax dollars are going these days. it's also probably causing more flag burning than giving to charity has ever done.

http://nationalpriorities.org/index....per&Itemid=182