This Week featured an interview with former President Jimmy Carter. First, the good: Carter talked about his foundation’s efforts to eradicate the Guinea Worm from villages in Africa. Carter said that with proper care (and enough money), the parasite could be wiped out in three years. For more information, check out the Carter Center’s website.
Of course, even in discussing the war against the Guinea Worm, Carter couldn’t help but take some shots at American foreign policy. At one point he (falsely) claimed that we need to “increase our amount of foreign aid; we’re in the bottom of all the developed countries in giving to other people.” This is simply untrue: America leads the world in charitable giving, providing over $27 billion in governmental foreign aid in 2005, more than twice the amount of the next leading country, Japan. The amount of private aid that Americans give dwarfs even that enormous figure: the Hudson Institute estimates that Americans privately donated a further $71 billion in 2004 alone. Know-nothing do-gooders will tell you that this country’s per capita giving level is unacceptable, but these people ignore two facts: One, Americans pay far less in taxes relative to Europeans, which allows for this country’s extraordinary level of private giving; and two, the United States devotes a far higher percentage of its GDP to defense, allowing our freeloading allies to allocate more money to foreign aid than they could otherwise afford.
