Development Aid - Prolonging Poverty At Taxpayers Expense

"foreign aid is poor people in rich countries giving money to rich people in poor countries"

Peter Bauer - Libertarian Intellectual

"Handing out aid abroad is traps the recipients into government dependency in the same way that welfare hand outs do at home"

Daniel Thomas - Dissenting Intellectual

Much has been written about this contentious subject by politicians and other interested parties in order to justify their stupefying and destructive waste of money.

Advocates of foreign aid or International Development as its now called, always use emotional blackmail together with images of fly covered, pot bellied African children in order to extract ever growing sums of money from the hard pressed taxpayer.

The American people are among the most generous in the world, donating over $3 billion dollars per year privately to charity. Most American people would be shocked to learn that their government spends mind boggling sums of their money in foreign aid some of which finds its way to countries and regimes that wish them harm.

The British people are equally as generous but because they vehemently oppose their political class extracting money from them under threat of imprisonment, which they then go on to throw at vanity projects and bribery abroad, they are subjected to regular government propaganda which doesn't fool anyone.

Their Prime Minister David Cameron regularly hits the airwaves with his soundbites and slogans trying to justify his personal agenda of doubling foreign aid and enshrining the new figure into law.

The foreign aid lobby wheeled out Mike Florman, a wealthy advocate of taxpayer funded vanity, to try and persuade the British people that regardless of what they say, they really do support David Cameron's foreign aid policy

"the majority of those in the 'DE' socio-economic group thought that aid spending was about right or too low. Crucial C1 voters were less likely to think that aid was too high than those in the AB social group. This reflects a general respect for philanthropy throughout the British population".

That gobbledygook was followed by " the bottom decile gives on average 3% of their budget while the top decile only 1%.

What this bureaucrat is saying is that here's the proof that the British population are generous at heart with the poorest donating more than the wealthier therefore they support Cameron's theft of their money to waste on bolstering his image abroad.

The foreign aid or International Development is an industry in its own right and a corrupt one at that but because its a supposedly noble cause they go about their rotten business without let or hindrance.

The foreign aid propagandists are always selective in their use of statistics. We are informed that a shot of polio vaccine costs a mere $4 and that the hundreds of thousands spent preventing polio is money well spent.

Yes it is but what the propagandists fail to mention is that the aid bureaucrats spent almost a billion of taxpayers dollars on millionaire consultants.  They spend tens of millions on top class hotels, chauffeur driven cars and other luxuries that could feed the starving for years.

According to one statistic consultants charge the Department for International Development ( DfID)
$1,120 per hour which is equivalent to fives times the average annual wage in Malawi.

The British public will be heartened to learn that aid to Pakistan is sheduled to increase by 87% next year. This is the country run by Muslim fanatics that openly promote the downfall of the west, one that gives sanctuary to the Taliban who kill British troops in Afghanistan and was the chosen retirement destination of Osama bin Laden.

They will also be heartened to learn that aid to Nigeria will increase by 79% next year. Nigeria is an  extremely rich  country being the worlds 6th largest oil exporter and it is also regarded as one of the most corrupt countries on the planet.

The American taxpayers are being totally ripped off. A staggering $72 billion and rising in overseas aid annually. When military aid is stripped out that still leaves a whopping $37.7 billion for the consultants and bureaucrats to waste on their vanity projects.

The USAID website contains all the information on their activities but it does take a time to wade through the gobbledygook.

When I read that "Representing indicators and performance trends by strategic goals" it told me that this report was written by a bureaucrat for the benefit of other bureaucrats.

Due to time constraints I was reduced to picking a statistic at random, it was that the American taxpayer funded 40,880 hours of climate change training in Ethiopia.

The American public should be outraged as this is not just waste of money but a criminal waste of money. Here is proof  of the damage that the likes of Al Gore have inflicted on the starving people of Africa with their 'combating climate change' scam which diverts resources from life saving skills to worthless propaganda.

What the Ethiopians and other undeveloped countries need is training in agricultural techniques, crop growing, animal husbandry and other useful skills that will help them to survive and which will make them independent of foreign aid.

It is generally accepted outside the foreign aid industry that is funding programmes that the indigenous government should be funding itself is ineffective and only encourages corruption, entrenches aid dependency and prolongs poverty.

Trade not Aid.