Tell me this is not the best country in the world

westernpromise

Quite a lot of UK foreign aid is actually spent in the UK. If Botswana gets a foreign aid donation towards modernising its infrastructure, a condition is likely toe be that it be spent in the donor country (on consulting services, E&P services, etc).

GreatApe

Thrugelmir wrote: »

The UK's productivity has been poor for some years. Selling houses built a hundred years ago at ever increasing prices to each other doesn't create wealth.

The UK productivity is one of the highest in the world

We are probably in the top 10-20% of productivity on the whole planet and many of those who are more productive have natural advantages (eg norway with its huge hydro oil and gas or sweden with its huge hydro or the USA with its vast oil gas and mineral wealth etc)

Now you could argue productivity has not increased in the UK a huge amount but you do so by looking at the peak of a bubble vs a period of lower growth thanks to brexit uncertainty and during a period where oil and gas output declined and we enforced lower productivity methods (like wind farms and pv panels in favor of coal) and higher forced needless excessive education of the young

GreatApe

westernpromise wrote: »

Quite a lot of UK foreign aid is actually spent in the UK. If Botswana gets a foreign aid donation towards modernising its infrastructure, a condition is likely toe be that it be spent in the donor country (on consulting services, E&P services, etc).

More interesting way to spend £15 billion, can sustain 330,000 kids enrolled each year for a 3 year education (£15k per kid say £9k on the education £6k living costs)

Have anyone in a poor country that can pass an English test to an average level and then filter by IQ so maybe you'd get 10 million applying each year so take in the top 3% and also screen for health

Let them stay post education and have them pay back this favor in the way of student loans are paid back via earnings

Average UK IQ and health would increase
Some otherwise poor but smart kids would be saved
Cost will be much lower than the headline £15 B (as perhaps 90% of loans would be repaid since these are the A kids) and all of it spent in the UK

Select also for gender 80% women 20% men this is so overall world population is lower as the women might have 2 kids in the UK rather than 4-5 kids in the poorer countries

zagubov

GreatApe wrote: »

More interesting way to spend £15 billion, can sustain 330,000 kids enrolled each year for a 3 year education (£15k per kid say £9k on the education £6k living costs)

Have anyone in a poor country that can pass an English test to an average level and then filter by IQ so maybe you'd get 10 million applying each year so take in the top 3% and also screen for health

Let them stay post education and have them pay back this favor in the way of student loans are paid back via earnings

Average UK IQ and health would increase
Some otherwise poor but smart kids would be saved
Cost will be much lower than the headline £15 B (as perhaps 90% of loans would be repaid since these are the A kids) and all of it spent in the UK

Select also for gender 80% women 20% men this is so overall world population is lower as the women might have 2 kids in the UK rather than 4-5 kids in the poorer countries

What's the poor country gaining apart from having its brains sucked out?

GreatApe

zagubov wrote: »

What's the poor country gaining apart from having its brains sucked out?

They dont have to be gaining anything its our money we can do with it whatever we like and those countries dont own their citizens

Also we would not be taking all their smart kids. There are some 2+ billion poor people or about 40 million in each age group we are interested in. We would only be offering <1% of this group a chance to study in the uk with funding provided some of whom will return, many of whom will send some percentage of their future earnings 'back home' to help their families

Herzlos

GreatApe wrote: »

They dont have to be gaining anything its our money we can do with it whatever we like

That sort of defeats the point of foreign aid, no?
If it doesn't aid the foreign country we're helping, then what's the point?


Your system is essentially stealing all of the intelligent/healthy youth and making things worse. Why not spend the same money setting up facilities to educate and sustain them over there, and then you can also avoid the complaints about foreigners over here, being that we're allegedly full.

Takedap

Herzlos wrote: »

Why not spend the same money setting up facilities to educate and sustain them over there, and then you can also avoid the complaints about foreigners over here, being that we're allegedly full.

Which is actually part of the usually unspoken aim of FA. And also the part that is never recognised by the ones whose first thought is to take money away from the world's poorest people.


For every £100 I pay in tax, 70 pence goes in Foreign Aid. I certainly don't begrudge it.

zagubov

GreatApe wrote: »

They dont have to be gaining anything its our money we can do with it whatever we like and those countries dont own their citizens.

Well, yes they do have to be gaining something or why would they be incentivised to take part in financial exchanges with us?

Many countries have invested financially in the education of their youth. Are you suggesting that we could hijack the last few years of their education and make them pay all future taxes to us?

GreatApe wrote: »

Also we would not be taking all their smart kids. There are some 2+ billion poor people or about 40 million in each age group we are interested in. We would only be offering <1% of this group a chance to study in the uk with funding provided some of whom will return, many of whom will send some percentage of their future earnings 'back home' to help their families

Why is this starting to sound like we're asset-stripping countries of the best brains they need to lift themselves to our level of development?

These countries need aid, not to be subjected to a warrant-sale. (forumites from south of the Tweed may need to find out that that thankfully-extinct abomination was).

GreatApe

Takedap wrote: »

For every £100 I pay in tax, 70 pence goes in Foreign Aid. I certainly don't begrudge it.

It is 0.7% of GDP not 0.7% of taxes

Plus the UK gives much more than most countries? We give double what the French give and more than the Germans and Americans who are more wealthy than the UK

It is roughly enough to give all non privately educated kids £20,000 welcome to adulthood voucher (the richest 7% of kids dont get it) which is what I would do.

At age 18 you get a £20,000 voucher which you can use towards your university tuition fees or you can use it for a housing deposit or just keep it as a voucher which appreciates at whatever the 10 year gilt yield is and can use it at anytime for a university education or a house deposit or use it as your pension pot on retirement

So give every UK child £20k or keep giving to foreign aid at a rate twice what the french give?

Takedap

GreatApe wrote: »

It is 0.7% of GDP not 0.7% of taxes

So give every UK child £20k or keep giving to foreign aid at a rate twice what the french give?

You're right. I've just run the figures from the last "How your tax was spent" letter. It was actually just over 1% I'm still not going to complain.


And on the second bit, would I rather give £20k to every UK child or have the money spent on helping what are literally the poorest people on the planet and in some cases making the difference between then living or dying? Do I really have to tell you?


5 times as much of my tax money went in paying interest on the National Debt as went towards foreign aid. 10 times as much went on education & 20 times as much on Welfare (which did not include pensions, that's a separate item).



Sorry, but I don't give a flying f#*@ what the French give.