Years of Poems and Spirits

Article (c)first published in Foreign Affairs March/April 2005 (that is by how much I am behind)

Quotes, summaries and comments
(The perception of generosity, the in-effect aid amount)

September 2000, it joined the un in issuing the Millennium Declaration … In March 2002, the United States and the international community adopted the Monterrey Consensus,

U.S. assistance for the world’s poorest countries is utterly inadequate.

official development assistance (oda): in 2003 the United States gave $16.3 billion in net oda, Of that amount, Together, the multilateral and bilateral aid represented 0.15 percent of the
$11 trillion gross national income (gni) of the United States in 2003. In the 2004 U.S. budget—which totaled $2.3 trillion—development assistance represented just 0.7 percent of budgetary expenditures.

These sums are vastly smaller than the American people think they are. In a 2001 survey … by University of Maryland found that Americans, on average, believe that foreign aid accounts for 20 percent of the federal budget.

The Wall Street Journal and others, … reported that private giving … exceeds official giving, but their estimates, … erroneously include $18 billion in private remittances.

the sum of U.S. public and private financial contributions to international development would amount to around $26.6 billion, or just 0.25 percent of GNI.

What is more, U.S. o⁄cial aid for economic development by including a considerable amount of assistance that contributes little or nothing to long-term development … e.g. to strategic countries focuses on nations that have geopolitical importance, such as Colombia, Egypt, Iraq, and
Afghanistan

Food aid: high transaction costs and distorts the local economy by depressing the prices local farmers receive for their goods. Amazingly, nearly half of the money spent on U.S. food aid in 2004 went to cover transport costs rather than the food itself.

According to the author’s calculation:
only $118 million for U.S. in-country operations and direct support for programs run by African governments and communities—just 18 cents for each of the nearly 650 million people in low-income sub-Saharan Africa.

Sachs asks two questions:
1. How much foreign assistance is needed and can be used effectively to achieve transformational development?
2. What is the U.S. capacity to give? or how does U.S. aid stack up against Washington’s promises to poor countries?
(See article for details … he actually found a number to answer question 1!)