Generosity

Why should we have to pay for projects in foreign countries with our tax dollars? Well, we don't have to. It is a decision. At the moment the decision costs $15 per month each, $200 per year.

The United States represents around 25% of global GDP, with around 4% of the global population. The Canadians and Qataris give more, per capita, to poorer countries than we do. The Irish and Germans and Dutch give twice as much as we do, the Norwegians six times as much – but we're bigger, so our decisions matter the most. According to court proceedings this week, 90% of USAID awards under review have been terminated.

The United Kingdom decided to commit seriously to overseas development in 1997, when a new Labour government swept in with clear voter instructions to be ambitious. Many smart people left private sector jobs and spent their most productive years thinking through how to make that commitment cost-effective. They found ways to be efficient and kind. High standards on spending meant it took a decade to build up to the goal of 0.7% of GDP. Little fraud, little abuse, many lives saved. Many economies have grown, and many kids have been vaccinated against measles and tetanus, as a result of that work. Five years ago, the commitment was dropped to 0.5% as a "temporary measure" for COVID. This week, the Prime Minister announced that the UK can only afford 0.3%.

It is quicker to destroy than to build, in this latest round a hundred times quicker.

Some aid sucks, some achieves nothing. The simple stuff is known to work, like peacekeeping in conflict zones, public health programs, and, increasingly, cash transfers to poor households. Lots of aid is in the middle, and it’s hard to be sure when making a grant – maybe it’ll spur the next Green Revolution, maybe it’ll lead to some unused seeds in farm sheds. But child mortality used to be high, now it is lower. AIDS used to kill millions every year, now it kills hundreds of thousands. A lot of that change is due to international aid paying for bed nets, antiretroviral drugs, and vaccines. Paying to make sure you can see a doctor when you’re pregnant.

Extreme poverty is not inevitable. Economic growth is occurring today in most, but not all, lower income countries. That was not true in the 1960s. As outsiders, we can try to help boost it in the spirit of kinship – or sit back and see what happens. Ending extreme poverty is not a boulder we have to push uphill forever. It has a finite ticket price, because (as most though not all economists agree) people generally don't slip back under once they get out of it. It is our decision whether to split the bill.

So why help? Because we can. Hundreds of thousands of people die of TB in India each year, a preventable disease that used to kill thousands in the US and UK too. Life matters, other people matter, and it doesn't cost us much to help. No one is forcing us. The US and the UK, two of the richest societies that have ever existed, can decide.