Hacker News Reader

Comment by excuse-me | Hacker News Reader

Indian has a space program, a nuclear weapons program and now owns British Steel and LandRover - and we send them aid to feed themselves !

View on HN

The United States of American has a space program, a nuclear program, own a lot and 1 in 5 children are living in poverty.

You can say the same about almost any country.

The state of poverty and despair in western countries is far more mind boggling to me than in developing countries.

True but AFAIK no other countries are spending their tax money providing food aid to the USA?

I agree our own poverty situation is awful, but honestly that's another reason to not be spending tax money the US International Food Aid Program. What if we spent that ~1.2 billion each year on feeding our hungry children, trying to reduce the number of families in poverty etc..?

Countries (including India) donate to the US during times of disaster (Katrina). Not exactly the same thing, but worth pointing out.

The US gets a lot of value from having a friend in the region. Especially one with the military capabilities that India has.

But really, my point is that we live in a complicated world. It's idealistic (naive?) to think "how silly, people are starving yet they have a space program or a nuclear program?!" Science and energy aren't wasteful places to be spending money. Frankly, we live in a world where military spending can hardly be seen as wasteful.

The donations during Katrina were meant to be understood as moral support. These donations were not to be misunderstood as a claim that the US would have been incapable of dealing with Katrina by themselves.

>>not to be misunderstood as a claim that the US would have been incapable of dealing with Katrina by themselves.

Oh, yes sure.

But if somebody in my neighborhood dies, I lend them shoulder so that they cry in comfort. Not that they are incapable of dealing with their loss. But because that's how friends treat each other. With compassion and are always there for each other during times of need.

Yes, but this relation is not symmetric, which is where the OP's question comes in

It depends, you could spend $1.2Bn on feeding the people of various third world countries or you could spend $6.7Bn/Month on bombing just one of them - not sure which is going to gain you more friends and influence, but neither is going to do much for a poor kid in Alabama

I agree with you, I wonder why someone downvoted / flagged your post. The US has 1000+ bases around the world and spends a lot of money maintaining troops in "friendly" countries and client states (Middle East puppet regimes) and occupying and bombing other countries. The real total "defense budget" including all the offensive actions, DoD, Pentagon, TSA etc is more than $1 trillion (that's $1000 billion, or $1000,000 million). All of that could be spent at home but we'd rather bomb / liberate those civilians than to spend money on healthcare of our elderly or food or education of our kids.

http://antiwar.com/blog/2012/02/20/the-real-us-military-budg...

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/us-govt-ran--13-trillion-budget-d...

The Federal Reserve has printed trillions of dollars and given it to their buddy banksters and have no trail of it, and we the taxpayers have to pay it back by inflation. Poor suckers who saved for their retirements can go to hell.

http://www.dailymarkets.com/economy/2009/05/14/federal-reser...

End the corporate bailouts, bring the US military budget to a sane level, end the subsidies for big oil and gas, end the subsidies to banksters and we'll have enough to feed all the kids and the poor and provide universal healthcare.

Bank of America Pays No Taxes, Gets $1B Refund: Report http://www.thestreet.com/story/11059978/bank-of-america-pays...

Bank of America, GE Pay Zero Federal Taxes http://publicintelligence.net/bank-of-america-ge-pay-zero-fe...

Bank of America, Citigroup, GM paid no taxes http://www.standard.net/topics/opinion/2011/04/04/bank-ameri...

Federal Reserve Cannot Account For $9 Trillion http://www.dailymarkets.com/economy/2009/05/14/federal-reser...

We all pay for the research but when it's time for profits it's "capitalism" because socialism is evil!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies A 2009 study by the Environmental Law Institute[5] assessed the size and structure of U.S. energy subsidies over the 2002–2008 period. The study estimated that subsidies to fossil-fuel based sources amounted to approximately $72 billion over this period and subsidies to renewable fuel sources totaled $29 billion. The study did not assess subsidies supporting nuclear energy.

The three largest fossil fuel subsidies were:

Foreign tax credit ($15.3 billion) Credit for production of non-conventional fuels ($14.1 billion) Oil and Gas exploration and development expensing ($7.1 billion) The three largest renewable fuel subsidies were:

Alcohol Credit for Fuel Excise Tax ($11.6 billion) Renewable Electricity Production Credit ($5.2 billion) Corn-Based Ethanol ($5.0 billion)

I was going to sarcastically reply that my apartment building also wasn't holding a fundraiser for the robber barons on wall street until I remembered that we already did.

Also, you are aware that in 2011 the usa spent .86 trillion dollars on the military and wars? Maybe we should go after that for food aid before complaining about a paltry billion donated from the richest country in the world to our fellow human beings.

Agreed 100%, but arguing about military spending seems pretty tangential to the main discussion here, whereas the food aid program is directly relevant.

Amen to that! It's more like $1 trillion or $1.3 or more, see my response below. And we need to go after the banksters and big oil and gas that take away more than enough money that could be used to balance our budget before we talk about aid that is a fraction of a percentage of our GDP.

The definition of poverty in the US and India is a little different, in the USA it means a family income of less than $43,512 a year - in India it means dying of starvation.

Not wishing to belittle the struggle of so many US families - but this isn't quite the same thing.

The poverty level in the us is $23 050 for a family of 4 (1). Not sure where you got your figure.

Roughly 10% of americans were food-insecure at some point in a year (2)

(1) http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/12poverty.shtml

(2) http://webarchives.cdlib.org/sw1s17tt5t/http://ers.usda.gov/...

Yes, in India ~50% of the population doesn't have regular access to clean water or a sewage system. Yes, I'd rather be poor in the US than poor in India. But I maintain that the state of poverty in the US (and other western countries) is a far bigger failure than the state of poverty in any developing country.

Also, I can't help but link to this great post whenever talking about poverty:

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/

the mac and cheese one makes me tear up every time I read it.

Food insecurity in the US is meaningless. The definition is so broad it encompasses all sorts of ridiculous situations.

Consider a morbidly obese person who eats 6 cheeseburgers/day. At dinner time on the 30'th day of the month (payday is the 1'st of next month) they run out of money, and are only able to purchase 4 cheeseburgers that day. By the definition of the USDA, this person is food insecure.

Comparing poverty in the US to poverty in India is a misnomer - poor people in the US are actually richer than the rich (top 5%) in India. I say this based on both personal experience and statistics: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/the-haves-and-t...

The article by Scalzi you cite does not describe the poor in the US. I debunk it (with stats) here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1713461

Food insecurity at some point in a year is not at all the same thing as starvation.

That does not sound like the correct number for the US poverty line. Where did you get it from?

Sorry my mistake, it was from a lobbying group website and is 2x the "official" US poverty level income figure. Their point being that even at 200% of the official figure it's still pretty tough, which is certainly true.

Their site was one of these "thinktanks" that appear to be an official government agency until you look very closely.

The problem is not lack of food production but distribution. There is a need for a lot of investment in infrastructure.

What keeps India's infrastructure basically third-world while other (small, but rapidly growing) parts of the economy are world-class?

Really bad governance. All the development and growth you hear about is driven by capitalism, private sector growth, and privatization of energy, telecommunication and other traditional government strongholds.

The country is held back by public sector mismanagement and obscene corruption.

Not sure if relevant, but the Geopolitics of the United States article claims the thesis that one reason the US got such a strong economy was because the rich Mississippi Basin had more navigable waterways than the rest of the world combined. It mentions the Ganges River by saying:

"The Ganges River Basin is the most agriculturally productive in the world, but the Ganges is not navigable. The combination of fertile lands and non-navigable waterways makes the region crushingly overpopulated and poor."

That Stratfor article is amazingly good; I wish they'd post the second half publicly vs. requiring email (I'm reading it now).

It's annoying they don't have a price between free and $349/yr. I'd pay $100-150.

Its really a mixed bag. Some regions have phenomenal growth and are driving all the growth. Where as the poorer regions of the country are left in a vicious circle. Although that is changing but at a very slow rate.

Yeah its not fair is it?

British went to India (on what visa?) and looted the country shipping everything valuable to Britain. And now British can't let Indians into their country because of visa restrictions? That is fair right?

Or Britain liberated India from a Mughal conqueror and put the Hindus back in charge.

American's also don't let Brits in because of Visa issues - and after we, almost successfully, taught them to speak English

India is a secular country. Hindus are not in charge (Prime minister is sikh - minority, Head of ruling party is a christian, President whose position is large ceremonial is hindu, Vice President whose position is also ceremonial is muslim - Find a country with diversity at the top in entire world).

>>Britain liberated India from a Mughal conqueror So called Mughal conqueror also thought he is a liberator.

Edit: Typo.

All you people are a joke. Still discussing religion and historical shit and whom to blame. What's wrong with you people? Seriously, what's done is done. Wake the fck up.

>India is a secular country. Hindus are not in charge

Tell that to the Christians of Orissa or Muslims of Ahmedabad or Kashmir.

50,000 Christians fled in Orissa in 2008, thousands of homes destroyed and dozens of Churches burnt. http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/sep/01mob.htm

Thousands were still unable to return because of Hindu extremists more than 1 year later: http://www.christianpost.com/news/orissa-christians-are-pris...

Remember when Hindu-dominated BJP kicked Jaswant Singh out of the party for saying the truth?

Jaswant Singh: "Look into the eyes of the muslims that live in india and if you truly see through the pain that they live of which land do they belong to? we treat them as aliens! because somewhere, inside we continue to ask that 'even after pakistan you still want something?' these are citizens of india now. that was jinnah's failure, because jinnah never left and never really advised the muslims that stayed back."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachar_Committee_Report#Main_fi...

-Muslim parents are not averse to mainstream education or to send their children to affordable Government schools. The access to government schools for children of Muslim parents is limited.

-The average amount of bank loan disbursed to the Muslims is 2/3 of the amount disbursed to other minorities. In some cases it is half. The Reserve Bank of India’s efforts to extend banking and credit facilities under the Prime Minister’s 15-point programme of 1983 has mainly benefited other minorities marginalizing Muslims.

-There is a clear and significant inverse association between the proportion of the Muslim population and the availability of educational infrastructure in small villages. Muslim concentration villages are not well served with pucca approach roads and local bus stops.

-Most of the variables indicate that Muslim-OBCs (Other Backward Class) are significantly deprived in comparison to Hindu-OBCs. The work participation rate (WPR) shows the presence of a sharp difference between Hindu-OBCs (67%) and the Muslims. The share of Muslim-OBCs in government/ PSU jobs is much lower than Hindu-OBCs.

>>Or Britain liberated India from a Mughal conqueror and put the Hindus back in charge.

Joke?

Firstly Muslims participated and contributed equally to Indian 'Freedom' Struggle. Notice the word 'Freedom' there! Indians consider it Freedom, being an Indian I've never read anything in our history books, which considers the post mughal period as a the period of 'Freedom'.

Secondly British stole a lot from India, took it back to England to make itself rich. Mughals as far as I know did nothing like that. The conqueror never went back, In fact he united India and contributed to India's rich cultural heritage in music, poetry, science, wealth and in nearly every aspect of life.

After all that India was never a nation ruled by single ideological power. Mainland India has been ruled by Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists(Asoka was a Buddhist), atheists. And there have been no defined borders of Mainland India throughout history. Which has been area from the north starting from southern tips of Russia, the whole of Afghanistan and then extending on the east till Iran.

India has been ruled by people speaking various languages, cultures, skin color and ethnicity for thousands of years.

What did Britain steal from India? Some diamonds, but most of the other stuff was renewable resources (and time/opportunity cost), right?

The British banned several industries in India to encourage the development of those industries in Britain. One of Gandhi's famous acts of disobedience was leading people down to the sea to make their own salt, an industry that was forbidden in India at the time.[1] The British did do a few good things for India, but they did some really bad things too.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March

What do you mean by 'renewable resources'?

The British rule in India was full of continuous exploitation of the Indian masses, both politically and economically. The value of freedom can't be measured in diamonds.

To learn more, start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_independence_movement

>What did Britain steal from India? Some diamonds, but most of the other stuff was renewable resources (and time/opportunity cost), right?

That's a sad, sick peace of imperial mentality. Would you rather be butchered by an army of some foreign people who consider people of their skin to be superior to yours, and then say it's only some diamonds?

What did the British steal from Native Americans? Only some gold?

What did the British steal from European colonists of America? Only some tea?

Put the Hindus back in charge? The British just used divide and conquer to rule (and the people were stupid enough to fall for that). The division of India was because of insecurity of Muslims and due to rigidness of the Hindu leaders who weren't willing to compromise on power, they wanted to be "in charge" and that's why Jinnah insisted on a separate country.

http://arjunpuri.wordpress.com/the-economist-attacks-india-i...

Even 60+ years after independence India and Pakistan are still virtually at red alert because of the lack of trust and because of the Kashmir dispute and both countries spend billions of dollars to arm their military while 75.6% of Indians and some 60% of Pakistanis live under poverty (live under $2 a day according to HDI). It works out well for the weapons manufacturers of the world, the taxpayers of India and Pakistan are helping the economy of US, UK, France, Germany etc by buying billions of dollars worth of killing machines.

http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/indicators/103.html

Not really.

Thats, well I don't know how to categorize that.

The brits - the East India Company to start - destroyed several different kingdoms starting with Bengal. They also demolished the Rajputs, the Sikhs, the Marathas - all Hindu Kingdoms. They demolished the Sultanate that ruled from Delhi, and several other princely states.

You could even say they were equal opportunity in that - no matter what religion you were, you would be cowed, because, well - they knew how. Divide and conquer worked.

They also didn't put Hindus back in charge. They realized that they needed a new class of people to work for them and then worked to create a peon/intelligent worker class. They didn't choose those people based on religion.

> we, almost successfully, taught them to speak English

Ummm, no you did not teach them to speak English.

Rather, "you" eradicated the parts of the population that did not speak English.

Also has enough food to feed themselves. But are tripping over time and again =/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com