'There Is No Luggage Rack on a Hearse...'

Former Governor Sarah Palin, the quitter from Alaska, deserves some acknowledgment. She can see Russia from her porch.

Compared to most Americans, Palin is an authentic internationalist. Less than ten percent of all Americans have current passports.

And yet the American heart is a generous one. Annually, Americans as private individuals working through private sector nonprofit organizations donate about $12 billion to causes and charities in the developing world. Foundations, corporations, churches and others kick in another $25 billion or so.

In the book The Culture Code, the cultural anthropologist Clotaire Rapaille notes,

"There is no luggage rack on a hearse, and since you cannot bring your...money into the afterlife, Americans choose to give a significant amount of it away..."

Representing its people, the American government spends additional $25 billion on foreign aid. An impressive dollar amount to be sure, but still far less per American than, say, what the Norwegians or Japanese spend per citizen.

Does any of this generosity matter? What are your expectations for results?

It is senseless and naïve to assume that good is being done just because a charity, church or cause has good intentions. It is pretty easy these days to identify social and economic injustice (hello, Golden Rule!). It is a lot harder to something about it.

Here, former President Reagan's caution about negotiating with the Soviet Union comes to mind. "Trust, but verify." Donors and charities alike should be held accountable for results, not merely turning out flowery, fact-filled problem statements.

The need for impact analysis noted, in the matter of global poverty, a bit of perspective and common sense are also in order.

Humankind has 10,000 years of practice at creating poverty, gender exploitation, polluted waters, illiteracy, health care apartheid, lack of opportunity and so on. Three billion human beings struggling in disgraceful poverty attest to this ugly truth.

Everyone who has ever tried to break a bad habit, train a worker or raise a child knows that change can come slowly. The analogy is germane because in the end poverty alleviation is about changing human behavior, raising expectations, inspiring individual self-worth, creating hope, teaching, building coalitions, and upsetting the status quo.

But -- as Opportunity Collaboration Delegates know better than anyone -- a helping human hand by itself is not enough.

If you think that throwing money at problems doesn't work, try solving a problem without it. As movie director and comic Woody Allen tartly observed, "Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons." Money pays the helping hand which can pat a student on the back, feed a sick person, dig a well or pull the levers of change.

No one has ever told me that they want to live in a world in which billions of people are cast aside. Yet for many people, global poverty is just too daunting, discouraging and depressing.

You don't have to be a pessimist to believe that the poor will always be with us. You do need to be ashamed enough to take action.

 

Comments

[wilson Juarez]

01:02 AM on 09/14/2010

The individuals working for nonprofit organizations and who donate money to developing countries are wonderful for doing that and are extremely appreciated. However, this doesn't mean that developing countries can't be independent and support themselves. Many developing countries have abundant natural resources to be wealthy. Unfortunately, many progressive leaders who have inaugurated extensive socioeconomic reforms like Jacobo Arbenz, Salvador Allende, Mohammad Mossadegh, Jaime Roldos and many others have been overthrown in Coups d'Etats by the United States, and England to an extent. If progressive leaders in developing countries don't meet the economic demands of the U.S., they have been overthrown or assassinated by U.S. economic hit men, Jackals, C.I.A agents, or the military. It would have been essential if this article would have added the Import Substitution Industrialization program (ISI) that developing countries used in order to reduce foreign dependency. Many leaders in developing countries have become puppets of Washington, in which trans-national corporations go into a developing country and extract their petroleum, metals, and other natural resources for their own profit, and the leaders of those countries along with their elites get a share of those profits, but not the poorest of the poor. The U.S. may be the number "#1" source of aid in the world, however, developing countries have the resources to help themselves. Historically, this has not been possible since U.S. intervention and expansionism in the Western Hemisphere has backward the economic processes of the current developing countries.

[Omnix]

11:54 AM on 09/15/2010

I agree, the US & UK's imperialist effort has undermined democracy in many countries. Some of the most notorious were in Iran, Dominican Republic, Falklands/Argentina, Nicaragua, and recently Iraq and Afghanistan.

What bothers me even more, though, is that this money is one more source of money bleeding from the US economy, when we already suffer from a scarcity of money. With large corporations and financiers sitting on $2T, unemployment at a 20 year high, foreclosures and defaults at record levels, major cutbacks in social services and programs, a failing infrastructure, and a large portion of the population hitting the poverty level in the US, I don't see how we justify giving $25 B to other countries. I'm as liberal as most people on here, and I believe we should help others in need. But, you can't supplement the economy of failing nations when your own economy and people are suffering. Until we return to solid expansion, that money needs to go to Americans.