{"id":3413,"date":"2011-03-08T10:22:01","date_gmt":"2011-03-08T17:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.harmonicminer.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/08\/immigration-by-the-numbers-and-what-doesnt-work-to-address-world-poverty\/"},"modified":"2011-03-08T10:24:13","modified_gmt":"2011-03-08T17:24:13","slug":"immigration-by-the-numbers-and-what-doesnt-work-to-address-world-poverty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.harmonicminer.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/08\/immigration-by-the-numbers-and-what-doesnt-work-to-address-world-poverty\/","title":{"rendered":"Immigration by the numbers, and what doesn’t work to address world poverty"},"content":{"rendered":"

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While the video doesn’t make this point, it’s also clear that simply giving money “to poor countries” isn’t going to do a great deal of good.  In any case, while I haven’t been able to track down the source of this quote,”Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of rich countries and giving it to the rich people of poor countries,” there is some truth in it.  Everyone who works legally in the USA pays Social Security taxes.  Since that money is just part of the overall budget (there is no “lock box” or “trust fund”), minimum wage workers in the USA are sending money to the Mubaraks of the world.<\/p>\n

Far more people have been elevated in India in the last 30 years by its capitalist economic revival than by foreign aid from other governments or international charities.  As annoying as it is to socialists everywhere, the best thing the US can do is export capitalism and freedom.<\/p>\n

“Micro-finance” (funding small loans to help people start businesses in poor countries) is not useless, and can help some people become self-supporting.  But for it to work, there has to be sufficient freedom and rule of law in the culture for investment and hard work to pay off.  It’s not likely to succeed when the local government boils down to a protection racket.<\/p>\n

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