Are wealthy countries in anyway responsible to lift poor countries out of poverty?

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You are right. Regrettably.
The problem becomes worse when it is structural. From top down.
And it becomes a given,and it is " how it is".
From tiny to unimaginable amounts.
Corruption is like stagnant water. It stinks…
And we are making enormous efforts to improve. I cannot speak for all Latin America,but I know it is a desire to do away with it. It shows when Justice works,and quickly.
 
Sarcelle said:
I have interacted with poor farmers who have to pay extra in bribe money to government officials so they could have permission to sell their harvest in the market
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They sound very much like commodity traders in the western world. Coffee farmers do all the hard graft and get paid very little for their work, then commodity traders make a fortune buying and selling the coffee beans.
 
Yes and no, Catholicism was brought through colonialism and then there’s been the various military coups, US interventions, civil wars, etc. those are breeding grounds for corruption.
 
Sarcelle said:
Shortly after a scandal broke out because the aid that supposed to be for the victims of this typhoon was instead pocketed by government officials.
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Is that a part of the story behind the outsider Duterte winning the Presidency over there?
 
graciew said:
We are so interconnected as nations that a misstep and any sort of domino effect may complicate things dramatically too.
Excesses. A very big structure in the public sector. Excessive salaries. Too many benefits.
Living above our paygrade,income,debts.
In other words,fasten seat belts,means fasten seat belts,for everybody.

And ineptitude of course.
But… Aid could perfectly well be monitored and provided in stages, as it is done in the private sector. A safe and efficient network.
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Yes I agree. I think aid like building infrastructure can be well targeted. Either a bridge is built or it is not. Either a highway is extended / widened or it is not. Either drainage is completed or it s not. Having a clear goal in mind that all can judge as successful is an important idea.

For the last two weeks my part of the Philippines was hit by 4 separate typhoons. The amount of water that fell created landslides, bridge overflows, temporary homelessness and unfortunately death as well. It flooded many houses so that people had no where to sleep. The government had been widening and deepening rivers in the preceding years and were putting in road drainage so it could have been much worse. This is the type of foreign aid I would prefer. Continually improving infrastructure. I would also like to see foreign governments take a strong hand in delivering these projects. There has to be some corruption in giving money to certain political families. That is just the sad reality. But excepting this well targeted infrastructure spending run by trusted foreign aid givers is something many here would be appreciable towards.

Of course this puts the aid givers ethics under the spotlight.
 
I mean it’s pretty objective that the US has lower corruption than a country like Mexico or Argentina, in the present day.

I’m saying I don’t know if the US now is more or less corrupt than in the past.

That’s not intuition.
 
abucs said:
Either a bridge is built or it is not. Either a highway is extended / widened or it is not. Either drainage is completed or it s not. Having a clear goal in mind that all can judge as successful is an important idea.
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The bridges and roads are usually built. The issue is, was it built for a fair market price or was the cost inflated so money could be skimmed off the top.
 
JanSobieskiIII said:
The bridges and roads are usually built. The issue is, was it built for a fair market price or was the cost inflated so money could be skimmed off the top.
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I think you are describing hedge funds and the stock market, they skim money from bridge building.
 
Probably

Duterte ran on the platform of zero tolerance of corruption and drug dealers.

Filipinos have rightly known that corruption and drugs are part of the reasons their country is poor.
 
This is exactly the kind of aid I was thinking of ,Abucs. And very closely assessed.
As if you had read my mind!
 
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JanSobieskiIII said:
I mean it’s pretty objective that the US has lower corruption than a country like Mexico or Argentina, in the present day.

I’m saying I don’t know if the US now is more or less corrupt than in the past.

That’s not intuition.
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If you can’t say that the US is more or less corrupt than in the past, then how can you say that Mexico today is more corrupt than the US a hundred years ago? What data do you use to ascertain that?
 
Name a time in US history when large swaths of the country were ruled by drug cartels. Or when an entire special forces unit defected, stole equipment, and became the armed security for one of those cartels.
 
Couple hundred farmers that were quickly crushed. They never actually ruled any territory the way modern cartels do with private soldiers and politicians bought and paid for.
 
JanSobieskiIII said:
Name a time in US history when large swaths of the country were ruled by drug cartels. Or when an entire special forces unit defected, stole equipment, and became the armed security for one of those cartels.
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The Al Capone era comes to mind. But without actual hard data we can’t really compare things. Your opinion is useless without actual facts.
 
There’s virtually no data I can find that compares what we’re looking for. I’ve been looking, maybe you’ll have better luck.
 
But many of these foreign aid missions save lives, without these monies many people would surely have perished. With that said, there does seem to be conundrums within foreign aid, we can avoid corruption by giving to reputable NGOs but we risk promoting an unsustainable mission (like local governments might not develop their own local institutions) or we can sustainably build public systems but risk corruption as well.
 
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