To the creeps who blame Africans for the breakdown of their economies and the like

[Dean]

Report: $854 Billion Removed from Africa by Illicit Financial Flows from 1970 to 2008 (http://www.gfip.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=299)




Total illicit financial outflows from Africa, conservatively estimated, were approximately $854 billion;



Total illicit outflows from Africa may be as high as $1.8 trillion;



Sub-Saharan African countries experienced the bulk of illicit financial outflows with the West and Central African region posting the largest outflow numbers;



The top five countries with the highest outflow measured were: Nigeria ($89.5 billion) Egypt ($70.5 billion), Algeria ($25.7 billion), Morocco ($25 billion), and South Africa ($24.9 billion);



Illicit financial outflows from the entire region outpaced official development assistance going into the region at a ratio of at least 2 to 1;



Illicit financial outflows from Africa grew at an average rate of 11.9 percent per year.




All praise USAID

[LeftSideDown]

Report: $854 Billion Removed from Africa by Illicit Financial Flows from 1970 to 2008 (http://www.gfip.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=299)



All praise USAID

I don't know, its kind of been proven over and over again that foreign aid doesn't help and it mostly goes to give ruthless dictators Corvettes and guns.

[Scary Monster]

I don't know, its kind of been proven over and over again that foreign aid doesn't help and it mostly goes to give ruthless dictators Corvettes and guns.

Not to mention europe's centuries-old colonialism in africa, which i would think is the root of africa's (native's) extreme poverty.

[Dean]

I don't know, its kind of been proven over and over again that foreign aid doesn't help and it mostly goes to give ruthless dictators Corvettes and guns.

Foreign aid helps where it needs to. That is, in providing the "giving" nation with political capital, or in empowering / endearing leaders to further the interests of the aiding state. It's pure delusion to think that foreign aid is ever given out of concern for the well being of those who live in the client nation.

[RGacky3]

I don't know, its kind of been proven over and over again that foreign aid doesn't help and it mostly goes to give ruthless dictators Corvettes and guns.

Yeah, so your solution? The market? sounds great all the African peopleneed now is lots and lots of money.

But I thought begging was your answer to poor people, but now you say it does'nt work?

[LeftSideDown]

Yeah, so your solution? The market? sounds great all the African peopleneed now is lots and lots of money.

But I thought begging was your answer to poor people, but now you say it does'nt work?

Foreign Aid doesn't work. Thats different than charity and a lot of the time its managed by the state. State run things for the most part do not work, and if you don't believe me I recommend you look up Losing Ground by Charles Murray. It limits itself to discussion of 1950 to 1980 and specifically examines data of before and after The Great Society. You can read some of it on google books, and just looking at the graphs is pretty damning.

The market worked pretty well in Botswana.
"As Robert Guest of The Economist noted in his 2004 book, The Shackled Continent, "In the last 35 years, Botswana's economy has grown faster than any other in the world."

"That brings me to probably the most important legacy of Khama's presidency: a limited government and one of the freest economies in Africa. (In its 2007 Economic Freedom of the World report, Canada's Fraser Institute ranked Botswana's economic freedom on par with that of Belgium and Portugal.) According to Scott Beaulier, an economist at Beloit College, "Khama adopted pro-market policies on a wide front. His new government promised low and stable taxes to mining companies, liberalized trade, increased personal freedoms, and kept marginal income tax rates low to deter tax evasion and corruption."

But why did Khama chose to embrace the free market and limited government at a time when Marxism seemed to be on an unstoppable march in other African countries? I can only hypothesize that a prescient leader like Khama would have been aware of the failure of African socialism as early as 1966, the year of Botswana's independence. After all, in February 1966, Kwame Nkrumah, the Marxist prime minister and later president of Ghana, was ousted in a coup amid economic decline and political repression. Moreover, Khama, who came to power peacefully, was not beholden to the Soviet Union or Maoist China for military, financial, and intellectual support, while many African liberation movements were. In fact, Khama seems to have had a healthy regard for the British parliamentary system and common law.

Economic openness served Botswana well. Between 1966 and 2006, its average annual compound growth rate of GDP per capita was 7.22 percent — higher than China's 6.99 percent. Its GDP per capita (adjusted for inflation and purchasing power parity) rose from $671 in 1966 to $10,813 in 2005. Unfortunately, the high GDP growth rate has not resulted in increased life expectancy, which, in a country ravaged by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, declined from 62 years in 1980 to 35 years in 2005."
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9399

But yeah, go on, you were saying?

[Dean]

Economic openness served Botswana well. Between 1966 and 2006, its average annual compound growth rate of GDP per capita was 7.22 percent — higher than China's 6.99 percent. Its GDP per capita (adjusted for inflation and purchasing power parity) rose from $671 in 1966 to $10,813 in 2005. Unfortunately, the high GDP growth rate has not resulted in increased life expectancy, which, in a country ravaged by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, declined from 62 years in 1980 to 35 years in 2005."
Capitalism is valuable for developing fledgling economies. However, in advanced capitalist economies, it develops a stagnation unprecedented - primarily because finance capital necessarily takes over, and efficient models of finance are always disassociated from material production, because it naturally confines capital in regard to its potential to accumulate wealth.

Reduction in costs is a pervasive and necessary character of finance capital, and this always manifests as reduced compensation and reduced material production.