Obama's Global Tax Proposal $845 billion

[B. Elliott]

This is the last thing the US needs to be worrying about. When he said that he's wanting to better relations with other countries, how did I know that it would also end up costing the US money for these 'improved relations'?

This man is going to tax us to death.

Obama bill: $845 billion more for global poverty

Sen. Barack Obama, perhaps giving America a preview of priorities he would pursue if elected president, is rejoicing over the Senate committee passage of a plan that could end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars in an attempt to reduce poverty in other nations.

The bill, called the Global Poverty Act, is the type of legislation, "We can – and must – make … a priority," said Obama, a co-sponsor.

It would demand that the president develop "and implement" a policy to "cut extreme global poverty in half by 2015 through aid, trade, debt relief" and other programs.

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obamas-global-tax-proposal-up-for-senate-vote/

Obama’s Global Tax Proposal Up for Senate Vote

A nice-sounding bill called the "Global Poverty Act," sponsored by Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Barack Obama, is up for a Senate vote on Thursday and could result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States. The bill, which has the support of many liberal religious groups, makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=56405

 

[B. Elliott]

Also, while it is a nice gesture, I think we already have enough problems here at home that need to be worked on.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

A number of news outlets have made false reports about this bill and called it Global Poverty Tax. In February 2008, Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media wrote that the Global Poverty Act (S.2433) "would commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid." [1] This is not in the bill; the bill does not require any minimum foreign aid spending. The only requirement of the bill is that the President create a plan to address global poverty and it goes on to suggest what areas the plan will cover.[2] Other outlets ran a similar story including WorldNetDaily[3] which cites Kincaid as a source

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_poverty_act"

Which provision of the bill are you complaining about?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

That amount is taken over 13 years.

After spending over a trillion dollars to invade the wrong country [oops], how does 65 billion a year compare?

The Republicans have proven to be the biggest spenders in history.

 

[B. Elliott]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_poverty_act"

Which provision of the bill are you complaining about?

The entire bill it's self. The US is already providing aid to foreign countries, which is fine by me, but I don't agree that we need to spend $845 billion to support a global 'welfare' system... whether it's over one, ten or twenty years.

 

[B. Elliott]

That amount is taken over 13 years.

After spending over a trillion dollars to invade the wrong country [oops], how does 65 billion a year compare?

The Republicans have proven to be the biggest spenders in history.

Comparing it to the cost of 'invading the wrong country' doesn't relate. Vietnam cost the US $584 billion. The Korean conflict cost the US $295 Billion.

It's already cost us a lot, so let's spend more! More, more, more! Because hey, it's small compare to that other bigger expenditure!

 

[B. Elliott]

How about we put that $845 billion into the US educational system over a 13 year period? I'd agree with that move.

 

[edward]

The bill, which has the support of many liberal religious groups

?

I had to laugh at this one.


From:

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obamas-global-tax-proposal-up-for-senate-vote/

 

[mheslep]

Big foreign aid to eliminate poverty projects are a mistake, or at least difficult in the extreme to make effective instead of harmful, and there is ample data showing development aid on the average does harm as Sen. Obama should know. What is needed is economic reform, not aid, which is why the recent collapse of the Doha round is a disaster - no matter to either pandering candidate AFAICT.

[A tragedy of the world’s poor has been that] the West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get twelve-cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get four-dollar bed nets to poor families. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get three dollars to each new mother to prevent five million child deaths.

… It is heart-breaking that global society has evolved a highly efficient way to get entertainment to rich adults and children, while it can’t get twelve-cent medicine to dying poor children.

— William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden; Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have Done So Much Ill and so Little Good

Why does this happen? Example:

...on June 12, 2005, the G8 agreed to cut Africa’s debt and to double aid to the continent. Under the deal, 80 percent of Uganda’s total debt of US$ 4.9 billion will be canceled. Upon hearing the news, the government increased the number of administrative districts in the country, which serve as the main instrument of political patronage, from 56 to 80. That move increased public administration expenditures by US$120 million.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb88.pdf, Pg 7.

Edit: aid vs growth in Africa graph attached.
http://www.nyu.edu/fas/institute/dri/Easterly/File/can%20foreign%20aid%20buy%20growth.pdf

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

The entire bill it's self. The US is already providing aid to foreign countries, which is fine by me, but I don't agree that we need to spend $845 billion to support a global 'welfare' system... whether it's over one, ten or twenty years.

There is no mention of $845 billion, no mention of $8.45 billion, no mention of $8.45.
http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.1302:"
The article you linked to is full of lies.

 

[russ_watters]

The source of the $845 B seems pretty clear to me, jimmy...what part didn't you get?

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

The source of the $845 B seems pretty clear to me, jimmy...what part didn't you get?

What part did you get? I posted a link to the bill. Here it is again.
http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.R.1302:"
It requires the US to develop a strategy. It mentions no deliverables except two reports. Show me the money.

 

[russ_watters]

The explanation was pretty lengthy. Should I copy and paste the whole thing? Did you read the article? The short versison is the bill would require us meet the "Millenium Development Goals", which call for .7% of our GDP going toward poverty reduction. From there, the math isn't very difficult... Did you see that part of the article and bill? Are you just being catty here or did you really see it and not understand it?

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Did you read the article?

No. I read the bill. There is no mention of 0.7% of anything.

Edit: Sorry, I didn't mean to say I hadn't read the article, just that my comments all along have been directed toward the bill, not the article. The bill does not commit us to do anything except come up with a strategy and submit a pair of reports. The US is already a signatory to the Millenium Development Goals.

 

[Art]

The explanation was pretty lengthy. Should I copy and paste the whole thing? Did you read the article? The short versison is the bill would require us meet the "Millenium Development Goals", which call for .7% of our GDP going toward poverty reduction. From there, the math isn't very difficult... Did you see that part of the article and bill? Are you just being catty here or did you really see it and not understand it?

The UN Millenium Development Goals did not specify any amounts of GDP from any country. It simply outlined what the targets are. The purpose of the Global Policy Act was to put pressure on the president to develop a strategy to help deliver the goals the US signed up for in 2000.

The individual 'rich country' target of .7% GDP by 2015 was agreed not at the UN but at the Scotland G8 summit in July 2006 so far from being a 'new tax' Obama's stance is simply a reaffirmation to stand by what has already been agreed to by Bush.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

None of what I have written so far gives you a clue as to what I think about the goals themselves. Here they are:
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/goals.html"
I have not read this document fully, I am only interested in the first bulleted item in the first goal:

Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day.

Without clarification, this goal is ridiculous. Here are some points to consider:
1) The amount $1 is arbitrary.
2) The drop in the value of the dollar in the past year has probably gone a long way toward achieving this goal without improving anything.
3) It is much easier to achieve this goal by helping only those who live on more than 50 cents a day than by helping those who live on less. It encourages us to help the richest of the poor. But why should I break a sweat over giving a penny to someone who has 99 cents?
4) People who live on less than a dollar a day have nonmonetary sources of income. Will these be held constant while the monetary source increases, or will these people end up paying for the dollar they get?
5) Are we going to stand on street corners in Darfur and hand out dimes? The dollar a day issue is not the biggest thing on Darfurian minds. Those dimes will only end up in the pockets of the Janjaweed.

Anyone else care to pile on? Are there any other goals that are ridiculous?

 

[Art]

Jimmy, I think you're interpretation of the first goal, to reduce poverty, is a little too literal.

It is not a matter of handing out the difference each day between what a person makes and $1. The principle behind the goal is to develop 3rd world economies to a point where people have jobs resulting in rising income levels thus lifting people out of abject poverty.

The $1 a day is indeed entirely arbitrary but chosen primarily as a slogan more for it's impact on 1st world citizens than for any specific economic reason though in the absence of any better metric it is also a useful measure of whether poverty trends are improving or disimproving. Most people would be horrified at the idea of having to live on $1 a day and it is that sense of horror that the folk leading the drive to combat global poverty are trying to harness to garner support for aid programs. If the UN were to launch an anti-poverty drive based on detailed explanations of GDP PPP etc... people's eyes would quickly glaze over as they fell asleep whereas the dollar a day is a simple and catchy slogan.

 

[chemisttree]

Not to worry. I'm sure that if we all just inflate our tires and tune up our cars we can more than pay for it.

 

[WarPhalange]

Pay for what?

 

[BWV]

The industrialization of China and India will likely half the number of people living under $1 a day without us doing a thing.

I have yet to see a single thing published by World Net Daily that is not riddled with distortions and inaccuracies.

The best thing the West could do to alleviate global poverty is to abolish agricultural subsidies, something Obama, the agribusiness senator from IL is very unlikely to do.

Kicking the subsidies
Third world farmers need a fair deal
Leader The Guardian, Monday August 18 2003

Developing countries are about to be sold down the river again and hardly anyone seems to care enough to do anything about it. It is now only a few weeks before the crucial World Trade Organisation (WTO) trade talks open in Cancun, Mexico, but they have become so bogged down in complexity and international stitch-ups (like last week's deal between the US and the EU) that real progress is unlikely. The risk of a walk-out by developing countries grows daily.
Let's get back to basics. Giving subsidies to farmers was a brilliant idea that transformed the food shortages after the second world war into a surplus. But it has grown into an institutionalised nightmare preventing developing countries from fulfilling their potential in one of the few areas where they enjoy a natural advantage - agriculture. Europe and the US are the main culprits. It is economic and social madness for Europe to be growing, for instance, subsidised sugar beet when its average cost of production is more than double that of efficient exporters such as Brazil and Zambia. It is only possible thanks to ludicrous subsidies, including protective tariffs of up to 140%. As Kevin Watkins of Oxfam says: "The $1.6bn a year the EU gives to the sugar barons of East Anglia and the Paris Basin generates surpluses that deprive countries such as Thailand and Malawi of markets. Mozambique loses almost as much as a result of EU sugar policy as it gets in European aid."

The US is no better. America's 25,000 cotton farmers received more than $3bn in subsidies last year, equivalent to 100% of the market value of cotton output. This works out at a staggering subsidy of $230 an acre. West Africa, one of the mostdeprived places on earth, happens to be one of the most efficient cotton producers, with an estimated 11 million people dependent on cotton as their main source of income. But it can't compete with subsidised products from the US, which has 40% of world exports. If subsidies were removed, West Africa, according to IMF figures, could produce profitably at two thirds of US production costs.

In this context it is premature to welcome last week's alleged breakthrough in negotiations between the US and Europe, which is regarded by Oxfam and others as reneging on the WTO aim to eliminate export subsidies. A joint commitment to cap the amount of direct payments to farmers to 5% of output sounds good. But it ignores the fact that there has been a parallel explosion of payments linked to other factors such as land ownership or past production levels. This merely preserves the featherbedding in a form less under the control of the WTO. Under this category comes the $180bn increase in spending on export credits and food aid by the Bush administration, which is regarded by fair trade lobbies as disguised dumping.

There is only one way to deal with this. Make it simple and effective. Abolish all agricultural subsidies so that every proposed reform doesn't generate new escape routes that negate its primary purpose. To this end, the Guardian is starting a new website today, aimed at kicking into oblivion all agricultural subsidies (http://kickaas.typepad.com). This is one of those rare topics that unites right and left. It is also one of the few remaining free lunches in economics from which practically everyone gains. It would galvanise developing countries' agriculture while freeing more than $300bn currently being spent by governments - over $200 per capita - every year on subsidies for other purposes. There will inevitably be transitional problems for some western farmers but nothing like the structural change other industries have experienced. And in the long run it will be of benefit to them, too. They will be able to grow crops they are good at rather than those attracting subsidies. All that the developing countries are seeking is a level playing field on which to compete. Is that too much to ask?

 

[Gokul43201]

This thread is based on an untruthful article in an Evangelical website? Don't we have a requirement to stick to more reputed news organizations?

 

[B. Elliott]

This thread is based on an untruthful article in an Evangelical website? Don't we have a requirement to stick to more reputed news organizations?

I'm not aware of the site being Evangelical, but do you have any evidence that Sachs did not make these statements? There's quite a few sites which explain where the $845 billion comes in.

Jeffrey Sachs, who runs the U.N.’s “Millennium Project,” says that the U.N. plan to force
the U.S. to pay 0.7 percent of GNP in increased foreign aid spending would add $65
billion a year to what the U.S. already spends. Over a 13 year period, from 2002, when
the U.N.’s Financing for Development conference was held, to the target year of 2015,
when the U.S. is expected to meet the “Millennium Development Goals,” this amounts
to $845 billion. And the only way to raise that kind of money, Sachs has written, is
through a global tax, preferably on carbon-emitting fossil fuels.

http://www.usasurvival.org/docs/ASI_Report_Global_Poverty_Act.pdf

 

[LowlyPion]

I'm not aware of the site being Evangelical,...

The site is certainly biased and suspect.

Here is another site run by the same J Sager in Willis TX:

http://www.un-freezone.org/aboutus.html

Edit: I see in looking deeper that J Sager is an ISP and the USA-survival site is owned by Cliff Kincaid.
"America's Survival, Inc.
Mission is to expose and educate the American people about the influence of global institutions, including an International Criminal Court, on their lives."

From his Bio on the site:
"Kincaid's books include:

* Profiles of Deception (with Reed Irvine) 1990.
* The News Manipulators (with Reed Irvine and Joseph C. Goulden) 1993.
* Global Bondage: The U.N. Plan to Rule the World (1995).
* Global Taxes for World Government (1997).
* Michael New: Mercenary or American Soldier (with Daniel New) 1998.
* The New United Nations' Welfare Giveaway (2000).
* The Hijacking of American Foreign Policy (2003).
* Why You Can't Trust the News (with Reed Irvine and Notra Trulock) 2003."

 

[LowlyPion]

More on Cliff Kincaid from his site:

"ASI has received the thanks and recognition of President George W. Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and General Tommy Franks for its work to protect American soldiers and citizens from "war crimes" prosecutions by the United Nations. Then-Senator John Ashcroft proclaimed: "One of my greatest allies in this crucial work is Cliff Kincaid. For years, Cliff has publicly exposed the U.N.'s schemes to destroy America's independence and freedom." "

Praise from George Bush, John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld is high praise indeed.

Egads.

 

[Gokul43201]

I'm not aware of the site being Evangelical, but do you have any evidence that Sachs did not make these statements?

The OP was not about Sachs, and the onus is on the OP to provide a reliable source for any claims made.

 

[B. Elliott]

The OP was not about Sachs, and the onus is on the OP to provide a reliable source for any claims made.

Agreed, but it most definitely concerns Sachs, the person who stated the figures. Ok, the the link in the OP is apparently questionable from what LowlyPion discovered, but that doesn't mean the information is fasle...

Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015.

http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/1804

In his 2005 work, The End of Poverty, Sachs argued that, with the right policies, mass destitution – like the 1.1 billion extremely poor living on less than $1 a day – can be eliminated within 20 years. China and India serve as examples. For Sachs, a key element is raising world aid form the $65 billion level in 2002 to $195 billion a year by 2015.

http://www.smu.edu/newsinfo/stories/jeffrey-sachs-symposium-19may2006.asp

 

[LowlyPion]

As to the idea itself, one wonders about the efficacy of eliminating extreme poverty. Isn't extreme poverty a choke on population growth?

Now I don't wonder an instant about the humanity of it - the desire to alleviate suffering and providing amplified opportunities for all on the planet. I certainly support that.

But sadly the planet is apparently becoming overpopulated and there is no plan in place or even much discussion about bringing the human biomass into stasis with the resources and energy available. It's a matter of laissez-faire that no one can touch. And like it or not there are limits.

World population was 1.6 billion in 1900. It projects to 9 billion by 2050. That's over 500% in 150 years. That hardly looks sustainable. The only question is when will it not be? If not by 2050 then 2150 or 2300? - certainly there is a maximum number. The growth rates must decline or reverse at some point or misery will surely be multiplied 1000 fold from the destitution poverty we see today.

 

[Gokul43201]

Agreed, but it most definitely concerns Sachs, the person who stated the figures. Ok, the the link in the OP is apparently questionable from what LowlyPion discovered, but that doesn't mean the information is fasle...

So if this is only about Sachs, will you clarify that this has nothing to do with Obama, or else provide reliable sources that make the same claims that are made in the OP?

 

[Evo]

Locking pending moderation decision.