It doesn't cost much to improve someone's life

https://ourworldindata.org/foreign-aid-donations-increase

by surprisetalk • 1 year ago

225 381 1 year ago

JohnFen• 1 year ago

I've temporarily dialed back on my charitable contributions. I believe that the US is at the front end of an unprecedented economic and political disaster, so I need to use the resources available to me to protect myself and my loved ones as best as I can.

Once I have that arranged, I can think about giving again.

hiAndrewQuinn8• 1 year ago

Related, I was thinking earlier today about at what probabilities and timelines of regime collapse it makes sense to start seriously planning a move to another country under. A 10% chance over a 10-year timeline feels about accurate to me - low probability, but not so low it feels safe to gamble with.

mrtesthah• 1 year ago

What formula would you even use to quantify that?

paulcole6• 1 year ago

The entire world has too much riding on the US not collapsing.

I think it’s a 5% chance over the next 100 years.

rufus_foreman• 1 year ago

You should write down your predictions and take a look at them 5 years from now.

zol• 1 year ago

What do you think constitutes a collapse? Can you give a modern times example of a country collapsing in a way you’re imagining the US might?

devilbunny2• 1 year ago

Plan how to become the new regime, if you think it's likely.

This period looks wild, in no small part because 90% of even the fringe-y media don't like Trump, but I doubt much of his shenanigans will hold up once court cases happen. People will get bench-slapped (the only lawyering pun I know, but it's a good one).

breppp14• 1 year ago

Where would you move that won't be affected by a United States collapse, or alternatively you can't predict a bleak scenario over a 10-year timeline?

Atiscant• 1 year ago

A dissenting voice that might of interest here is Peter Zeihan. He claims that the US is one of the few places that won’t collapse in the coming decade. I do claim here is right, but his analysis is, if nothing else, interesting. His book, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning, is an easy enough read.

holyra5• 1 year ago

I am an EU citizen and I am concerned about the collapse of the US and more shortly about its expansionism claims. US has such a military dominance and violent culture that I am afraid it will produce a global war. I now think that the EU needs to rearm, not to defend against Russia, but to protect us against US collapse and expansionism. China is our better bet in this coming disaster.

gcanyon3• 1 year ago

My wife and I are not-so-many years from retirement. Ten years ago, we were already planning to retire someplace with more reasonable healthcare. We were already confident in that decision, but the current situation has made it absolute, and possibly pushed the timeline forward.

jltsiren• 1 year ago

A 10% chance of collapse every decade is a reasonable baseline for a stable country. At least if a civil war or a major invasion counts as a collapse. That gives you a century of stability in the expected case, which is quite exceptional.

keming2• 1 year ago

Once I have that arranged, I can think about giving again.

The cost of gutting healthcare is going to go way up. It’s much more costly to fight 10 pandemics that are affecting 90% than it is to maintain vaccinations and control of 10%. That 10% affected becomes 90% affected quickly without assistance.

analog31• 1 year ago

I wonder how important private charity is anyway. The US leads the world in private charity, yet we're worse off than countries with less charity and more robust public institutions, such as the safety net, health care, and so forth.

etrautmann3• 1 year ago

There’s not a direct causal link between the metrics you’re describing. The economy is too large for private philanthropy to meaningfully impact things like health care delivery costs but it can still be crucial for the arts, community programs, and science funding and all sorts of other unconnected things.

lazyasciiart6• 1 year ago

That doesn’t tell you how important it is, because certainly nobody is currently planning to replace private charity spending with public institutions.

etrautmann3• 1 year ago

Interesting - I’m planning to dial up contributions since they’re so much more needed and impactful now.

etrautmann3• 1 year ago

At a broader level, parochial thinking and circling the wagons plays into the catastrophe song political narrative that is a strategy of the Steve Bannons of the world. Id encourage generosity for those who have the means. It’ll at least make you happier.

csomar5• 1 year ago

That is fair. This about governments, though. As an individual, you can be quite vulnerable; and you should always prioritize yourself first (if you are struggling, how are you going to help anybody else).

Also remember that you can significantly contribute in non-financial way (ie: teaching, connecting people to jobs, etc..)

almostgotcaught• 1 year ago

there are two kinds of people, as defined by how they react to things becoming scary: those that withdraw to protect themselves and those that remain and risk themselves to protect others.

i personally believe communities composed of the former cannot survive. coincidentally enough, american people are overwhelmingly of the former type.

keming2• 1 year ago

american people are overwhelmingly of the former type

HMOs, later PPOs, etc. in the U.S. seemed like a good idea, but health insurance wasn’t available or affordable for the minority. But there’s Medicaid, Medicare, the ACA, and much more, so the U.S. government has subsidized care and assistance.

Another “workaround” for unaffordable health insurance is going to an emergency room at a hospital, assuming you can get there, but many can. It’s slow as hell, but being seen in hours can be better than being seen in months. The downside is that this results in crippling debt for some. Bankruptcy can be declared, but then your credit is shot, and if you’re poor you may need credit.

Healthcare quality overall is quite good, though, even for the minority. It’s far from perfect, but compared to rest of the world, it’s not the worst place to get sick.

Now- why did an activist president, house representatives, and senators get elected that are cutting funding for global and U.S. healthcare? I can’t imagine it’s not the fault of foreign actors and the ease of manipulating 50% of the country through Fox News and social media. You wouldn’t believe how different the belief sets are here between that group and the rest. It changed radically in the last ten years.

The rest of us are far from indifferent to what’s happening. We just don’t know how to fix it. Protesting probably won’t change it, though we protest. Boycotts probably won’t change it, though we boycott. We don’t have enough in the government to even impeach, and what good would that do? They own all three branches of government. They used Gerrymandering and fired election officials, replaced leaders, subordinates, and did mass layoffs to ensure all future victories. They kicked certain news media out of the W.H. and are considering shutting other media companies down.

It all happened so quickly. Much more quickly than in the past in Germany or Russia.

throwaway69123• 1 year ago

as a foreigner to the us i am investing heavily in the us, there is a pathway where the legal and social changes could result in considerable economic benefit over the next two years. you should consider how that could occur before waving it off ideologically. i am coming from an investment point of view and am largely agnostic of the politics.

cowhow• 1 year ago

I'd unironically be interested in hearing what economic benefit you think is coming in the next two years?

The nonsense tariffs being thrown at allies and uncoordinated destruction of government foreign aid/social services seem like net negatives to me. I could see the United States Bitcoin reserve thing bumping up the value of crypto, but that whole space is so volatile I would only put in money I'm willing to lose.

aprilthird2021• 1 year ago

Please share your investment prospectus with us. What is the pathway and what economic benefit do you see down the line? I would love to reallocate my investments in my country, but the road we're on right now, I see it only ending worse off

Viliam1234• 1 year ago

There is always something. Previously it was covid, etc.

llamaimperative• 1 year ago

COVID and our current political predicament are basically the same event, and COVID was a once in a lifetime pandemic.

Sure something is always the most pressing threat to stability, but that does not imply all eras are similarly unstable.

m3kw9• 1 year ago

It is only the 3rd month of a 4 year term. Couple that with Elons move fast and break sht, you got some really risky stuff happening.

kennyloginz2• 1 year ago

Fear is the enemy.

hasperdi• 1 year ago

What about improving our own lives. I live in a first world country, work as a dev with decent earning. But finding things are expensive these days

jfengel• 1 year ago

Things have indeed gotten more expensive. But is it crimping your style? Do you eat enough $7/doz eggs and drink enough $11/gal milk to make a difference?

There are quite a few Americans for whom it is, and I'd also like to see more aid given to Americans who need it. Unfortunately, I don't see any effort towards that. Any savings from canceling foreign aid appears to be directed into tax cuts -- sadly, not something that benefits those who can't afford eggs.

tdeck• 1 year ago

I know it's not a key part of your point, but I'm curious if there's actually a place in the US where milk is $11/gallon. Here in Seattle it's remained around $4/gal.

yapyap• 1 year ago

statistically people reading articles these days are often well off enough that improving their own lives won’t mean much in terms of “sleeping under a bridge vs under a roof” or “eating or not eating”, whereas for others that might be the case.

Also nobody said you can’t improve your own life at the same time.

Also you helping other people doesn’t have to be necessarily monetarily.

kulahan7• 1 year ago

If you work as a dev in a first world country, it’s hard to imagine you’re truly struggling in any real sense (monetarily speaking I mean) unless you’re in your first couple years I suppose.

Still, if it somehow is the case, then this message isn’t directed at you. It’s just a little hard to imagine most developers can’t handle giving up a thousand bucks a year or whatever, which could literally save lives in some cases.

slwvx• 1 year ago

Though it wasn't directly mentioned in the article, the relevant context is that the Trump administration is in the process of cutting foreign aid by the US; see the link below for a few details.

Looks to me like the OWID article is saying that the aid from the US is a good investment.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/how-trump-s-di...

jerlam• 1 year ago

The foreign aid provided by the US does not live in a void; China has been doing well in providing financial aid and loans across the world recently.

kulahan7• 1 year ago

This is not inherently a good thing, unless you believe that Chinese values are worth spreading over American ones.

This is not to say that is or isn’t the case, just that it’s an effective end-result of letting them have massive influence globally.

Additionally, many of China’s deals are meant to bring nations into serious debt, rather than to truly lift them up. Again, this may also be the case with the US, so the question is who you would rather be your creditor.

deadbabe• 1 year ago

What China is doing is basically usury, it’s not the same. Stop glorifying China.

yimby20012• 1 year ago

Most cases of polio now are caught from the lav deattenuating, so unless you vaccinated everyone in the entire world at the same time or invent a better vaccine it’s literally impossible to eradicate with current technology. you can see in the diminishing returns in their graph.. I’m not sure why this is their example of a good place to spend more money

matthewmacleod• 1 year ago

Inactivated polio vaccines are widely available and do not cause the cases of polio that the attenuated vaccine does.

yimby20012• 1 year ago

You got me man, great troll

nitwit005• 1 year ago

It's a good example because once you eradicate the disease, the problem is gone for good. We spend zero money on smallpox.

We did successfully eradicate all but one strain of Polio, and I believe they've stopped vaccinating except for the remaining one.

hiAndrewQuinn8• 1 year ago

It's laudable to donate part of your own money to help those in need. It's much more laudable to be a well-functioning part of the deep capital markets that allow places like AMF to buy anti-malarial bednets for $2 apiece in the first place. It wasn't that long ago that making a single decent shirt was weeks of hard labor.

hatthew• 1 year ago

American citizens were asked to guess how much US federal spending goes to foreign aid. ... The average guess was a whopping 31%.

What? I'm very curious how people arrived at such a number. I wouldn't be very surprised if people thought it was, say, 5%. But 31% is a wildly implausible number. 15% of people thought it was over half the budget, which is too far from the Lizardman's Constant to just be trolls, but at the same time it's such a wildly high guess that I can't imagine a normal person sincerely making such a guess.

watersb• 1 year ago

Maybe some people have only a handful of numbers: none, one, two, and "many".

Maybe there are cognitive reciprocals of these numbers: "all", "some", "half", and "none".

So when you ask for a fraction, they say 50%.

sethammons4• 1 year ago

I have a friend whose fractions stop at fourths. "I'm at half a quarter of a tank of fuel."

copypasterepeat• 1 year ago

Ceaseless, decades-long propaganda that US is being taken advantage of and that America should come first certainly played a part in inflating that number in minds of a lot of people. When it comes to stuff like this I think that most people just go off the vibes and don't really have any reasonable idea how the budget is divided up.

asah2• 1 year ago

well... in fact...

- military is 2.7% GDP for US: https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2002099941... vs 1.9% for Europe: https://www.google.com/search?q=europe+spending+on+defense+a...

- US spent $62B on foreign aid, vs 0% from China and Russia, whose GDPs are far larger...

maxerickson• 1 year ago

Ironically, you are espousing a questionable world view based on vibes.

ks2048• 1 year ago

People are way off in their estimates of all sorts of things. I think many use "20-30%" as a generic "kind of small amount".

See this graphic that made the rounds recently (e.g. 1% are transgender, people thought 21%. 6% are military veterans, people thought 40%, etc).

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/tky94p/ame...

tailspin2019• 1 year ago

1% was higher than I’d have guessed for transgender people.

It turns out the figures are rounded in that graphic because the source article [0] (posted by another commenter) has it at 0.6% (which is likely rounded too).

Interesting when you consider how much certain topics seem to dominate current political discourse.

[0] https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/41556-americans-m...

SpicyLemonZest4• 1 year ago

Americans also estimate that 30% of the population lives in New York City (https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/41556-americans-m...). I think most people just don't have a numerical intuition for percentages, and don't necessarily intend for a guess of 31% to mean "I think the foreign aid budget is equal to the federal budget times 0.31."

calebio• 1 year ago

I kind of wonder if some of those folks equate things like the gulf war or the war on terror as "foreign aid".

Jtsummers• 1 year ago

People were surprised that the cost of federal civil service employees was only around 5% in the early DOGE discussions here. They were expecting 20+%. SSA which pays about 70 million people is just over 21% of the spending so far this year, and there are only 2.3 million civil service employees. For civil servants to cost as much in salaries as social security pays out would require them to be paid nearly $800k/year on average.

People are just bad at estimating, and apparently none of the ones making the absurd claims know (or their listeners/readers don't know) that all this data is publicly available.

NoMoreNicksLeft4• 1 year ago

When we spend $1 trillion a year on our military, just which states was that protecting from invasion? Did the Air Force repel a Dutch beachhead on the Alaskan coast last year that I didn't hear about?

All of that is to protect foreigners. Europe, east Asia, etc. When you hear about the US navy going after pirates off the coast of Somalia, that money wasn't spent protecting US citizens in most cases. When we were dropping drone bombs on ISIS, was ISIS any threat to the US mainland?

And that's just the military. There are so many slush funds going on, I don't think anyone can truly know just how much cash gets sent to or spent on foreigners. I don't think it's quite to 31%, but that guess isn't an order of magnitude high or anything like that.

solatic• 1 year ago

When we were dropping drone bombs on ISIS, was ISIS any threat to the US mainland?

Yes it was. The primary threat is the illegal drug trade, you know, the one that results in more than 100,000 overdose deaths per year in the US. The drug trade is a huge part of how groups like ISIS get financed. When you take out the group, you take out the people playing the drug trade to finance them, and you weaken the drug trade.

consider e.g. https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2017/07/isis-is-so-desp...

At the end of the day, there's the rules-based international order, and then there's everybody outside it. The law and the outlaws. Outlaws will collaborate to fuel their self-interest. When you weaken some outlaws, you weaken the rest; when you weaken some areas of the law, you weaken the rest as well.

ljf• 1 year ago

The fight against Somalian pirates for example, isn't to protect the local people, but to protect American interests.

rcarr2• 1 year ago

When you hear about the US navy going after pirates off the coast of Somalia, that money wasn't spent protecting US citizens in most cases.

Not directly, but it is protecting the financial interests of US companies whose products are on said ships.

oneshtein3• 1 year ago

$750B for defense was 3% of the federal budget in 2024. USA plans to shrink defense budget by 40%, to less than 2%, while asking other NATO members to increase their budgets to 5%.

China plans to spend 7.2% of their budget on defense in 2025.

Russia plans to spend 32.5% of their budget on defense in 2025.

brulard• 1 year ago

I believe most people don't truly understand percentages. Or are not good at thinking in percentages and probabilities

sethammons4• 1 year ago

five fourths of people have trouble with fractions and percentages

mcny2• 1 year ago

I used to be naive and covid changed that. I sincerely believe the US should have shared and China mainland should have accepted any and all knowledge we had about vaccines. Instead, we all went our own separate ways. It wouldn't have cost us much because it isn't like people in China mainland would have bought US vaccines and it isn't like we would import vaccines made in China mainland.

It was just common sense to share this knowledge the best we could and yet...

asah2• 1 year ago

Conspicuously absent: China (34.4T), Russia (6T) vs US (26T)

readthenotes1• 1 year ago

"Small increases in foreign aid could go a long way"

Unfortunately, his graph of polio results would indicate the opposite.

It's similar, in my mind, to school spending in Chicago and Baltimore correlates to educational outcomes:

When the problem needs both a systemic change and broad-based endemic change, more money is not necessarily the answer.

(For Afghanistan/Pakistan, it's to counter the anti-vaxx narratives that caused the program to stall out. For those school systems, it may start with food and shelter security for students)

rahimnathwani• 1 year ago

Adding more money to government-run K–12 education can sometimes work against meaningful reform. Increased funding typically grows the existing system: hiring more staff, expanding departments, and creating additional layers of bureaucracy.

More people come to rely on the status quo for their livelihood, which can reduce their willingness to support or even consider transformative changes.

WalterBright2• 1 year ago

Funding for education in America has increased by leaps and bounds, but K-12 educational attainment hasn't budged.

gcanyon3• 1 year ago

That polio graph is depressingly flat for the past quarter century :-(

vunderba• 1 year ago

If you are looking for reasonably responsible ways to donate money - I highly recommend using Charity Navigator which can help you avoid accidentally giving money away to fiscally irresponsible or downright scam charities (cough World Vision cough).

https://www.charitynavigator.org

timpark• 1 year ago

For those who might be interested, a similar site for Canadian charities is Charity Intelligence.

https://www.charityintelligence.ca/

jedbrooke• 1 year ago

I’m confused, by your link “World Vision” has a 93%/4 star rating, suggesting they would be a good charity. (I have no opinion one way or the other regarding the specific charity in question, however)

Retric4• 1 year ago

World Vision was secretly diverting aid for civilians back in 2016. They could be clean today, but I wouldn’t depend on Charity Navigator to spot that kind of financial crime. https://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/dfat-suspends-worl...

The inherent fraud of not using funds for what donors intend and diverting money from a charitable organization to line private individual pockets can be surprisingly difficult to spot.

robertritz• 1 year ago

This recent article[1] from the economist shows how much of the aid spending around the world just replaces government spending and never creates a system where those countries can stand on their own.

Not always the case but definitely for a lot of aid spending. Where I'm located (Mongolia) aid spending just gives the government an excuse to free up the budget for handouts to get them elected. It's pretty useless.

[1] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/03/06/the-demise-of-f...

boredhedgehog• 1 year ago

That's a good argument for voluntary individual contributions, but not for foreign aid.

The purpose of government is advancement of the common good of the citizens that form the polity. The good of people outside of the polity is beyond its scope and responsibility. Any aid to or alliance with a foreign nation can only be justified with tangible benefits at home.

e12e• 1 year ago

A stable productive trade partner is a benefit at home.

zmgsabst2• 1 year ago

This has been a long argument, eg “ordo amoris” — 700 years (Aquinas) to 1600 years (Augustine) in Christian philosophy.

The split is aligned with politics [1]; and the two sides can’t even agree on which direction demonstrates a lack of empathy. To some people, it’s moral to take from your neighbor and give to a stranger; to others, that’s antisocial behavior.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Heatmaps-indicating-high...

amanaplanacanal6• 1 year ago

The purpose of government is whatever people want it to be.

immibis13• 1 year ago

The purpose of any system is what it does.

tmpz222• 1 year ago

Solving problems abroad can improve economic outcomes locally - a good example with US Foreign Aid is how it was used to purchase American products, employ American Workers, and then improve the lives of folks internationally who could then (you guessed it!) go on to purchase American products, leading to American business growth and more hiring. Much of our aid contracts have stipulations making sure the money ends up back in America for example military aid contracts to Ukraine stipulating they would buy American weapon systems.

Solving problems abroad can prevent them from landing on your doorstep. I'd rather fight wars overseas, protecting economies that buy American products, then let the problems fester, cripple international trade, and risk reaching the American continent (9/11).

All I ask is you look one layer deeper into these problems rather then buying the news headline. You are having your pocket picked if you believe Elon Musk or other parts of the current administration are acting in the nation's interest.

jsingleton• 1 year ago

The last section is worth a read.

Your personal donations can also make a difference, especially if you focus on where they can go the furthest

https://ourworldindata.org/foreign-aid-donations-increase#yo...

Good time of year to donate (in the UK at least, as the tax year starts in April). Various ways to donate depending on your jurisdiction.

https://www.givewell.org/about/donate/tax-deductibility

nivertech2• 1 year ago

UN’s target for developed countries to give 0.7% of their GNI to foreign aid

O/c, the UN (a body with a majority of non-democratic members) will want the taxpayers of democratic countries to finance it, all without any real accountability

Any country that has not yet solved its own domestic problems should not donate money to other countries

nivertech2• 1 year ago

Any country that has not yet solved its own domestic problems should not donate money to other countries

Instead it should loan money, but only if it's proven that it will be beneficial, and there is an accountability on the receiving side

kqr2• 1 year ago

I warmly recommend setting up a recurring donation of, say, 0.5 % of your income. If most of us did this, in particular if we donate to effective charities -- it would make a difference, but not to our economies.

(Many of you may even find it is so non-scary to donate 0. 5 % that you choose to scale up to a larger percentage. But I have yet to find anyone who is willing to donate but claims 0.5 % is too much for them.)

banannaise• 1 year ago

One of the neat things about donating small amounts is that the tax benefit is negligible, so you can expand your targets to entities not registered as formal nonprofits. There are a lot of small but highly effective organizations that would find it burdensome to have such a formal, professional structure.

LightBug1• 1 year ago

No, no, no, wait ... we need to scale back foreign aid and spend it on missions to Mars.

underseacables• 1 year ago

I helped a friend in Brazil for a year by sending him a little money each month; less than $100. It would've made next to no difference in the life of an American, but where the exchange rate is 1 to 5, it made a significant difference in his life.

Unfortunately, it only made that difference for him because of the low exchange rate. If he were to receive free money from the government, for example, businesses with just raise their prices to account for the extra money in the system. Prices would go up and he would be left in the same situation that he was in.

lordfrito• 1 year ago

Wow this thread deteriorated quickly. I had to double check I wasn't on Reddit.

It doesn't cost much to improve someone's life

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