Looking Forward - Charity

Today's installment of my "Looking Forward" series started out as a simple reply to Sunny's comment from yesterday. My answer to her comment quickly became too long for a simple response , and evolved into a full-blown post of its own.

---Sunny's Comment---
...When did America start caring more about helping [people] from other lands over helping their own people?...
---End Sunny's Comment---

It's not as simple as that. As a society I'd like to think we're pretty generous. We think of ourselves as Rockefellers. He busted his ass made gazillions of dollars and eventually found himself so rich that he felt compelled to give back to society. But his donations seem to have been designed to help overall society, not individuals.

As Americans, we expect our people to succeed by our rules... hard work, not handouts. As an American society though, we think that giving food to other countries is a hand up, not a handout. And if you take things a step further, you realize that our aid to other countries almost always comes with strings.

At the individual level, I see your point, but I see the benefit of giving to the world as well. A lot of the time I think "What the hell are we doing giving millions and billions of widgets to Exampleistan? We keep saying 'do this and you'll get aid.' They keep saying okay. We give them aid, and they keep eating their dogs, forcing their cats to wear burquas, jailing their babies, oppressing their men, trading their food for more guns, and so forth. When are we just going to say 'fuck you' and take care of ourselves?"

Taking things a step further, as a country, we can't afford to keep throwing money and aid around like we're doing now. Let's see, Social Security is going broke and uncounted amounts of kids don't have basic health care, but we keep sending money overseas. That's like me being maxed out on credit cards, virtually unable to make my house payment and on the verge of losing my car, yet still hosting an expensive block party in a transparent attempt to influence my neighbors.

At the same time though, I understand why individuals donate their money to overseas charities. I've been to third world countries. I've seen the poverty. It's enough to soften even my cynical heart. And then there's the return on investment. Why would I give ten bucks to an American bum who's homeless by choice, providing him one or two meals, when instead I could give an overseas charity the same ten bucks, which is enough to feed a kid in Exampleistan for two weeks? And I even get a pretty picture to commemorate my generosity!

How does this relate to "Looking Forward?" I'm glad you asked. I predict that our reduced status on the global stage will cause us to focus more inwardly. As our own standard of living actually goes down for the first time in a century, it will cause us to look around and re-evaluate how we're doing stuff. Collectively, we'll say "Hey, what's this? We can't take care of ourselves, but we're spending all of this money overseas!?! I don't think so." There will be less discretionary income overall, but as a society, we'll decide to take care of ourselves and leave the global generosity to others.