If more welfare and free healthcare would destroy the economy?

Question

Then how can so much money be spent on aid? The US govt. has spent $40-60 billion per year over the last 20 years in aid, and in 2005 it peaked at $100 billion (not including the $34bn that private companies have donated.)

Even the EU can hardly keep up with so much aid, $40bn a year. And that's at nearly 1% of the Eu's combined Gross National Income. What the US hands out, that's not even a twentieth of a percent. Plus, foreign workers have sent home over a hundred billion dollars home to their families overseas.

So poor people in America, they might as well starve, job or no job. But free handouts for other nations thousands of miles away? What gives?

Answer 1

What gives are poor people are rich in the US compared to the extreme poverty in the World. A child dies of starvation in the world every 5 seconds, but would never die of hunger in the US.
It is more important to try to help those children then spend the money on healthcare as there are massive safety nets for the poor in the US. As a poor person I received thousands of dollars in free healthcare as our system in now.
What the poor in the US desperately need is jobs from employers who can help them grow and learn new skills so they can improve their incomes and buy health insurance. Microsoft, for example, was not created by the govt but by entrepreneurs and this co. created 5000 millionaires; some of these were once poor people but they worked there and learned new skills to serve others and increased their income. This is the best way for the poor to progress--learn skills to serve others and increase their income.
But the US is rapidly becoming a Socialist nation due to the huge increase in the size of the govt. Soon we will reduce aid as Sociast nations and people tend to be selfish with their weak economies (the US is the most generous nation on earth) and give big handouts and healthcare to poor and their potential to grow and increase income will be gone and govt will shut down business and free enterprise than cannot flouish in a Socialist system and the poor will be victims, as they are in Europe.

Answer 2

The amount of money spend on health care in the USA far exceeds those numbers. Health care cost in the USA amount to 17% of the GNP. That's more than 4.5 times the amount spent on national defense. Health care cost run about $6400 per year for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. The 2.9 trillion dollars budget submitted to congress this year would more than double to cover a national health care program.
The dollars spent on health care are staggering. It's much more than one can imagine.

Answer 3

Here's a link to NPR's "On the Media" if you want to give it a listen; the transcript won't be available for another few hours. An analyst breaks down a little of what the USA spends into percentages instead of just numbers, and it makes more sense that way. IF I REMEMBER RIGHT, we spend less that half of 1% of our budget on foreign aid. We spend about 4% of our budget on welfare. And if you count support and extras, we're spending about 24% of our budget on military spending.

That doesn't sound like welfare and healthcare would "destroy" our economy.

Answer 4

Who knows? I wish we would get out of that habit. Besides, almost every country we give aid to resents it and wants to destroy us evil Americans.