According to The Life You Can Save, handing out these bed nets saves about one life for every $1,865 spent. That's to say that if the United States was able to spend the $1.1 billion we spent on the Libya operation on long-lasting insecticide treated bed nets we could have saved almost 590,000 lives from almost certain destruction. America's other allies in Libya spent about $3 billion in total together. That's something to think about.I've been disappointed by Obama's record on foreign aid. Although President Obama has overseen an increase in the foreign aid budget, less than 1% of our budget goes towards aid, of which much is spent buying bombs and guns for countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Israel. I appreciate concerns about the efficiency and effectiveness of aid programs, but we are now entering an age where researchers are rigorously evaluating international development programs. We should use that knowledge to help the global poor.
Luckily, you don't have to convince Congress to pass a law to help some people in need. I encourage you to improve some lives and give.
1 comment:
Nice title! It's interesting to consider whether it is really more important for the U.S. to intervene based on the refusal to tolerate active violation of human rights with chemical weapons, or whether we should improve the lives of more individuals who are suffering, even if its more difficult to determine whether anyone is actively "taking" a decent life away.
There's also obviously many factors- for instance, do estimates of how many lives an intervention in Syria will save take into account those who may be less likely to use chemical weapons in the future depending on how harshly the international community responds?
I'm glad that so much more research is now being conducted on international aid programs.
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