56 billion in foreign aid while Americans sleep on the street

the troubles faced by homeless and poor folk in the states (and obvs elsewhere etc) is ofc a travesty, especially in the context of empty homes and the extreme wealth and tax avoidance of a relative few.

in relation to the foreign aid figure though, i have to pick a nit with that - i fully expect that the US (via govt and corporations) has taken considerably more than that figure out of foreign nations via warfare and the subsequent exploitation of resources and awarding of tenders to rebuild what they bombed the bejayzus out of.

beside the fact that this happened at all, the problem is that all of this profit stays with the super rich. but this of course is the point of all of this "promotion and protection of democracy overseas etc etc", is it not.

the uk typically gives a lot in foreign aid too - despite our own economic woes i support this in principle.. however, in many cases this money is very badly spent if it reaches it's destination at all, and lines the pockets of all of the corrupt ngo's, politicians etc along the way.

TLDR version? corruption is the issue. full stop

How about instead of giving this money to foreign countries or even to our poor, we instead use it to create jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. This way the poor aren't being giving something for nothing and at the same time are becoming employed again. They can start to save up their money again so that some of them can go on to create new businesses to hire more people. Meanwhile our crappy roads, waterworks, etc are reinvigorated so that they can continue to be used for many years to come. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Of course this is all provided that this $56 billion MUST be spent. In all honesty we could just not spend that money and not accumulate more debt. But I guess that is an unreasonable request for our government so I fall back on the idea from my first paragraph.

reply to post by Heisenberg59


That is true, you could divide it, a part for your homeless... Because, there can be some riots, or clashes, while your government is buying geopolitical and strategical positions worldwide...

Originally posted by Heisenberg59

I say we take that 56 billion dollars and invest it back into our communities. Take these foreclosed homes and set up a program to get the homeless off the damn street.

I agree with that we spend too much money on foreign aid....however if you want to help the homeless...give them jobs...not homes...

I can't tell you how many people we arrest that have "disabilities" but seem to have plenty of energy to fight us...or rail their spouses....or wrestle with one of their buddies. Its complete bull# how much this country hands out to people.

We should be asking....why are they homeless? Did they pay attention in school...did they complete school...did they work during the summers when they had a license between school years....how many applications have they put in the last 6 months. Sure...if someone is down on their luck....ill be the first one to help...ive let people ive arrested use me as a reference for jobs before because I thought they were still great people. But over all we spend more money on people that have no motivation to do anything...than we do on foreign aid.

We need the manufacturing jobs back, ASAP. Things will only get worse unless that happens. NAFTA really screwed the U.S. economy. I think underemployment is as big a problem as unemployment, maybe even worse. It isn't that there are no jobs, it's that the jobs being created are not usually full time and pay minimum wage or only slightly higher. Without a living wage families are forced to accept government assistance just to survive (I think that may be what they want though, but that's a different thread). We need jobs that pay an actual living wage instead of these service sector jobs that our current government seem so proud to have created for us.

reply to post by lampsalot


You don't need a college education to make good wages. There are plenty of jobs for those who don't mind getting dirty in trade skill's. Welding, mechanics,building trades,iron workers,electricians,a/c techs,machinist's,etc. The fact is that kids should go straight from high school into trade school before going to college. They would be more mature and have a skill to fall back on in case they don't get that great job sitting on their ass making the big bucks.

In the UK, we also give away billions in aid to countries that have armies, nuclear weapons etc, which to me says they dont really need the aid as they obviously have money but spend it wrongly. There are still people homeless 20-30-40 years later in all countires around the world. What i want to know is, when this money is sent,

1. Where exactly is the money paid to? (Bank?, government funding?)
2. Who receives the money?
3. How is the money spent? How do we know if its spent on the homeless or weapons or other government ideas.

We should not send money but should send goods (food, medical supplies, building materials etc). This would also create jobs for the homeland sending the aid.

In these hard times of financial struggle created by the banks and government, charity really should start at home, especially as we are told to tighten our belts while benefits are cut for the poor and benefits taken away for the middle class families that have children.

But like our government say, WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER, unless you are a millionaire and/or politicain in which you can have a tax cut, and a fat bonus for failure!!!

reply to post by elrem48


Oh ya i definitely have noticed that.From what i have learned
so far being sick is if you are not flat broke and renting a crap room
with no belongings at all, then help for you is next to impossible to get.

The real people who are down but still trying to improve them self are screwed
as far as help from the govt goes.

Originally posted by Krazysh0t
How about instead of giving this money to foreign countries or even to our poor, we instead use it to create jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. This way the poor aren't being giving something for nothing and at the same time are becoming employed again. They can start to save up their money again so that some of them can go on to create new businesses to hire more people. Meanwhile our crappy roads, waterworks, etc are reinvigorated so that they can continue to be used for many years to come. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Of course this is all provided that this $56 billion MUST be spent. In all honesty we could just not spend that money and not accumulate more debt. But I guess that is an unreasonable request for our government so I fall back on the idea from my first paragraph.

I've become a conservative over issues like this, but I too refer to your first paragraph.. I'd like to refer to your second paragraph, but maybe in time....

Nice post.

reply to post by cosmicexplorer


you have those kind because for some unknown reason
the govt see's being a drunk as a disability. I learned this first hand
when applying for help once years ago when all my medical started
(if only i had got help back then, things would be different, i would not be
looking at maby one more year ot live if i was lucky.)
But i was having seizures and could not figure out why, so the doc told me
to apply for disability to get medical coverage, so i was young (early 20's)
and did what they said, i naturally got told no, but the guy sitting next to me
when i applied got approved, because he had a drinking problem.

That was the last time i set foot in a dr office or govt building until recently,
i was so ticked off, here i was with real medical issues and i got denied but
this guy spent all his cash on booz so he got it.. amm here is a idea... DONT
give him money and he cant buy booz..

But instead, i just went back to working, the seizures faded away and i thought
i was in great health until last year. when i started having issues with swelling
out of now where, and i got the surprise from the doc on the first visit.
she looked at my test and her first words to me were "Well, you are not dead yet"

So really, lack of decent insurance and help when it was needed is the reason
i will die before long. Gota love the system. NOT...

reply to post by Heisenberg59


If you think that foreign aid is free money, you're missing a LOT. It always comes with a price. That, and it's a relative drop in the bucket. What does that come to, about $180 per person? Trust me, the country does better, and on average, we have more than $56B flowing in because of it.

As far as 30 hours because of Obamacare - that stipulation only affects companies with more than 50 employees who don't currently offer coverage. Every other employer in the US will benefit from expanded tax credits for the coverage they offer. Outside of restaurant chains, it barely affects anyone.

Originally posted by Spookycolt
Its nothing but being smart and preparing for bad times.

Show me any poor person and I will show you mistakes they have made that put them in the situation they are.

With the exception of a horrific accident or disease there is no excuse.

And work 3 jobs at mcdonalds if you have too. People are lazy.

How can illegals find work yet regular citizens cannot?

You guys need to quit making excuses for these lazy bums.

quit making excuses for a broken system that dictates a certain amount of people are broke, homeless or wage slaves to function feeding off of creating fake fiat debt based "money" out of the very same people's signature on a loan or other document that is legitimizing a species of money then traded on the open market for profit while the "borrower" repays the original "money" he created plus a usury often more than 3 to 4 times the amount of the original, which as you should know, is not a loan at all but newly created fractional banking digital bank entries.






deny ignorance.

reply to post by Heisenberg59


This is why our country would have been better off has everyone of voted in the green piece party. Jill was more concearned about these types of problems and it makes me sick to think that we are helping others before we can help our own. But good luck in getting everyone to vote for that party, its always about democrats and republicans and always will be.

This is a probably somewhat inaccurate and overly simplistic view on the topic, but it seems as if the foreign aid does benefit Americans.

Some of the money is given to war torn third world countries to help stabilize the region. Once the region has become stable the big corporations can move in and construct factories and hire the local population at a fraction of the cost of what they'd pay in America. The goods they produce are shipped back to America where they are sold cheaply to help Americans buy the stuff they need for a cheap price. The government gets a chunk of what they "invested" back in import tax and sales tax and income tax on the people who sell/buy/transport the goods. A chunk of that tax money is used to pay the salaries of people who work in the "entitlement" industry that help the homeless as well as benefit the homeless themselves by buying the stuff they need and giving them money.

It seems that the money is given to the homeless in a round-about fashion, but it helps out more people than if they just gave it straight to them.

Originally posted by dogstar23
reply to post by Heisenberg59

 

Outside of restaurant chains, it barely affects anyone.

That's like saying, if you don't count the 6 sticks of butter, Paula Deen's cookies are nearly fat free.

You can flippantly dismiss the restaurant workers, but the truth of the matter is that they are a large part of the workforce. And they, along with many others, are going to have their earning potential affected by this law, whether or not people want to acknowledge the inconvenient truth.

When i read what you people have written. I cant stop to notice how dependent we have made our selves of money. Its like without it, We all suffer and die a horrible death.

There are many things we can do. But it wont help to blame our political leaders or the rest of the 1%.
Because, at 07:00 you start up you car and go to work for these people, one way or another.

Originally posted by chrome413
We need the manufacturing jobs back, ASAP. Things will only get worse unless that happens. NAFTA really screwed the U.S. economy. I think underemployment is as big a problem as unemployment, maybe even worse. It isn't that there are no jobs, it's that the jobs being created are not usually full time and pay minimum wage or only slightly higher. Without a living wage families are forced to accept government assistance just to survive (I think that may be what they want though, but that's a different thread). We need jobs that pay an actual living wage instead of these service sector jobs that our current government seem so proud to have created for us.

I can't imagine that would help the country. How would anyone buy anything if it cost 8x as much? You wouldn't be able to buy anything that was made and all the companies would go out of business and then no one would be working.

I think, and I'm sure I've said it before, that the only reason a manufacturing job used to be a valid way to achieve the American dream and have a house, boat, family, two vacations a year, etc. was that WW2 came along and destroyed the manufacturing capability of the rest of the civilized nations. America was the only country with an intact infrastructure so they could afford to dictate the price that the rest of the world paid. They had a monopoly. Now that things have recovered, companies can't afford to pay your average blue collar worker a premium salary and still thrive.

You should probably be happy they pay slave wages to people in Africa to keep the prices down. The only way bringing the manufacturing back to America would help people here would be if they could pay the workers 85 cents an hour. At least they implemented things like no child left behind and created a lot of scholarship funds and things along those lines so that a lot of the people can get a "higher" education and not need all the manufacturing jobs that they got rid of.

reply to post by Spookycolt

Show me any poor person and I will show you mistakes they have made that put them in the situation they are.

Originally posted by severdsoul
reply to post by cosmicexplorer

 

you have those kind because for some unknown reason
the govt see's being a drunk as a disability. I learned this first hand
when applying for help once years ago when all my medical started
(if only i had got help back then, things would be different, i would not be
looking at maby one more year ot live if i was lucky.)
But i was having seizures and could not figure out why, so the doc told me
to apply for disability to get medical coverage, so i was young (early 20's)
and did what they said, i naturally got told no, but the guy sitting next to me
when i applied got approved, because he had a drinking problem.

That was the last time i set foot in a dr office or govt building until recently,
i was so ticked off, here i was with real medical issues and i got denied but
this guy spent all his cash on booz so he got it.. amm here is a idea... DONT
give him money and he cant buy booz..

But instead, i just went back to working, the seizures faded away and i thought
i was in great health until last year. when i started having issues with swelling
out of now where, and i got the surprise from the doc on the first visit.
she looked at my test and her first words to me were "Well, you are not dead yet"

So really, lack of decent insurance and help when it was needed is the reason
i will die before long. Gota love the system. NOT...

Thats exactly what im talking about....I suffer from some serious stuff myself...enough that the military wouldn't let me back in if I wanted to but being a cop is ok...I could go on disability if I wanted to but I make way more money by working. Since I have started working every raise ive gotten has been washed out with rising heath care costs, taxes, or some random event. Now they are looking at taking our pensions as well...which was the last thing i had to look forward too. I think we should make our own nation somewhere haha.

Its sad that people who really need the help can't get it. Hell maybe I should just do it....if enough of people like us just do it..they will have to discard it...then we can all go back to working.

reply to post by purplemer


you just owned the heck out of his trite rubbish

i hope his heart sank when he saw that pic and realisation dawned