I propose a constitutional amendment:
As long as the US is in debt, it cannot give foreign aid.
LET'S GOOoOoooo!!!
That money is owed by the nation and it cannot afford to incur more debt. If the country has a surplus, then it's up for discussion.
Not sure if that's the legal way to do it.
Way back when Davy Crocket was a US representative, the house approved money to rebuild a widows house that had burned down. Feeling rather smug about their good deed, He asked one of his constituents what he thought about the act.. The constituent replied, “it wasn’t your money to give”. After that, Davy Crockett became a fiscal conservative. Todays Congress needs to learn the same lesson. It isn’t their money to give!
That's such a enlightening story. That's exactly it.
the only winning move is not to pay
Back in the day it was loaned. Got paid back. Now it's just given away and kicked back.
spot on. that's why they don't have to pay it back is because these countries are actually giving a lot of it back to our corrupt government employees.
What you are proposing is a loose federation of autonomous humans. Each, whilst acknowledging the basic existence of the other humans, is fully self-supportive. Very little or no "community" projects or resources.
I can see the logic from the point of view of an individual who has been successful in working hard and harvesting resources. Why should he or she be compelled to share that stored wealth with others who have not worked or been less successful.
The problems I see with this approach are twofold:
This more or less describes medieval social systems with a few kings and sub-lords who pay for a private army to protect themselves against the mass of the peasant population.
tl;dr Humans are tribal pack animals not designed for being lone wolves. Although "rugged self-sufficiency" is superficially attractive (to the rugged) it's hard to see as being a successful strategy long-term.
What you are saying is that without government to force us we will not take care of the poor around us. We will somehow need government to do that for us.
Anyone who becomes a government employee will not be like the rest of us greedy people. They will put their greed to the side and focus on taking care of the poor people. Those selfless people will force a tax on us because we refuse to help others.
Yet when elections come around we the selfish will freely elect the selfless to spend our money better then we would have it left to ourselves.
If the government take half our earnings in taxes and fees then without it we would be able to spend twice as much.
If businesses were not taxed the same way they could charge less for products and services and pay employees even more.
If my income doubled and I was paying less for everything I’d sure as hell donate more to worthy causes.
The perspective you have is simple and quite compelling, however as in all things (where humans are involved), it becomes far more complicated. Most people are basically good, they can also be selfish when essentials are sparse. It is quite easy to be generous when you have a surplus of resources, and this is where you typically find the generous side of most people. I believe the argument is that we currently have a deep lack of resources to be giving away financial aid to other countries when we have indebted ourselves to near the point of bankruptcy. I also would argue that philanthropy is not the duty of the government without the approval of its constituents. It is nice of them to profit off of payouts to other countries and corporations, however; we have significant infrastructure and social issues at home. I agree that it is a wonderfully generous act to loan your fire extinguisher to your neighbors, however it isn't very prudent when your house has just started to catch fire.