
This isn't to say that everything goes perfectly with foreign aid. I'm sure that in a country like Afghanistan, a large percentage of the aid will be lost to corruption of some kind or another. But even considering that, I'd bet that you could do plenty of good by some combination of building infrastructure and handing out food and giving big bribes to the people who give out medium-sized bribes so the small bribes go in the right direction. More good, I'd think, than if you spent the same amount of money on fighting war the expensive way America has to.
(The 2006 aid data is the most recent I could find in the Census Bureau's 2009 Statistical Abstract. Afghan GDP data here, and Afghan war cost data here.)
1 comment:
$65 billion worth of HSR would probably save more net lives.
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