ONE Vote

I'm about to head out for the ONE Campaign's launch of their ONE Vote initiative now, s

The ONE Campaign is about fighting disease and severe poverty in the developing world, and the idea of the ONE Vote initiative is to inject this issue into the presidential race. Honestly, this strikes me as the kind of topic where elite views matter a lot more than popular ones and there's probably nothing to be accomplished by trying to insert it into practical politics, but I suppose getting all the presidential candidates to at least address the subect (Edwards and to a lesser extent Obama have already done so that I'm aware of) is probably important to shaping elite views.

Comments

If you really do want to fight disease and poverty in developing countries, you've got one logical vote in 2008: Ron Paul.

He'll get rid of the agricultural subsidies to U.S. agribusiness that keep farmers in those countries poor. No other candidate will -- not Hillary, not Barack, not Rudy McRomney.

Go Ron!

Posted by Zagnut | June 11, 2007 9:06 AM

How about fighting poverty and disease in the US? Charity begins at home.

Posted by SLC | June 11, 2007 9:15 AM

How about fighting poverty and disease in the US? Charity begins at home.

"Charity begins at home" is a new one. So when the local shelter asks for a donation I assume you tell them, "sorry, I'm donating to myself this year"?

This may not be readily apparent to a resident of the wealthiest nation in history, but the poor and sick outside of America are much, much poorer and much, much sicker than the poor and sick in America. Given that America spends one-eighth of one percent of GDP on foreign aid, and that we're talking about issues where increasing that aid by a paltry couple billion would save hundreds of thousands of lives every year, I think America can afford, for once, to be slightly less of a world-class asshole and actually try to do some good for a change.

Posted by Christmas | June 11, 2007 10:39 AM

SLC -

Poverty at home is a big deal. But we've been addressing it - the minimum wage, the earned income tax credit, social security, and medicaid, trying to improve access to education. We're working on it with the push for universal health care too.

But when people talk about poverty in the developing world, they're talking about extreme poverty - people living on less than one dollar of purchasing power per day. For a dollar a day, I couldn't sustain my coffee habit, let alone pay my rent, eat, invest in getting more than a buck a day, or stay even remotely healthy. We're talking about people dying because they can't afford to live.What's your living wage? There are 1 billion extremely poor in the world and the US is doing way, way, way less to help them than to help the realatively poor at home.

Posted by The Black Monk | June 11, 2007 10:54 AM

How about applying the Hippocratic Oath and an objective review of past programs to questions of poverty and misery in the fourth world? Consider, for example, the plea of the Kenyan James Shikwati, "For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!", and also former World Bank economist William Easterly's book, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good

Finally, consider that President Bush supports doubling his original aid package to Africa. Shouldn't that alone make you think twice about this subject?

Posted by Fred | June 11, 2007 1:13 PM

Amartya Sen noted in Foreign Affairs that Easterly failed to take into account different types of aid (our aid isn't exactly like Taiwan's aid) while aid's successes, such as Korea. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not the solution, nor is making the perfect the enemy of the good. Just because Bush claims he likes aid doesn't mean aid is a bad idea. Bush once thought getting drunk and snorting coke was a good idea, so once in a while he gets something right.

Posted by Reality Man | June 11, 2007 3:37 PM

You're talking about South Korea, I assume, Reality Man? That colonial outpost of ours with tens of thousands of troops in permanent bases for the last half century?

Posted by Fred | June 11, 2007 3:47 PM

I haven't read the Sen article, but the best lesson to come out of Easterly's work (both The White Man's Burden and The Elusive Quest for Growth) is the tendency of dollars to evaporate when aid is large-scale and government-based. Local programs that respond to the realities on the ground, as well as the market, have proven success all over the world. Give Bono and Jeffrey Sachs credit for their vision -- let's just push for a more nuanced approach.

And, as much as I hate to say it, Zagnut is right... Ron Paul's support for ending U.S. farm subsidies and import quotas would probably do more for the developing world than any USAID program. Too bad that's something that only Congress can change, and Big Agriculture holds Congress's purse strings.

Posted by Angry Sam | June 11, 2007 8:27 PM