With the recent revelation that global remittances to poor countries totals more than three times the size of the total US foreign aid budget, I would argue that we should completely eliminate the foreign aid budget. The public tax burden should be decreased by an equal amount. This might result in more workers with foreign families having a higher income, possibly increasing remittances further. Remittances seem like a more beneficial method of aiding other countries for several reasons. First, the money may be used more efficiently by individual foreign consumers than through large block grants to foreign governments. Second, Americans without foreign family would have higher discretionary income. Third, I believe this is a more moral policy allowing individuals to dispose of their income as they see fit.
This policy should probably be supported by other pro-immigration policies.
Someone has probably developed this into a stronger policy argument, but this is just what occurred to me the other day.
With the recent revelation that global remittances to poor countries totals more than three times the size of the total US foreign aid budget, I would argue that we should completely eliminate the foreign aid budget. The public tax burden should be decreased by an equal amount. This might result in more workers with foreign families having a higher income, possibly increasing remittances further.
This doesn’t follow. The money that would come from cutting foreign aid would be spread across the entire tax bracket with only a small fraction of it ending up in the hands of workers with foreign families. Of course, if aid is damaging to developing economies then it doesn’t matter where the money ends up once those programs are eliminated. In any case, the foreign aid budget is tiny and would have a negligible effect on the tax burden.
The pro-immigration angle is where most of the utility in this proposal would come from.
With the recent revelation that global remittances to poor countries totals more than three times the size of the total US foreign aid budget, I would argue that we should completely eliminate the foreign aid budget. The public tax burden should be decreased by an equal amount. This might result in more workers with foreign families having a higher income, possibly increasing remittances further. Remittances seem like a more beneficial method of aiding other countries for several reasons. First, the money may be used more efficiently by individual foreign consumers than through large block grants to foreign governments. Second, Americans without foreign family would have higher discretionary income. Third, I believe this is a more moral policy allowing individuals to dispose of their income as they see fit.
This policy should probably be supported by other pro-immigration policies.
Someone has probably developed this into a stronger policy argument, but this is just what occurred to me the other day.
This doesn’t follow. The money that would come from cutting foreign aid would be spread across the entire tax bracket with only a small fraction of it ending up in the hands of workers with foreign families. Of course, if aid is damaging to developing economies then it doesn’t matter where the money ends up once those programs are eliminated. In any case, the foreign aid budget is tiny and would have a negligible effect on the tax burden.
The pro-immigration angle is where most of the utility in this proposal would come from.