----- Original Message ----- From: "Luke Weiger" <lweiger at umich.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Saturday, July 27, 2002 7:03 PM Subject: Foreign aid
> Obviously the potshots at the anti-globalization movement won't go over
> particularly well here. However, I think it's fairly clear that sextupling
> foreign aid would do more good than just about anything many on the left
> agitate for:
> http://www.thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020729&s=easterbrook072902
>
====================
Unless the sextupling of that aid continued to contribute to greater net flows of capital to "the North" in the manner suggested by Lloyd Bentsen when he testified before the Senate in 1993:
"Last year, the US contributed $1.6billion to the multilateral development banks. The banks, in turn, awarded US companies procurement contracts amounting to more than $2.2billion. The difference is 39 per cent. That's a 39 per cent bonus."
Who gets the aid, comprador elites who spend it on guns and the usual paraphernalia of kleptocracies or citizens who can develop networks of production to meet their educational, health care and other technological/organizational needs, including massive land reforms, is far more important than the "throw more money at the problem" approach.
Ian