The United States is recognized worldwide as the richest nation in the world, and yet it is also known to be one of the world's poorest contributors to overseas aid. As Adelman (2003, p. 9) points out, other nations "blast the United States for being stingy." Should America contribute more? Although it is troubling to see people in other nations suffer for lack of aid, there are also a number of reasons that the U.S. should continue to provide aid at its current level.
The first of these is that here in America we have our own poor. The streets of all of our major cities are littered every morning with homeless people sleeping in doorways, on park benches, and under bridges. There are far more homeless than can be accommodated at shelters, and most shelters only allow each person to stay there a few nights per month, forcing them to find other shelter for the bulk of that month.
Moreover, many homeless become that way due to mental illness (Sullivan, Burnam, & Koegel, 2000, p. 444). Mental hospitals no longer able to obtain the funding to keep their doors open simply close, turning their patients out upon the streets where they are ill-equipped to survive. To send money to foreign lands before finding ways to help these people right here in the United States is coldhearted.
Another reason for the United States not to increase its foreign aid is that we are already trillions of dollars in debt, $5.3 trillion, to be exact, by the end of fiscal year 2008 (Martin, 2009). This is slightly more than 37% of our GDP (Martin, 2009). Our economy is on the rocks, home foreclosures are skyrocketing, and banks are going under. Unemployment is high, and people are living in their cars, abandoning their mortgages, and in some cases even abandoning their pets with their homes. With catastrophic economic woes and astronomical debt already in place, the United States cannot afford to increase its giving ...