Originally Posted By: JHZR2
But why are they better off??? Why? Because of first-world tax dollars driving technology? Because of charity, much (billions) coming out of my tax dolars? Handouts? Wheat? immunizations? technology?
What brought the rest of the world up was our charity and business decisions in chasing a cheaper laborer... from which the lower 95% or so benefit, and the upper 5% or so profit on.
Those who profit do better... those who benefit, just benefit for the widget they bought at that moment. Like I said in another thread... they danced as the titanic sunk.
So my thought is that WE brought the rest of the world up... by our practices and our decisions. At cost to us. Now, meanwhile we were accumulating debt like nobody's business. Debt = cannot afford... So we were allowing the upper 5% to profit, so the lower 95% could "benefit", meanwhile writing checks that they could not cash, in the form of the national debt.
Would SS and medicare last a LOT longer had the money been put away instead of spent? Would half of the issues be so if we hadnt indebted ourselves to the point of no return?
We brought them up, with the sweat of our brows and the taxes from our pockets. Some profited, some "benefitted". Only very few win, even if most seem to maintain the status quo via education and hard work.
Meanwhile our poor decisions errode the ability to sustain.
You bring up good points but for scale. We give away ~$26 billion a
year. A lot of money to be sure, but fairly small in comparison to our GDP and certainly the Global GDP. So that is far from driving the global economy.
What if we didn't do the Marshall plan? Just left Europe on it's own after WWII. Would we have been better off? Would we have the trading partners that we have now? (And the economic activity) Would the Soviets have rolled over the border and taken over?(Probably) And that would have cost us how much? (Both in money and lives)
I'm not a fan of foreign aid but I believe that it is necessary where our national security is benefited.
You are also missing that the freedom this country demonstrated to the world and helped to bring freedom to billions of people that also help their economic condition. As Panda pointed out, Warlords (powerful, corrupt government) do not benefit the people much.
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I feel that there must be "levels" or groups or classes of people, because there is a natural distribution in everything, intelligence, health and drive included.
I agree. That's why I said that there will be unemployment no matter what you do.
