Very interesting piece by Edward Lucas on Christian Aid Week.
CHRISTIAN AID WEEK is rightly a time for warmheartedness. But that is
no excuse for softheadedness. It is sloppy thinking, for example, to
believe poverty in one place is caused by wealth in another. To share
the wealth of the rich world evenly among the poor would temporarily
dent poverty, not end it. Redistribution invariably destroys wealth in
one place; it rarely creates it in another. The redistributed money
would mostly go on short-term consumption or be stolen by corrupt
officials. The root cause of poverty, above all injustice, would remain.
Worth reading the whole thing.
Nelson Mandela said last year in a speech of uncharacteristic
foolishness, that “like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural.
It is man-made.” Actually, poverty is all too natural: not so long ago
a nice flint axe and a dry cave was the summit of human material
ambition.
Yes, I’ve used that line as the anchor for a piece as well.
The overwhelming lesson of five decades of Third World aid is that,
paid from taxation, it takes money from poor people in rich countries
and gives it to rich people in poor ones.
A slight quibble….shouldn’t that quote actually be attributed? Peter Bauer?
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