No entry on the U.S. Political agenda has fewer advocates than does “FOREIGN AID”. What little of it that remains in the budget carries forward subsidies to COLD WAR client states which are now relegated to holding the line against Muslim Fundamentalism. The poor countries of the world had their last serious mention in U.S. Policy in 1961, when JOHN F.KENNEDY made his only appearance at the U.N. General Assembly . There, he proposed that the industrial nations make the 1960’s . “THE DECADE OF DEVELOPMENT ”, and he pledged 1.0 percent of this country’s GNP to the effort. nothing came of that speech. Nothing like it has come from any president since.
But there was a time when U.S. citizens were in favor of giving economic and technical assistance to the poorer countries. That was at the end of World War II . For a few years as they recoiled from the horrors of that war, people all around the world embraced there sense of people as global family. Freedom from want had been declared an aim of the war by the allies. They had spelled it out in the United Nations. Declaration of 1942. In the ‘under developed countries,’ which were ten emerging from the disbanding colonial empires of the European industrial powers, people were to be lifted out of poverty. With grants and soft loans under the Marshall Plan, U.S. tax payers financed the economic recovery of the mother countries of those empires _allies (excepting only the USSR) and former enemies alike.
A GLOBAL MARSHALL PLAN
Now, in 1995 the time has come to bring the vision of global Marshall plan into focus again. Getting on with the industrial revolution is the most urgent challenge civilization now faces. If foreign aid was being considered an act of common humanity at mid-century, it is now dictated by the exigencies of common survival. The population of world has more than double since1950 _ from 2.5 billion to 6.1 billion. The number of people living in the direst poverty increased to 1.7 billion-close to the total population of the under developed countries in 1950. The population is doubling now again. The no. is direst poverty could equal the present world population. A doubling after that would bring the human species close to full occupation of the Earth.
THE ISSUE IS POVERTY
The problem is not population; it is poverty .we can reach zero-growth population, if we expand the world economy fourfold and share the proceeds equitably. That would bring the poorest 20 percent out of poverty. The industrialized countries must climb out their economic torpor and restart their economic engines. Outlays for foreign aid could help to provide the necessary stimulus. In most of the industrialized countries (especially in the U.S ) government appear to be unwilling or unable to take the initiative.
The rich industrial country is an historical phenomenon. it is rich in the that non of its inhabitants needs submit to toil and want. Poverty persists in the industrial countries as a social institution. In the poor countries poverty is familiar story it exist by definition. Simply there is not enough to go around. Even today, village people in the poor countries live b\very much as there forebears did when the agricultural revolution settled them in villages 10,000 years ago they survive by the sweet of there brows.
The out lays ,for Foreign Aids could help to provide the necessary stimulus for the revitalization of the developed Countries economies .In most industrialized countries (especially in the UNITED STATES ) ,governments appear to be un willing or un able to take the initiative.
BIRTH RATES DECLINE
For the present this historic turning point is obscured from the public understanding by its arithmetic. The declining growth rate is multiplying a larger population each year. Growth proceeds , accordingly , by the largest annual increments ever _ in excess of 90 million people per year. If the decline in growth rate continues on its present slope, the annual increments will being to shrink at the turn of next century that depends of course on the rate of development especially in the poorest countries.
The neo-Malthusian alarm bells continue to ring .The cry is that “ Those people over populate their Countries .”In fact ,the Countries that have the highest population density _ the seats of ancient civilization in ASIA _ have moved most decisively in to the industrial revolution and through the demo graphic transition.
NEO-COLONIAL ECONOMIES
The controversy that have surrounded foreign aid have grossly inflated its dimension in the public understanding. Except in the national budgets of the Nordic countries and Canada, outright grants for development have rarely exceeded 0.3 percent of the output of the industrialized world. For more than a decade, that which is properly reckoned a foreign aid in the U.S. federal budget as never exceeded 0.2 percent of the countries GDP. The percentage was higher when foreign aid served Cold war ends. Most of the flow then went to a half-dozen countries in East and Southeast Asia and to those of the eastern end of the mediterranean. In South Korea and Taiwan, the fall out from aid and the huge military expenditure was being enough to trigger genuine development. That end the regional boom that occurred as a result of the Korean and Vietnam Wars metamorphosed those countries along with the city states of Hong kong and Singapore. They became the “TIGERS OF EAST ASIA”.
AGENDA 21
A comprehensive sampling of this now immense body of work is available in agenda 21 and its underlying primary data bank as the U.S. media failed to report, Agenda 21 in the principle work product of the U.N conference on Environment and Development that convened in RIO DE JANEIRO in June 1992. agenda 21 spells out and prices out the program of “sustainable development” that will sustain the fourfold multiplication of the global GDP. Tat will be require in the next century to eliminate poverty in the world population that has doubled to 10-to-12 billion. Its is a program of development the earth can sustain in bringing the human species through its demographic transition.
Agenda 21 is composed of 2,500 enterprises engineered and other wise realize by indigenous experts in the developing countries and U.N. technical agencies. They specify work to be done in environmental repair and conservation in resources(specially agricultural resources) development in the building of urban infrastructure, and in the development of human capital. The 2,500 enterprises constitutes, of course, no more than a start on the work that must engage hundreds of millions of men and women in every developing country over the next century.
Agenda 21 shows that the task is finite and within the bounds of the Earth’s resources. The developing countries are to supply most of the approximately
$600 - billion annual investment. From ‘savings’ which are latent in their underemployed work forces and under utilized work resources, they are committed to invest $500 billion about 10 percent of their GDP. The industrial countries are asked to invest $125 billion_ 0.7 percent of their combined GDP. It will be transfer principally in the form of the technology necessary to catalyze the yield from people and resources. while the industrial countries signed the nonbinding documents setting from Agenda 21,tey made no commitment to supply there 0.7 percent share.
For foreign aid there is “no money”. The industrial were readier forty-five years ago to render economic assistance to the under developed countries. Government had retained war powers for the first tasks of peace now the globalize economy is in private hands. The translational corporations conduct their own foreign policies with the countries of two worlds. There 25 million employees and perhaps 100 million principal share holders thrive in a financial hothouse that escapes the doldrums in which the industrial economies and populations are becalmed. The 24 hour world financial market, which conducts currencies transactions at 10 times the rate that facilitates the movements of goods and investments capital across national border, disburses the credit to corporations and governments alike. A government that that undertake fiscal measures including outlays for foreign aid invites trade against the value of its currency.
Agenda 21 asks, first of all, that the industrialized countries restart their economies .The electorates of those countries must soon assert their interests in the choice now being made by the UNITED STATES .The logistics of sustaining a population of 28 billion would offer little slack for the market process and no tolerance for freedom of expression.
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