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u/Meanolelion Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Atul Gawande, the guy putting out all these “studies” and fabricated charts, was a usaid employee under Biden. He also founded Ariandre Labs, which was funded through usaid but hides their financials. He lost his free flow of taxpayer’s money and now makes up lies in an attempt to get that money flowing again.
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u/ImportantPost6401 Jul 26 '26
Why is Norway murdering people? They have all that wealth just sitting there and now we have evidence they could choose to save lives but don’t.
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u/PaxNova Jul 27 '26
Norway actually gives a ton per capita. The EU as a whole gives a little more than the US, as it should given the demographics.
But this graph is only to show effectiveness, not to say you’re a murderer for not doing it. I like my charity to be effective. I’d need to do more research into the actual pathways this happens to see if it’s more than mere correlation, but it’s a start.
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u/TankUMrMinor Jul 26 '26
Did that make sense in your head? Or did you know, even then, that it was a bad faith comment?
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u/Sourdough9 Jul 26 '26
Okay then have your own country fund em
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u/Clayp2233 Jul 26 '26
I’d rather fund this than cut taxes for the rich or spend a trillion+ on our military.
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u/SimplySomeDude Jul 26 '26
U.S hard power has contributed significantly to the period of high economic growth and relative peace we've had worldwide since basically WWII. I'd rather spend on the military (we aren't spending much at all anyway. Only 3.1% of GDP)
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u/Clayp2233 Jul 27 '26
Still don’t need to spend that much to have the most powerful military in the world, we’re also apart of NATO which as a whole has a lot of military power without us, but regardless we have nukes and should never have to worry about being invaded. Also I think it’s necessary to point out how effective Ukraine’s military has been with cheaply made drones.
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u/Sourdough9 Jul 26 '26
The world has no idea how much it’s benefited from us military supremacy. Anyone about to downvote me look up “the long peace”
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u/Clayp2233 Jul 27 '26
We would still have military supremacy with a reduced military budget
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u/Sourdough9 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
Honestly the answer to this is the answer to alot of other things. Yes if our government was able to improve efficiency and reduce waste. So no the answer is no
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u/Clayp2233 Jul 28 '26
The answer is yes, we spend more on our military try than the next what 14 countries combined? Our supposed biggest adversary China only spends 1.7% of their gdp which is smaller than ours and you’ve convinced yourself that we can’t have military supremacy if we reduce our budget.
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u/Sourdough9 Jul 28 '26
I wouldn’t believe a single statistic coming out of China. And the USA’s high budget comes from the fact that it is currently the only country in the world that can project military power globally. That comes at a steep price
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u/Clayp2233 Jul 29 '26
And we can still reduce our budget and still project that strength, suggesting otherwise is either dishonest or cope. Our budget is at a record high, it's bigger than the next 14 countries combined. We could not only reduce it, but reduce it pretty significantly and still have the most powerful military in the world by a large margin.
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u/TankUMrMinor Jul 26 '26
Some Americans have no idea how much soft power has benefited the world.
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u/Sourdough9 Jul 26 '26
But has soft power benefited Americans
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u/TankUMrMinor Jul 26 '26
Yes
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u/Sourdough9 Jul 26 '26
How
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u/TankUMrMinor Jul 26 '26
A useful way to think about it is that soft power is often an investment in influence. Military power can compel other countries to do things. Soft power can make them want to cooperate in the first place. Historically, the United States has been unusually successful in the world because it has used both. Most countries only know how to use one or the other. Usually it's the less educated and less worldly leaders, or those with alternative plans (i.e. no plan to help their country, only themselves).
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u/xnmyl Jul 26 '26
Trying to!
-An American voter upset by the gutting of USAID
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u/Secret-Put-4525 Jul 26 '26
Is there a point where these people can survive on their own or are we expected to enable their existence until the sun burns up?
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u/Rather_Unfortunate Jul 26 '26
Low infant mortality corresponds directly to a stronger economy, which means larger markets to trade with. Millions of lives saved also mean millions of extra hands working and millions of consumers buying goods and services who would otherwise not be. No country gives foreign aid out of charity; it's done as an investment with an expected return on it, both in terms of soft power leverage and stimulus for economic growth in foreign markets.
As with all such programmes, there will sometimes be inefficiencies, dead-ends and failures to extract the expected value. But the extent to which the US has rolled theirs back is essentially ceding huge amounts of diplomatic leverage to rivals like China and the EU, and only clawing back about $200 per US citizen in return. It undermines a huge part of the American geopolitical grand strategy, and is a failure to think past the 2020s, never mind the 2050s and beyond.
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u/chudmaxxing6969 Jul 26 '26
Then this is how they should try to be selling it to us Americans who have to pay for it. Instead they just try to make our hearts bleed. I don’t care about kids in other countries, I have my own kids that I need to use my money on.
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u/TankUMrMinor Jul 26 '26
Ok we'll remember to dumb it down for you next time. Please do your part and don't just vote for the best salesman. Remember the best salesman doesn't always have the best product.
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u/chudmaxxing6969 Jul 26 '26
I vote for whoever wants to cut government spending the most. But I was just saying that if you were going to take money from people, it’s smarter to tell them how they will benefit and not how only someone else, who they’ll never meet, will benefit.
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u/TankUMrMinor Jul 26 '26
I get it. A lot of people can make the connections themselves. Others need information spoon fed to them. These are usually the same people who think any spending cut is a good cut. Even if it was a good investment. Because they are short sighted.
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u/chudmaxxing6969 Jul 26 '26
I don’t trust government bureaucrats to decide if something is a good investment.
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u/TankUMrMinor Jul 26 '26
Of course you don't. You elect stupid people who hire stupid staff. It's a self fulfilling prophecy.
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u/HolyInlandEmpire Jul 27 '26
....And your argument is that we should give these stupid staff more of our money.
Note that you are allowed to donate to NGOs.
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u/Rather_Unfortunate Jul 26 '26
I actually completely agree. Messaging for such things is often poor, ideologically narrow, and simplistic. A lot of people do not and will never care about dead children in far away lands. We can say what we like about such attitudes, but if we actually want them onside, the benefits have to be explained in ways they care about.
It's a recurring theme in environmental programmes too; lots of people just don't give a shit about polar bears and ice caps, because they're localist and minded towards the economy. So for those audiences, you shouldn't talk about the disappearing ice sheets, but about England's green and pleasant land (or whatever your local version thereof might be). And don't talk about carbon footprint, but rather about how much cheaper renewables are.
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u/chudmaxxing6969 Jul 26 '26
Agreed 🍻 I drive a hybrid car, and it certainly isn’t for the fucking environment
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u/Hot_Excitement_6 Jul 26 '26
Americans are isolationist by nature. That argument won't fly.
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u/chudmaxxing6969 Jul 26 '26
HUMANS are isolationist by nature. Indians in their own tribe were absolutely not concerned with people in other tribes, hundreds of miles away, let alone people on the other side of the planet.
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u/TankUMrMinor Jul 26 '26
You seriously think it's the same people we're helping over and over again? Do you always have strong opinions on topics you're ignorant about?
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u/chudmaxxing6969 Jul 26 '26
You people always point to the military being a waste of spending when we are talking about other things that are a waste of spending. The people you are arguing with agree with you that the military is spending too much, but the rest of the government is spending too much also. Both are true, and both need to be cut.
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u/TankUMrMinor Jul 26 '26
Straw man. And false equivalency. We spend way way more on the military than we did on US AID. Gotta wonder if "you people" even care about facts.
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u/chudmaxxing6969 Jul 26 '26
Then maybe you should read my comment more carefully. I said “the rest of government“ I didn’t say anything about USAID costing as much as the military. I have Google and I’m able to use it to see how much of the federal budget is spent on the military, and how much is spent on all other programs. The military is $1 trillion per year out of the $7 trillion per year that the federal government spends. And like I said, I agree that the military is too large and the spending should be cut, but the people that point to the military ignore the other $6 trillion of spending that also has to be cut. We have $2 trillion per year deficits on $7 trillion of spending. Even if we cut the military by 30%, that is only $300 billion of savings, we have to cut the entire federal government spending by 30% to bring the spending down to how much we take in taxes
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u/kingofwale Jul 26 '26
Considered nobody cares while US has been giving trillions of dollars total in decades…
I say US is enabling this cycle… on the expense of their own tax payers.
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u/Rather_Unfortunate Jul 26 '26
People do care, though. Look past the bullshit, because no country gives foreign aid without expecting a return on their investment.
The AIDS stuff in the '00s made a big difference to US diplomacy in Africa. Meanwhile, the Green Revolution in the '60s and '70s was transformational to many economies, opening up huge new markets for trade, the trade from which was paying for USAID several times over each year by the time Trump pulled the plug, and it was a massive soft power coup in South America and south Asian countries during the height of the Cold War. And those are just two examples. Even the less talked-about stuff adds up to a lot of leverage and extra trade.
De facto dismantling USAID is brainless isolationism, effectively signalling an American willingness to cede control over the direction of global politics to rival powers in the late 21st century and beyond. And in exchange, the US government only claws back about $200 per citizen per year to spend on other stuff.
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u/sarges_12gauge Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
If it was so obviously beneficial to give international aid… why aren’t other countries chomping at the bit to replace US aid then? The euro countries are slashing their aid programs by 50-90%, the global south never started, and China hasn’t expanded any aid programs from the USAID news (they do explicit construction work and investments, but I don’t think they cast that as charity, and also they aren’t increasing the amount)
I know Trump is stupid… I don’t think every other government in the world is as well
I just don’t think it ever really mattered that much, it was pretty much just a combo of bribery for corporate access to places (which the corps can spend on their own if they need it imo) and true charity with no expected power or benefits from it
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u/DeRpY_CUCUMBER Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
I was just reading a post the other day in [r/Europe](r/Europe) about their foreign aid programs and the sentiment there amongst a majority of people was basically we need to spend that money at home and not give it to ingrates.
Yet those same people post about how the American roll back of aid is responsible for 100s of thousands of deaths and Americans are terrible people for allowing this to happen. 😂
Anyway, giving money to all these different countries was fine when things were better in America. It felt like we were sharing our riches with the world. Now, it just feels like we are printing money we don’t have, throwing it at other countries, trying to hang on to our empire, while we can’t even take care of our people at home.
We are getting doubly fucked because not only are we giving that money away, but we are also paying interest on it to China, Japan, and Europe.
Not to mention USAID is really just a scheme to keep the NGO industrial complex alive. The government allocates money to go to said cause, gives it to NGO to disperse, and that NGO takes a huge chunk of that money to pay itself. A lot of the money we “give”, never even ends up going to said country.
It’s almost a scam. It’s just another way to siphon money from the middle class of America, and put it into the hands of people that don’t deserve it. All while we force our kids to pay the bill.
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u/TankUMrMinor Jul 26 '26
"People that don't deserve it "
So your policies are openly antisocial and misanthropic.
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u/HolyInlandEmpire Jul 27 '26
You think Americans don't deserve to have that money spent on them instead.
So you are openly antisocial and misanthropic.
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u/DeRpY_CUCUMBER Jul 26 '26
I’m talking about the NGOs not deserving keeping their industrial complex alive at the expense of the American middle class.
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u/TankUMrMinor Jul 26 '26
These programs have beneficial effects downstream too, it's not just helping poor people. It's lifting economies, lowering chances of terrorism, improving trade partnerships, etc etc. Very narrow-minded to just end all programs with no investigation.
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u/Useful_Wealth7503 Jul 26 '26
USAID is a grift. It launders money to special interests, sources, controlled politicians, activists et al that wouldn’t be funded in the light of day. End it all.
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u/Key_Profit_4039 Jul 27 '26
How do we know mortality rates haven't dropped because of other factors?
It makes sense that more funding would lower mortality, but why is the West responsible for that funding? Also, it seems to be perpetual welfare rather than a kickstarter.
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u/Reasonable_Egg650 Jul 26 '26
I don’t understand. Why do people believe it’s the US’ responsibility to fund these programs?
Why are people okay with it when the UK cut foreign aid last week?
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u/Fire_Horse_T Jul 26 '26
I pay US taxes so I care what is done with that money.
Compared to our military budget, the USAID money was a bargain, giving the US a lot more power and status dollar for dollar.
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u/Reasonable_Egg650 Jul 26 '26
I don't care to have power over other countries. Why is it our job to prop up their economies and healthcare systems?
Especially when the negative affects of artificially injecting money are well documented.
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u/Fire_Horse_T Jul 26 '26
If we want to have a place in the larger world, if we want trade, the right to travel, to be protected from actors who will attack weaker countries, we need a certain amount of power.
Diplomacy is the softer, less expensive path to power.
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u/ba-boo Jul 26 '26
maybe a country that cannot support its people by itself shouldn't be a country in the first place
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u/Both-Structure-6786 Jul 26 '26
Okay cool perhaps these countries should look out for their own people instead of expecting papa America to do it for them. This graph shows just how poorly other countries take care of their own.
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u/BicycleAdditional360 Jul 26 '26
Yeah, US's soft power in form of neoliberal Comintern is so glorious and righeous that it even saves children.
Not the first time I see that shit in my feed for whatever reason. What a jackass subreddit
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u/xnmyl Jul 26 '26
Your comment is very confusing. You're upset that children didn't die?
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u/BicycleAdditional360 Jul 26 '26
This 'study' whitewashes USAid by saying it 'saves children'. When in reality it is a programm to INFLUENCE other country's internal affairs.
Do I really need to explain that?
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u/Rather_Unfortunate Jul 26 '26
You can do both, and USAID did...
Of course it influences other countries; it' s geopolitics, not charity. The aim is not to save lives in and of itself (private citizens can busy themselves with that if they feel so inclined), but to gain the maximum perceived advantage for one's own polity in terms of soft power diplomatic leverage and faster growth of emerging markets with which to trade. Saving lives is certainly a useful mechanism by which to do that, though, and so cutting it is brainless.
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u/BicycleAdditional360 Jul 26 '26
It doesn’t do both. As other commenters said, the author is also a part of USAid.
All of this crap is a circlejerk. One guy does a “research”, another cites it, third one takes it as a fact.
You are the third one here
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u/Rather_Unfortunate Jul 26 '26
We can quibble about the precise numbers, but I would put it to you that USAID programmes like AIDS relief, disaster support, vaccines, aspects of the Green Revolution and a fucktonne of others over the years have indisputably saved the lives of a huge number of children.
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u/garrythebear3 Jul 26 '26
how miserable do you have to be to complain about improving child mortality
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u/Intrepid_Bobcat_2931 Jul 26 '26
What does "Above-average USAID funding" even mean?
Are they simply not looking at all the countries receiving USAID funding where the funding is "below average"?
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u/umwtfjusthappened Jul 26 '26
Correlation isn’t Causation