Comments on: Colombia chooses the Venezuela/Cuba way

By: om

om — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 15:53:31 +0000

There is a simple easy “answer” to most problems, unfortunately it isn’t correct. (Will Rogers?)

By: Mike K

Mike K — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 15:29:57 +0000

That’s not why Latin America has been lagging economically for 200 years.

It has been lagging because most (except Brazil) were Spanish colonies. The culture that was embedded was not the Protestant ethic that built, England, Holland and America.

John Tyler we see the neocon drive to spend money on everyone but our own citizens.

Art Deco on June 24, 2022 at 10:36 am said:

If a nation needs foreign aid for more than ,say 25 or 30 years, that is slam dunk evidence that that form of aid does NOT WORK

And you came by that judgment just how?

Centuries of experience ? We had our own experiment with LBJ.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 15:12:46 +0000

I think two terms now. Used to be just one.

By: Don Mynack

Don Mynack — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 15:07:01 +0000

FYI – Colombia’s presidency is term-limited to a single term.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 14:36:21 +0000

If a nation needs foreign aid for more than ,say 25 or 30 years, that is slam dunk evidence that that form of aid does NOT WORK

And you came by that judgment just how?

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 14:35:06 +0000

This did not require that the USA send billions of $$$ of taxpayer money to have these nations adopt high yield crops.

Borlaug’s research was financed by public agencies, some domestic, some inter-governmental. Its adoption was promoted by these agencies. The issue of your imagination is interesting to you. It’s not of interest generally.

By: om

om — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 14:34:57 +0000

IIRC those high yield Green Revolution crops were developed at the University of Minnesota with a variety of funding sources over decades, those sources included the Feds IIRC. There just might have been some foreign aid monies involved getting those third world farmers to adopt the new seeds and such. Or just maybe some foreign aid involved for “field trials” of the new varieties, just maybe.

It is pretty sure that most of the foreign aid didn’t do any of those maybe things.

There are a few ex foreign service type readers here who may know something if they care to share.

By: JohnTyler

JohnTyler — Fri, 24 Jun 2022 13:32:59 +0000

It was Norman Borlaug’s development of high yield, disease resistant crops that allowed many nations to become self-sufficient in agricultural products, esp. India, Pakistan and Mexico.
This did not require that the USA send billions of $$$ of taxpayer money to have these nations adopt high yield crops.
In fact, the governments of these nations could have purchased these crop seeds with a minimal amount of foreign aid.

When the US spends money at home, the citizens expect it to be spent efficiently and wisely (which, unfortunately, is rarely the case). But this expectation is valid.

So why is it when the USA sends money as foreign aid, such an expectation is derided and any attempt to find proof of the efficacy of foreign aid is considered off limits??

If foreign aid actually improved the lot of the poor in other nations, there would be no need to continue it beyond the first, say, 25 to 30 years.
But here we are, still spending the citizen’s WAGES, for foreign aid to many of the same nations that have been receiving aid for at least this long.

At the end of WWII, the Marshall Plan, brought back much of Europe from the dead. This aid to Europe lasted for what ?? 5 years?, 10 years? at most.
They then got back on their economic feet.
(true, the US taxpayer supplies a totally disproportionate share of NATO’s defense budget).

If a nation needs foreign aid for more than ,say 25 or 30 years, that is slam dunk evidence that that form of aid does NOT WORK and that there are other factors – political and cultural – that are maintaining that nation in a state of economic under performance.
Actually I find it astonishing that anybody does not see this.

By: om

om — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 21:57:20 +0000

Foreign aid, see Green Revolution and international programs for improving yeild if rice, wheat etc. Famines are now political not as much natural (Ukraine as a coming Roosia induced famine).

By: miguel cervantes

miguel cervantes — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 21:48:32 +0000

most of the foreign aid goes to ngo’s like the ones who directed the persecution of the bitkovs and the guatemalan presidents,(another pet peave of mary o’grady who spread antiwestern values, through out the economy, and of course, arms suppliers and other parties, how much reaches the people, well you can measure that with a magnifying glass,

so the atlantic council which funds crowdstrike and other outfits, push certain parties to be funded certain media, and then they get a cut, and alternate parties are cut out,they work with various alphabet agencies, which protect them, see vindman, as prototypical example,