Watching the ABC evening news Friday I saw Pres. Biden touting rejoining the Paris Accord and WHO and how America was back. The news anchors were almost glowing in their report of how happy and receptive the zoom conference of mostly European leaders were of Biden's announcement. It made me laugh, of course these leaders were glad that America was back. They aren't glad were back they're glad we are paying for these programs again. Much like NATO before Trump forced their hands we were paying the bills.
People always complain that the U.S. is the world's police force, we're really the worlds pocketbook and everybody wants to put their hands in our pockets.
If you look at the Paris Accord payments of the countries as how much per person in the country's population, it sheds a different light on the figures. And it's a _voluntary_ contribution.
ReplyDeleteThe WHO has voluntary contributions also, but there are assessed fees in addition to those. The U.S. has the highest fees and provides more of the WHO funding than any other country. I'm not sure how that funding is provided, but last I heard it wasn't clear that Trump had the authority to stop payments that were already pledged by U.S. agencies.
I wish we could just scrap the budget and start from scratch. It also wouldn't hurt to look at organizations that get money from the taxpayers with an eye to how exactly that money is spent. I know the largest part of our voluntary WHO contribution goes to polio programs, but it'd be interesting to look at the administrative budgets of these organizations.
I agree with you that we can't continue to fund the world when we have hungry/unemployed/homeless people without access to healthcare here. I feel the same way about funding tax breaks for people buying multiple yachts ;)
Funding tax breaks is a little different, all they are really doing is taking less of that persons money. Every time I hear someone complain about tax cuts the act as though the government is giving them money. You are right they should scrap the budget but also all taxes. When they quit misspending money and have legitimate budget they can come back and tell us what they really need.
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