Political! Here's an extra $50 billion for good works: How will you spend it?
- Thread starter Roxanne Appleby
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Pure
Fiel a Verdad
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liar,
just for illustrative purposes, how much (and what % of national budget) does Sweden spend on fighting AIDS and malaria, overseas?
the US funding for fighting malaria is apparently about 250 million in FY 2006.
http://www.data.org/issues/governmentFunding_for_Malaria.html
the US spending per budget 2006, total. 2.6 trillion. do the math.
i get, .01% (a hundredth of one per cent).
----
from the above site.
the figures below reflect intended additional spending for a 5 year period.
//On June 30, 2005, President Bush announced the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), a new commitment to spend an additional $1.2 billion between 2005 and 2010 and cut malaria related deaths by 50% in 15 focus countries in Africa.
The new initiative is partnering with national malaria control programs, international organizations and the private sector with a goal of providing prevention and treatment for 175 million of the most vulnerable people (children under the age of five, pregnant women and people living with HIV/AIDS) in its 15 focus nations by 2010. PMI is providing anti malarial drugs, insecticide-treated bed nets, treatment for pregnant women and indoor mosquito spraying. The first phase of the program was launched in early 2006 in Uganda, Angola and Tanzania and has thus far reached 6 million Africans with anti-malaria services.
In 2007, PMI plans to reach an additional 30 million Africans with medicines, sprays and bed nets by expanding into four new focus countries – Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda and Senegal. In addition, at the recent White House Summit on Malaria, the Administration announced that eight additional African countries – Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali and Zambia – will be added in 2008. //
just for illustrative purposes, how much (and what % of national budget) does Sweden spend on fighting AIDS and malaria, overseas?
the US funding for fighting malaria is apparently about 250 million in FY 2006.
http://www.data.org/issues/governmentFunding_for_Malaria.html
the US spending per budget 2006, total. 2.6 trillion. do the math.
i get, .01% (a hundredth of one per cent).
----
from the above site.
the figures below reflect intended additional spending for a 5 year period.
//On June 30, 2005, President Bush announced the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), a new commitment to spend an additional $1.2 billion between 2005 and 2010 and cut malaria related deaths by 50% in 15 focus countries in Africa.
The new initiative is partnering with national malaria control programs, international organizations and the private sector with a goal of providing prevention and treatment for 175 million of the most vulnerable people (children under the age of five, pregnant women and people living with HIV/AIDS) in its 15 focus nations by 2010. PMI is providing anti malarial drugs, insecticide-treated bed nets, treatment for pregnant women and indoor mosquito spraying. The first phase of the program was launched in early 2006 in Uganda, Angola and Tanzania and has thus far reached 6 million Africans with anti-malaria services.
In 2007, PMI plans to reach an additional 30 million Africans with medicines, sprays and bed nets by expanding into four new focus countries – Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda and Senegal. In addition, at the recent White House Summit on Malaria, the Administration announced that eight additional African countries – Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali and Zambia – will be added in 2008. //
Last edited:
Liar
now with 17% more class
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For the last 12 years, it has been a goal (and give ot take a tenth, it has also been the result - aid increased in years with large natural disasters, wars etc, ad slightluy below the mark in compatitively "calmer" years) in the budget to have a 1% post for aid to developing countries. How much of that goes specifically to fight AIDS and malaria, I don't know. I'll dig and see what I can find.
Pure
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in short, if Lomberg is saying to the US gov [the Bushies], take lots of money and fight AIDs instead of trying to protect the environment (in particular reduce carbon emissions), the reply is:
"we'll do neither, thanks, and save the billions: 'good works' are for the churches. oh, and if the Africans want to stop AIDS, they should learn to stop screwing around."
isn't it odd how our right wingers [non Bushies] have developed this sudden interest in fighting AIDs provided it's done with money taken from "environmental protection"?
===
i can imagine the next step, our right wingers will say,
"Hey, how about feeding the poor! They desperately need it. Channel some of that alternate fuels research money there!.... Attend to the poor! Prevent malaria, just stop talking about the air and the climate!" Anything! Just leave the oil companies the fuck alone!
"we'll do neither, thanks, and save the billions: 'good works' are for the churches. oh, and if the Africans want to stop AIDS, they should learn to stop screwing around."
isn't it odd how our right wingers [non Bushies] have developed this sudden interest in fighting AIDs provided it's done with money taken from "environmental protection"?
===
i can imagine the next step, our right wingers will say,
"Hey, how about feeding the poor! They desperately need it. Channel some of that alternate fuels research money there!.... Attend to the poor! Prevent malaria, just stop talking about the air and the climate!" Anything! Just leave the oil companies the fuck alone!
Last edited:
Roxanne Appleby
Masterpiece
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How to Think About the World's Problems
By BJORN LOMBORG
WSJ, May 22, 2008
The pain caused by the global food crisis has led many people to belatedly realize that we have prioritized growing crops to feed cars instead of people. That is only a small part of the real problem.
This crisis demonstrates what happens when we focus doggedly on one specific – and inefficient – solution to one particular global challenge. A reduction in carbon emissions has become an end in itself. The fortune spent on this exercise could achieve an astounding amount of good in areas that we hear a lot less about.
Research for the Copenhagen Consensus, in which Nobel laureate economists analyze new research about the costs and benefits of different solutions to world problems, shows that just $60 million spent on providing Vitamin A capsules and therapeutic Zinc supplements for under-2-year-olds would reach 80% of the infants in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, with annual economic benefits (from lower mortality and improved health) of more than $1 billion. That means doing $17 worth of good for each dollar spent. Spending $1 billion on tuberculosis would avert an astonishing one million deaths, with annual benefits adding up to $30 billion. This gives $30 back on the dollar.
Heart disease represents more than a quarter of the death toll in poor countries. Developed nations treat acute heart attacks with inexpensive drugs. Spending $200 million getting these cheap drugs to poor countries would avert 300,000 deaths in a year.
A dollar spent on heart disease in a developing nation will achieve $25 worth of good. Contrast that to Operation Enduring Freedom, which Copenhagen Consensus research found in the two years after 2001 returned 9 cents for each dollar spent. Or with the 90 cents Copenhagen Consensus research shows is returned for every $1 spent on carbon mitigation policies.
Focusing first on costs and benefits means that we can reconsider the merits of policies that have gone out of fashion.
The unpopular war in Iraq has undermined rich nations' belief in the success of military intervention as a way of reducing conflict. But Copenhagen Consensus research reveals that a peacekeeping force is even more effective than aid in reducing the likelihood that a conflict-prone nation will relapse into violence.
Four new civil wars are expected to break out in the next decade in low-income nations. Compared with no deployment, spending $850 million on a peacekeeping initiative reduces the 10-year risk of conflict re-emerging to 7% from around 38%, according to Copenhagen Consensus research by Oxford University's Paul Collier.
Because of war's horrendous and lasting costs, each percentage point of risk reduction is worth around $2.5 billion to the world. Thus, spending $850 million each year to reduce the risk of conflict by a massive 30 percentage points means a 10-year gain of $75 billion compared to the overall cost of $8.5 billion, or $9 back on the dollar.
In other areas, too, sound economic analysis suggests solutions that we may at first find unpalatable.
Poor water or sanitation affects more than two billion people and will claim millions of lives this year. One targeted solution would be to build large, multipurpose dams in Africa.
Building new dams may not be politically correct, but there are massive differences between the U.S. and Europe – where there are sound environmental arguments to halt the construction of large dams and even to decommission some – and countries like Ethiopia which have no water storage facilities, great variability in rainfall, and where dams could be built with relatively few environmental side effects. A single reservoir located in the scarcely inhabited Blue Nile gorge in Ethiopia would cost a breathtaking $3.3 billion. But it would produce large amounts of desperately needed power for Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt, combat the regional water shortage in times of drought, and expand irrigation. All these benefits would be at least two-and-a-half times as high as the costs.
In each of these areas – and in the areas of air pollution, education and trade barriers – the world's scarce resources could be used to achieve massive amounts of benefits.
Next week, some of the world's top economists, including five Nobel laureates, will consider new research outlining the costs and benefits of nearly 50 solutions to world problems – from building dams in Africa to providing micronutrient supplements to combating climate change. On May 30, the Copenhagen Consensus panel will produce a prioritized list showing the best and worst investments the world could make to tackle major challenges.
The research and the list will encourage greater transparency and a more informed debate.
Acknowledging that some investments shouldn't be our top priority isn't the same as saying that the challenges don't exist. It simply means working out how to do the most good with our limited resources. It will send a signal, too, to research communities about areas that need more study.
The global food crisis has sadly underlined the danger of continuing on our current path of fixating on poor solutions to high-profile problems instead of focusing on the best investments we could make to help the planet.
Mr. Lomborg, organizer of Copenhagen Consensus, is the author of "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming" (Knopf, 2007).
By BJORN LOMBORG
WSJ, May 22, 2008
The pain caused by the global food crisis has led many people to belatedly realize that we have prioritized growing crops to feed cars instead of people. That is only a small part of the real problem.
This crisis demonstrates what happens when we focus doggedly on one specific – and inefficient – solution to one particular global challenge. A reduction in carbon emissions has become an end in itself. The fortune spent on this exercise could achieve an astounding amount of good in areas that we hear a lot less about.
Research for the Copenhagen Consensus, in which Nobel laureate economists analyze new research about the costs and benefits of different solutions to world problems, shows that just $60 million spent on providing Vitamin A capsules and therapeutic Zinc supplements for under-2-year-olds would reach 80% of the infants in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, with annual economic benefits (from lower mortality and improved health) of more than $1 billion. That means doing $17 worth of good for each dollar spent. Spending $1 billion on tuberculosis would avert an astonishing one million deaths, with annual benefits adding up to $30 billion. This gives $30 back on the dollar.
Heart disease represents more than a quarter of the death toll in poor countries. Developed nations treat acute heart attacks with inexpensive drugs. Spending $200 million getting these cheap drugs to poor countries would avert 300,000 deaths in a year.
A dollar spent on heart disease in a developing nation will achieve $25 worth of good. Contrast that to Operation Enduring Freedom, which Copenhagen Consensus research found in the two years after 2001 returned 9 cents for each dollar spent. Or with the 90 cents Copenhagen Consensus research shows is returned for every $1 spent on carbon mitigation policies.
Focusing first on costs and benefits means that we can reconsider the merits of policies that have gone out of fashion.
The unpopular war in Iraq has undermined rich nations' belief in the success of military intervention as a way of reducing conflict. But Copenhagen Consensus research reveals that a peacekeeping force is even more effective than aid in reducing the likelihood that a conflict-prone nation will relapse into violence.
Four new civil wars are expected to break out in the next decade in low-income nations. Compared with no deployment, spending $850 million on a peacekeeping initiative reduces the 10-year risk of conflict re-emerging to 7% from around 38%, according to Copenhagen Consensus research by Oxford University's Paul Collier.
Because of war's horrendous and lasting costs, each percentage point of risk reduction is worth around $2.5 billion to the world. Thus, spending $850 million each year to reduce the risk of conflict by a massive 30 percentage points means a 10-year gain of $75 billion compared to the overall cost of $8.5 billion, or $9 back on the dollar.
In other areas, too, sound economic analysis suggests solutions that we may at first find unpalatable.
Poor water or sanitation affects more than two billion people and will claim millions of lives this year. One targeted solution would be to build large, multipurpose dams in Africa.
Building new dams may not be politically correct, but there are massive differences between the U.S. and Europe – where there are sound environmental arguments to halt the construction of large dams and even to decommission some – and countries like Ethiopia which have no water storage facilities, great variability in rainfall, and where dams could be built with relatively few environmental side effects. A single reservoir located in the scarcely inhabited Blue Nile gorge in Ethiopia would cost a breathtaking $3.3 billion. But it would produce large amounts of desperately needed power for Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt, combat the regional water shortage in times of drought, and expand irrigation. All these benefits would be at least two-and-a-half times as high as the costs.
In each of these areas – and in the areas of air pollution, education and trade barriers – the world's scarce resources could be used to achieve massive amounts of benefits.
Next week, some of the world's top economists, including five Nobel laureates, will consider new research outlining the costs and benefits of nearly 50 solutions to world problems – from building dams in Africa to providing micronutrient supplements to combating climate change. On May 30, the Copenhagen Consensus panel will produce a prioritized list showing the best and worst investments the world could make to tackle major challenges.
The research and the list will encourage greater transparency and a more informed debate.
Acknowledging that some investments shouldn't be our top priority isn't the same as saying that the challenges don't exist. It simply means working out how to do the most good with our limited resources. It will send a signal, too, to research communities about areas that need more study.
The global food crisis has sadly underlined the danger of continuing on our current path of fixating on poor solutions to high-profile problems instead of focusing on the best investments we could make to help the planet.
Mr. Lomborg, organizer of Copenhagen Consensus, is the author of "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming" (Knopf, 2007).
J
JAMESBJOHNSON
Guest
Stop with the mind stroking!
Everyone on the planet starts from the position of "WHATS IN IT FOR ME?" This is economics 101. Its the reason things happen and dont happen.
Everyone on the planet starts from the position of "WHATS IN IT FOR ME?" This is economics 101. Its the reason things happen and dont happen.
amicus
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Unless you believe, as most of the left does, that money is the root of all evil and if you need more, just print it, then it doesn't matter what you do with the 50 Billion.
But if you are objective and realize that 'money' is a measure of wealth, and wealth is the creation of needed and desired goods and services of intrinsic value, then there is only one honest course of action.
Since government produces nothing.
Return the 50,000,000,000 to the producers you stole it from.
Amicus...
But if you are objective and realize that 'money' is a measure of wealth, and wealth is the creation of needed and desired goods and services of intrinsic value, then there is only one honest course of action.
Since government produces nothing.
Return the 50,000,000,000 to the producers you stole it from.
Amicus...
Pure
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thanks amicus!
at least you're honest. 50 billion aint goin' nowhere.
it's a bit much for the WSJ and Roxanne to 'say fight AIDS with 50 billion and reduce efforts re climate change.'
neither roxanne nor anyone on the right has the slightest intention of supporting the US gov spending 50 billion on AIDS. the actual amt is a minuscule part of Bush's budget, and is probably already too high to suit them or WSJ or Roxanne and certainly Amicus.
ami Return the 50,000,000,000 to the producers you stole it from.
it would seem like Lomberg is the romantic: from his experts list of desirable outcome, he expects governments to act for the benefit of those in far away parts of the world!!
now mr lomberg, what do you think are the objective of US foreign policy? read the neo con proposals for the new century and get back to us.
i'm afraid Lomberg's writings just provide diversion for the right wingers weeping crocodile tears for malaria victims who need a $2 mosquito net, while whipping up support for a multi trillion dollar effort in Iran, on top of the 10 billion a month one in Iraq.
at least you're honest. 50 billion aint goin' nowhere.
it's a bit much for the WSJ and Roxanne to 'say fight AIDS with 50 billion and reduce efforts re climate change.'
neither roxanne nor anyone on the right has the slightest intention of supporting the US gov spending 50 billion on AIDS. the actual amt is a minuscule part of Bush's budget, and is probably already too high to suit them or WSJ or Roxanne and certainly Amicus.
ami Return the 50,000,000,000 to the producers you stole it from.
it would seem like Lomberg is the romantic: from his experts list of desirable outcome, he expects governments to act for the benefit of those in far away parts of the world!!
now mr lomberg, what do you think are the objective of US foreign policy? read the neo con proposals for the new century and get back to us.
i'm afraid Lomberg's writings just provide diversion for the right wingers weeping crocodile tears for malaria victims who need a $2 mosquito net, while whipping up support for a multi trillion dollar effort in Iran, on top of the 10 billion a month one in Iraq.
Roxanne Appleby
Masterpiece
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The point is, if you're going to "steal the $50 b from the producers" in the first place (you are), at least spend it wisely instead of pissing it away on politically 'sexy' but wasteful projects. Is that really such a controversial thing to suggest?
