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The Soon Coming Judgment Of God Upon America and How To Escape It 118
poorer today than they were in 1980. An amazing 43 are poorer than they were in
1970. Fifty years of failure have demonstrated that foreign assistance more often
harms than helps.
359
Nations are poorer because US aid has not taught them to be self-reliant. An old proverb
states: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a
lifetime.” In a manner of speaking US aid has not taught the poor nations of the world how to
fish, how to be self-reliant. James Bovard of the Cato Institute writes that US aid has brought out
the worst in governments of impoverished nations:
…[US AID] has often encouraged the recipient governments' worst
tendencies--helping to underwrite programs and policies that have starved
thousands of people and derailed struggling economies…. In agriculture, in
economic planning, in food assistance, U.S. foreign aid has routinely failed to
benefit the foreign poor…. foreign aid routinely went to countries pursuing
policies destined to turn them into permanent economic cripples…. “Unless a
nation puts its own financial and economic house in order, no amount of aid will
produce progress.”… Instead of breaking the “endless cycle of poverty,” foreign
aid has become the opiate of the Third World. [US]AID and other donors have
encouraged Third World governments to rely on handouts instead of on
themselves for development.
360
(Emphasis added)
The failed results of US direct and indirect aid are that poor nations are much worse off.
Food production has fallen. “Since 1960, per capita food production in Africa has fallen 20
percent.”
361
“[F]armers have seen the prices for their own crops nosedive when US free food has
been given to their countries.”
362
In Somalia when food aid poured into the country, the local
farmers saw the prices received for their crops fall by 75 percent.
363
In the book World Hunger:
12 Myth, the authors explain that food aid can actually prevent the very thing that is needed in a
nation to alleviate hunger; that is agricultural development:
…food aid can actually forestall agricultural development that could
otherwise alleviate hunger. The inflow of food aid-even in many emergency
cases-has proved time and again to be detrimental to local farm economies.
Cheap, subsidized, or free U.S. grains undercut the prices of locally produced
food, driving local farmers out of business and into cities….
364
But even worse atrocities have resulted from foreign aid. As “part of World Bank-funded
‘development’ projects” we see communist ideals forced on populations; “[m]illions of peasants
have been pushed off their lands and many have been herded into collectives.”
365
This is in
similar fashion to the forced collectivization of peasant farmers in the U.S.S.R. and China, which
led to famine and the death of an estimated 32 million people.
366
It would be natural to assume
the collectivization funded by the World Bank would have the same results that were achieved in
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