How to Taper Off Foreign Aid

Will the Cuban fiasco, and the subsequent denunciations of the United States in all the countries into which we have poured foreign aid since World War II, finally shake us out of our obsessive world almsgiving? If it does, how can we extricate ourselves from the program with the least awkwardness?

The purposes of foreign aid have never been made clear by its advocates. They have constantly shifted its ostensible grounds. The argument has gone around in circles. Foreign aid was originally recommended for economic reasons. When the economic arguments for it were shown to be untenable, its supporters replied that the real reasons for it were political. When the political arguments were shown to be unsound, its supporters returned to their economic argument.

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Henry Hazlitt

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Will the Cuban fiasco, and the subsequent denunciations of the United States in all the countries into which we have poured foreign aid since World War II, finally shake us out of our obsessive world almsgiving? If it does, how can we extricate ourselves from the program with the least awkwardness?

The purposes of foreign aid have never been made clear by its advocates. They have constantly shifted its ostensible grounds. The argument has gone around in circles. Foreign aid was originally recommended for economic reasons. When the economic arguments for it were shown to be untenable, its supporters replied that the real reasons for it were political. When the political arguments were shown to be unsound, its supporters returned to their economic argument.