Earlier quoted context omitted.
> so USAID made up almost 2% of all the US' federal discretionary spending! So, tiny; a fraction of what we spend on much less useful things like the Iran war or huge gifts to ICE. 30 years of that level of USAID funding would only get us to a single one of those trillions in debt. > The vacuum their exit has created is being rapidly filled by a wide mix of other interests. Yeah, we don't really want China vacuuming…
Yes the Iran war is also a waste of money. Money being wasted in one place is hardly an argument to do it in another place. And the whole point of discretionary spending is that it's money that could have been spent on society instead of e.g. setting up fake social media sites to try to cause chaos in another country. And because of regularly bloated spending I think we often lose track of what it really means. $34 b…
You think that's where most of USAID money is going?
> $34 billion is $100 from every man, woman, and child in the US.
Substantially less than unrest and unchecked disease in entire continents would cost us.
> Imagine if all of this money was spent domestically.
We'd probably blow it on some full-body MRIs.
> China's pharma companies are establishing production factories within Africa for the local production of trade-level quantities of pharmaceuticals meaning they'll be able to provide not only for their own needs, but have enough production to turn drugs into exports.
Yeah, they got that one from us. https://www.usp.org/news/usaid-launches-five-million-dollar-...
It's how China got big in the first place, even; we shipped our manufacturing there!
> It's not like African nations don't realize what we're doing, while we then go and try to lecture them about the Chinese debt trap. What a shock that they're not listening.
Certainly. But that's just trading one hegemon for another.