Why Help the Distant Poor?

I've heard the question before in one form or another: last year when the earthquake hit Pakistan; the tsunami in early 2005. But it's ongoing, in some form, and people always preface it with some verbal dancing, trying to ask the question without coming across as a completely insensitive. Most recently, I heard the question from one of my own friends. It went something like this: "Why are we sending all this money overseas to help people when we have problems here? I mean I hate that bad things happen like earthquakes and things, but we've got our own problems." OK, that was paraphrasing, but that's the type of question that I got.

There are two sides to this argument: the moral/ethical, and the self-interest/stability arguments. But before I get into that, we need to set something straight: It is a myth that the United States gives huge amounts of money for humanitarian aid, or official development assistance. Sure, it's the largest number out there in absolute terms, but the U.S. also has the world's largest economy. As a percentage of GDP, the U.S. government spending comes in dead last among the industrialized countries. Annual giving from the U.S. government is around $1.5 billion, a fraction of what's been spent in the Iraq catastrophe.

That aside, there's the moral argument. We should help the poor because they're suffering, and that's appalling. It's not that there isn't enough in the world to go around because there is. One of the most interesting takes I've heard recently on this moral/responsibility side of the argument was in the song, "All U Can Eat," by the brilliant Ben Folds. He performed it recently on the Henry Rollins Show. You can see the performance by going to that link, clicking on Uncut on Demand, the Henry Rollins Show, and Musical Performances and Interviews. In the song, Folds recounts a conversation with his son in a restaurant, wondering aloud at all the bloated people, asking what they would do if they had to give up their minivans and the convenience of their supermarkets and trade places with someone in a developing nation. It's a nice message, especially coming from a popular artist such as Folds.

That message is clear and true. But even if you don't feel that we need to help the starving and sick just because people shouldn't have to suffer through their short lives, there's also the fact that we bare a burden of ethical responsibility. For example, saying that rising sea levels due to global warming -- a situation that will undoubtedly be more difficult for poor countries -- is everyone else's problem just doesn't cut it. Less developed countries have contributed very little in terms of greenhouse gases, while the overwhelming majority of the gases created by human activity have come from the developed West: Western Europe and the United States. So when the people of Tuvalu find their entire country underwater and become environmental refugees, is it their problem? I think not.

One theory about the relationship between the developed world and the less developed world is dependency theory, which states that power relationships were formed with the less developed world by European colonizers. The inequality created by this power system was caused by colonial exploitation when developed nations sought raw materials from the less developed areas.

Dependency theorists believe that the current system is linked to the colonial past. Less developed countries remain poor because of the past relationships; therefore, it is the responsibility of the developed world to help the poor in the less developed world because we, or our ancestors, created that system. The poor are poor because we made them -- and keep them -- that way.

There are also reasons of self-interest for helping underdeveloped countries. And this is the last-straw argument I would use for people like my selfish friend. Helping impoverished places leads to economic stability for them which leads to political stability. Political stability leads to less market volatility which is economically beneficial for the developed world. Moreover, as incomes increase in less developed countries, the people in those places begin to desire manufactured goods and intellectual property created by the developed world. This would bolster first-world economies. And finally, if a person is suffering from malnutrition, AIDS, Malaria or Tuberculosis, he can't work and produces very little that is economically beneficial to the less developed world or to the more developed world.

Even if you suffer from the American condition of unapologetic selfishness described in the Ben Folds song, there are still leak-proof reasons for helping the distant poor. The return on the investment is immense.