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do you feel is right that we spend money and resources helping other countries while there are needs in this country? unemployment, eductaion, homeless people, etc....

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Jimi

I think we should concentrate more on our own country, but still aid in foreign affairs.

Car Enthusiast

agreement

VIVIX

I believe George Washington said that we should stay out of other countries affairs and I agree with him. I think we should concentrate a lot less on other countries and more on ourselves. It's just plain stupid. When I say A LOT, I mean A LOT. If groups like The Red Cross and FEMA (not sure if that's a humanitarian aid group or a government group) can fund themselves without government funding, then more power to them, I'll donate more money when they need it. But our country has enough problems as it is, if we ignore them then we're fucked. I'm glad about "The War on Drugs" thing that the big W. doing even though it's pretty much all for show (the bastard.)

Yeah, that's my cent and a half.

Jimi

Other countries affairs become our affairs, whether we get involved in them or not. By aiding in their agenda, we are also upping their economy, which will inevitably boost our economy as the country in question ups trade with us. By standing idly by, it doesn't go unnoticed. When the economy of said country does boom, we won't be recognized as a trading state due to our lack of aid. Therefore, Russia or China or any number of other countries gets the business we could have easily come by.

It's also not a question of economy, but a question of humanity. Countries are starving. There is a lack of simple medication for children who are in desperate need. Disease plagues Africa, and South America, and Southeast Asia. Simple vaccines are in dire need, and we can easily supply our surplus.

ButterMup

We have a surplus?
A surplus of what?
1. Certainly not money...the National Debt is currently around 7 and a half trillion dollars. Trillion. And considering that we're annually overspending about 400 billion more than we take in already, that number doesn't look like it's going to be smaller, come the end of this fiscal year.
We simply don't have cash to throw around for these people right now.

2. Certainly not medication and vaccines (many of which don't even "belong" to the U.S. anyway, but are rather purchased by us from manufacturers in Canada and the UK - see Item #1 for a good reason why we aren't buying up every pill and needle we can get our hands on anymore).
Case in point: name 5 people you know who got their flu shots this year.

3. Certainly not food. While crop yields in the United States have been steadily rising over the past half-century, and have really spiked in the last decade thanks to nifty shit like bioengeneered frankenveggies that can grow out of the side of a goddamn cliff if we need them to, the per capita yield - the amount of food we grow, as measured against the number of mouths we have to put it in - has actually declined, thanks in part to a horrendous harvest season last year .
It's edging up to approixmately a 1.5:1 ratio right now, not in favor of the food. We've got too many fat fucks eating too much, and the dirt can't churn out enough succor to keep them full, let alone to have any left for folks overseas.
Again, nothing to spare on that front.

So, in summary, while I really do wish every other country on the face of the Earth was doing absolutely great and no-one needed to worry about a thing, that just isn't the case...but the fact remains the we are not these peoples' keepers. Hell, many of them don't even want our "assistance", and would prefer that we keep our noses out of their affairs, their cultures, their lives entirely (I refer you to a little place called Iraq, which you may have heard isn't terribly receptive to our well-intentioned [ha] advances).
Right now, the United States itself is in a potentially dire situation, and as selfish as it may sound, all of our resources need to first be allocated toward taking care of ourselves before we offer silver platters to other countires in the name of "foreign affairs", so that in another 10 years, when Ethiopia, Madagascar, or Cambodia come a-calling, asking for a helping hand, we'll actually be able to lend it.

Jimi

We have a surplus of food. We have a surplus of a number of vaccines, except for the big flu vaccination problem right now. There are places out there that actually need our help, rather than the places the we decide we're going to give our "help" to because they have oil. We are spending money on producing Viagra, hair-loss medications, Botox, any number of medications that are being created in mass to serve our vain purposes. We waste food on a daily basis. We have buffets, we make way too much food for ourselves, while countries are starving. We do, Buttermup, have a surplus of many things that can help other countries.

As you said, we have a number of "fat fucks" in this country. We are a country of gluttons, of over-consumers. Even still, we have extra that we let go to waste. While we sit with happy fat, full bellies, children in Chad, Uganda, Cambodia, Somalia, Ethiopia, and a good number more countries have nutrient-deficient bellies full of parasites and disease. We fail to realize that we, as a whole, are living a life of glamour, even though we're in an economic slump right now.

ButterMup

Although several of your "arguments" don't come attached to anything even remotely like proof, I'll definitely agree with one right off: the fact that our quality of life, as compared to the countries you listed and many more, is absolutely staggering.
We're high on the hog, and have been for two centuries; after all, a Nation doesn't become a global superpower by being poor, hungry, dirty, and diseased.
But nothing lasts forever.
The Roman Empire had a sweet deal going, until their pomposity and excessive addiction to all things opulent crippled them to the point that the empire declined into total irrelevance within a single generation.
Similarly, the Zulu Kingdom in Africa was once the single most powerful conglomeration of tribes on the continent, which is now a nation of scattered populace, in isolated, economically unimpressive little principalities. Even the most powerful, modern cities that continent can muster pale in comparison to what we consider 'mediocre' North American cities.

While those are sort of esoteric examples, my point is this:
A civilization, no matter how powerful, can never lose sight of moderation, lest it overextend itself and, ultimately, fail.
Right now, the United States is in the precarious position of still hanging on to our past achievements, wise decisions, and the luxuries we've been able to accrue over the past 200 years, and those things have served us well in getting to us to where we are today...but that forward momentum won't last.
If we let ourselves be corralled into the role of World Provider, and more importanly if we actually buy into that philosophy and begin acting on it as eagerly as you imply that we should, we WILL overextend ourselves.
We will tax the few remaining resources we have left, we will run ourselves in to the ground, we will be faced with cultural uprising, defection, and emigration like you've never imagined as the quality of life we've come to expect can no longer be supported because our government is too busy scratching other nations' backs and teaching their citizens to read.
If all of our former citizens (a fickle bunch, don't kid yourself) go looking for greener pastures, who do we have left to dig this place out of the rut it's in?

Once people establish their expectations, those expectations cannot be detrimentally altered without consequence, and the unfortunate reality lies in that, although the US is wealthy and powereful by comparison to most of the rest of the world, we didn't get this way by singlehandedly supporting a dozen other countries in addition to our own, and now, more than any other time in history, we need to conserve our resources and pull out of the slump that we're in - a slump that should be judged not by comparing to others to us, but by comparing to us to ourselves.

Jimi

Yes, and I have said on occasion in this forum that this greatness will not last forever, however, on the same token, by helping other countries now, we will be ensuring help from others in the future if a governmental fall does ensue.

At this point, we have the ability to help nations, if even minutely, in astronomical ways. we have excessive grains, including corn. We have vegetables, we have a surplus of meat, which can be dried. Markets throw food away every day. Even "comparing us to ourselves", the excess is not being utilized either way. Why not give these countries surplus if we can, rather than holding on to it until it's rotten and trash?

ButterMup

Good points, all, and I do see where you're going with this.
One thing I'd like to mention, though, in regards to the wasteful hogs that we Americans tend to be:
People won't stop wasting just because there's less of something available than there was before. Our wastefulness isn't so much a variable function of economy as it is an ingrained cutural trait, unfortunate though that may be.
For example, take away half of the corn in the country and send it to Uganda, which would be enough food for, like, their entire population.
The net effect of that altruism is that corn prices on our own market will rise because suddenly there's only half as much supply to meet the full demand, causing consumers to bitch and moan about prices, which then leads to people either not buying corn at all because it's so damn expensive, or not buying other things, like green beans or sliced carrots, because they'd rather have corn and can no longer afford both, which causes the agricultural economy to falter as income decreases even more than it is already (and it's been made painfully clear that the American government doesn't like to subsidize farmers for anydamnthing, ever, so they'd just end up taking the hit in their pocketbooks).
Then, say hello to that much-lauded 'trickledown effect'...
As farmers no longer have the money to buy all the equipment, fertilizer, food for their livestock, and things like that, the impact spreads. Companies like, for example, John Deere, will lose sales when farmers quit needing bigass tractors and tills to take care of their land, because they had to sell half the acreage for money. Then assembly plants get hit because they lose contracts to the fact that not as many John Deere products are selling, so not as many need to be made, so J.D. needs to start cutting fat, lest they take a loss this quarter. Then it's on to industrial production arenas such as steel smelting plants, when the assembly lines they used to sell to find themselves without a need for as much raw material. And so on, and so on, right down the line, adding lost jobs and woe to the tally all the way along...which doesn't do much for the economy either, if everyone's drawing unemployment and too afraid to spend any of it back into rotation.
And that's just from a little corn! Can you imagine? Holy shit.

The fact remains, though, that Americans won't all stop tossing out the kernels if they've cooked too much, and just weren't that hungry. Frustrated parents won't refrigerate the shit their brat kids refuse to eat for some other night - they'll chuck it and be done.
A few might step up, sure, but those are mostly the people who do that already; the ones who recycle, and support local grocers, and plant trees in their spare time. They're already on the ball.
Most Americans just couldn't give a hoot, as they've got - in their minds - more important, immediate concerns than, say, the well-being of our economy and our planet. That's the government's job. Whadda we pay those bastards for anyway, right?

While your idea is great, and if we could just arbitrarily turn society on a dime from the slovenly, gimme-gimme clusterfuck it's become, I think we'd have plenty of food, at least, to pass out to other countries in need.
That doesn't solve our financial straits, but at least we wouldn't feel the impact too harshly for a few years...and by that time, maybe Uganda will be a superpower itself, and THEY can throw US a bone!