USAID is not the sole source of administering AIDS and malaria treatments. No doubt many more people were successfully treated because those treatments exist.
I don't think I understand your point. We shouldn't develop new treatments because one country won't supply them to the entire world for free? Why is it the US's responsibility to treat every disease everywhere in the world? Do these countries not have their own governments?
1) The point is that global health is also about access to a drug, not just existence.
2) We don’t. USA’s foreign aid per capita is not that high (especially now). To mobilize private money for aid, you need a long-term, trusted infrastructure.
3) Countries that receive aid typically do not have functional governments.
> The point is that global health is also about access to a drug, not just existence.
And that point is irrelevant to whether or not we should develop new drugs.
> Countries that receive aid typically do not have functional governments.
Maybe they should work on fixing that, or just dissolve the country and get absorbed into a functional country if they can't manage to create a functional government on their own.
We’ve been providing foreign aid for, what, like 70-80 years now? Have the dysfunctional governments fixed themselves yet? How long should it take? 100 years? 500 years?
Maybe providing aid is just propping up dysfunctional governments by doing their job for them and it would be better in the long run if they were allowed to collapse and be replaced with something that was forced to be functional.
It’s globally useful to eradicate/reduce disease in a region irrespective of whether or not the region’s government becomes stable. Viruses and bacteria mutate and do not care about borders.
I have no fantasies that aid will magically make countries stable.
If it is globally useful then the burden should be spread equally among all the countries on the globe. If the US is providing this service, other countries should compensate us for it.
It’s not an either/or. While we figure out the practical solutions to corruption in impoverished nations, we can /also/ do other work to improve the situation in Earth. And, in doing so, we will make solving the impoverished/corruption problem easier to fix.
We don’t have to figure out a solution to anything in other sovereign nations. Nor, can or should we really impose any functional, non-corrupt government on people who are unable or unwilling to do it themselves, unless you’re willing to go back to full-blown colonialism. The people in the country need to figure it out themselves and decide they want to have a functional government and make it happen. We can’t do it for them.
You’re conflating national building with mitigation of disease. I agree: medical aid is not a substitute for local medical infrastructure and can threaten its development. But aid is not guaranteed to do that. Also, disease is intrinsically bad.
I don't think the US is responsible for providing free healthcare for other countries. It should start doing that for its own people, though. That would be a big step towards being a functional country. Or maybe just not have legislation called "One Big Beautiful Bill". The US is a joke.
You are getting a lot of free stuff, because you own the dollar. That keeps you afloat so far, but I don't think it will last for much longer.
Why do you keeping making posts implying the US provides the bulk of international aid when that is demonstrably not the case (on a % of GDP basis or total dollar amount)?
The point is that a treatment existing does not mean it will be adequately administered. The biggest pool of treatable cases worldwide does not occur where the people with the most ability to pay are.
And a treatment not existing means it will not be administered at all, adequately or not. You need to make the treatment exist first, then you can figure out how to administer it as widely as possible. You can't administer a treatment that doesn't exist.
I don’t disagree with your point. It’s not the US’s responsibility to supply malaria drugs. My point was that it is not for lack of an existing cure that people are dying of malaria or AIDS, in reference to the article.
Personally speaking I wish the US was drastically more involved with providing aid because it can help reduce the impact of individual catastrophies happening everyday.
People keep saying we're the richest country in the history of the world. I think we have a responsibility to practice good old fashioned Christian compassion (with a side of soft power if that's more your thing.)
Either way, individuals are welcome to practice any sort of compassion they want with their own money. The government collects tax dollars from citizens under threat of violence, and their only responsibility should be to use that money to ensure the welfare of its citizens, not to engage in charity work in other countries. If citizens want to do that, have the government collect fewer tax dollars and citizens can give them to charity as they see fit.
Absolutely we aren’t a Christian country. I personally don’t need Christianity to tell me charity for our fellow humans is a good thing. Plus, richest country in the history of the world remember?
The rich in the US enjoy their wealth at the “pleasure” of the lower classes. (And not just the American lower classes.) Those dollars they’re hoarding? Those were created by the people and have value because of the people. So, I’m all for confiscatory taxation to fund humane charitable endeavors and eliminate wealth hoarding. Someone will have to make do with one less yacht I suppose.
Finally, the amount we’re taking about here is a mere pittance. Let’s cut some other wasteful spending first (Pentagon) if you’re looking for savings.
USAID is not just charity. It is a projection of soft power that keeps many countries and world citizens looking up to the USA. It reduces likelihood of terrorist attacks on US citizens.
Among people likely to consider a terrorist attack, USAID is widely considered a front for the CIA to meddle in other countries' governments (and this has been proven to be the case in some instances). Which, if true, makes it a bad front for the CIA, and if false, means it creates more resentment than anything else and does little to reduce the likelihood of terrorist attacks.
>Either way, individuals are welcome to practice any sort of compassion they want with their own money. The government collects tax dollars from citizens under threat of violence, and their only responsibility should be to use that money to ensure the welfare of its citizens, not to engage in charity work in other countries.
Soft power is of obvious immense benefit to citizens of the United States, however you've rejected that in other comments.
The argument otherwise reads like a stereotypical "Not with my tax dollars!" argument. It's always fascinated me, that. Inevitably it's always an impassioned argument, regardless of the funding subject.
In this particular case, a very conservative estimate might put the number of child deaths in the tens of thousands. Reality is probably closer to hundreds of thousands at this point.
I pay taxes, a lot of them. I don't get angry when my taxes are used by the government to keep disadvantaged children in hellish conditions alive.
If you were to express the total cost of USAID's former budget against your tax bill as a binary choice between that and a few hundred thousand kids dying, I suspect it'd be much harder to maintain your current position.
Moreover, consider that central to this issue is the abrupt dismantling of an agency which was critical to global aid flow, and amounted to a rug pull. There was no justification for that.
Hopefully Sam's ASI is more compassionate than people, which frankly isn't a high bar lately.
How about we lower taxes and give money back to the people who earned it? If you want to use your money to save dying children on the other side of the world, you are welcome to do that. If other people have more pressing needs for their money they can do that too.
It seems people are infinitely compassionate when spending someone else’s money.
I think KFC called that the Double Down, but to each their own.
What of the argument against USAID’s rapid disassembly then? Is such an outcome permissible or even desired on account of sparing these funds sooner, aid continuity be damned?
At what speed should it be disassembled? I don't see how dragging things out will help. No matter how slow you go, people who want it to continue are going to say it's too fast. May as well rip the band aid off quickly.
I mean, your plan seems to be:
A. The US should give infinity money to everyone forever and never stop. If anyone ever dies, it's the US's fault for not supporting them enough.
B. If you are going to stop, do it on the schedule of the people who are getting free stuff, and only stop when they decide they don't want free stuff anymore (i.e. never).
A responsible pace that doesn't result in abrupt mass deaths due to the lack of aid continuity.
>A. The US should give infinity money to everyone forever and never stop. If anyone ever dies, it's the US's fault for not supporting them enough.
Nobody said that, but with operating the world's largest aid agency for the better part of a century comes massive responsibility.
>B. If you are going to stop, do it on the schedule of the people who are getting free stuff, and only stop when they decide they don't want free stuff anymore (i.e. never).
You're right. Hopefully those impoverished kids (many of whom are dead now) take some personal responsibility for themselves in the afterlife. To think we'd even entertain pulling their food and medicine on their schedule and not our schedule.
We were trying to have nuanced discussions about these things 10 years ago and were ignored. The time for going slowly was then. Now things are just going to get done.
> You're right. Hopefully those impoverished kids (many of whom are dead now) take some personal responsibility for themselves in the afterlife. To think we'd even entertain pulling their food and medicine on their schedule and not our schedule.
The children? No, but their parents and the other adults running their country. That is who is responsible for providing for them. Americans have their own children they need to take care of and do not need their money seized and sent overseas to take care of other people's children.
And yes, maybe it is a "rug pull" but it was always going to be. It is immoral to engender such dependence in the first place, like keeping someone slightly poisoned so they're constantly sick and dependent on you to take care of them. Let people grow strong so they can take care of themselves and treat with them as equals.
>Americans have their own children they need to take care of and do not need their money seized and sent overseas to take care of other people's children.
You talk as if it's a zero-sum game, as if the two choices are mutually exclusive.
>And yes, maybe it is a "rug pull" but it was always going to be.
It is zero sum. How is it not? This is not an investment. It is not going to create future tax revenue for the US. It is just keeping people barely alive in crippling poverty for a little bit longer than they would otherwise.
IMO it is an investment and it will bring future revenue to the US. Because this fosters working relationship with other countries, countries that we ultimately rely on for their resources. Because they have a working relationship with the US, they're willing to give us some pretty sweet deals.
If you look at Africa, it has the most wealth by resources out of any continent. It's also the poorest continent nominally. We're getting a lot of good stuff at INSANE discounts.
What I'm describing is, of course, colonialist in nature. The US is an empire, not a nation. But, the hope is that as we help those countries develop they can help us stay developed, and we can eventually reach some mutually beneficial equilibrium. Instead of exploitation.
But, currently, the relationship is exploitative. It's a bit wild to me that you legitimately think the US, of all countries, is being exploited. No bubba... no. We do the exploiting. Everything you own is build with layers and layers of global exploitation built into it. You have a few hundred slaves working for you as we speak.
I don't think I understand your point. We shouldn't develop new treatments because one country won't supply them to the entire world for free? Why is it the US's responsibility to treat every disease everywhere in the world? Do these countries not have their own governments?