The ONE Campaign
Everyone should sign the ONE Campaign Declaration. The ONE Campaign is a new umbrella organization founded with the support of Rock the Vote and other social justice organizations. The goal of ONE is to lobby the US government and other members of the G8 to increase their aid to suffering countries by just 1% in order to combat global AIDS and poverty. In addition to the petition, ONE sponsors a number of local events around the country and offers white wristbands and other merchandise with the ONE logo. Check out these celebrities who also signed the Declaration. ONE by ONE we can counter the tide of disease and poverty abroad!
posted by Hans Riemer at 10:21 AM
11 Comments:
A nobel effort Hans, but until the dictators in Africa are removed so that aid actually gets to those who need it any increase in aid will unfortunately be wasted.
I don't really want my tax dollars spent on some corrupt country.
AIDS is easily preventable by the way.
The goal of ONE is to lobby the US government and other members of the G8 to increase their aid to suffering countries by just 1% in order to combat global AIDS and poverty
Hans sure has a way of making his tax increase advocations look small. If anyone knows anything about this issue, they'll know that these increases in aid are going to come from YOUR pocketbooks. Just yesterday something was mentioned about an increase in airline ticket prices to assist in this.
I, for one, would rather have CHOICE as to who I donate to and who I do not donate to, as opposed to throwing more money at corrupt internationalist bodies and regimes that spend money inefficiently and in a corrupt manner.
The Old and the Rested
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: June 14, 2005
Men in their 70's raced on bikes for 40 kilometers in this month's National Senior Games in Pittsburgh. A 68-year-old woman threw the discus 85 feet, and a 69-year-old man hurled the javelin nearly half the length of a football field.
Is it possible that people this age are still physically capable of putting in a full day's work at the office?
I realize I'm being impolitic. In the Social Security debate, the notion of raising the retirement age is the elephant in the room, as Robin Toner and David Rosenbaum reported in The Times on Sunday. Both liberal and conservative economists favor the change, but politicians are terrified to even mention it to voters.
Americans now feel entitled to spend nearly a third of their adult lives in retirement. Their jobs are less physically demanding than their parents' were, but they're retiring younger and typically start collecting Social Security by age 62. Most could keep working - fewer than 10 percent of people 65 to 75 are in poor health - but, like Bartleby the Scrivener, they prefer not to.
The problem isn't that Americans have gotten intrinsically lazier. They're just responding to a wonderfully intentioned system that in practice promotes greed and sloth. Social Security is widely thought of as a kumbaya program that unites Americans in caring for the elderly, but it actually creates ugly political battles among generations.
With the help of groups like AARP, the elderly have learned to fight for the right to retire earlier and get bigger benefits than the previous generation - all financed by making succeeding generations pay higher taxes than they ever did themselves.
The result is a system that burdens the young and creates perverse incentives for people to retire when they're still middle-aged. Once you've worked 35 years, more work often yields only a tiny increase in your benefits (sometimes none at all), but you still have to keep paying the onerous Social Security tax, which has more than doubled over the last half century.
If the elderly were willing to work longer, there would be lower taxes on everyone and fewer struggling young families. There would be more national wealth and tax revenue available to help the needy, including people no longer able to work as well as the many elderly below the poverty line because they get so little Social Security.
Getting that kind of system seems politically hopeless at the moment here, but it already exists in Chile. Its pension system has a stronger safety net for the older poor than America's (relative to each country's wages) and more incentives for people to work, because Chileans' contributions go directly into their own private accounts instead of a common pool like Social Security.
Once Chileans accumulate enough money in the account to finance a pension that pays at least half their salary (which is better than what the typical American gets from Social Security), they can start collecting the pension and still go on working. In fact, they have an extra incentive to go on working because they keep more of their paychecks: elderly Chileans, unlike Americans, are freed of the obligation to continue making pension contributions.
The result has been a big change in working habits. Before the private-account system began in 1981, Chile had a traditional pension system going broke with the same problems as America and Europe: rising taxes on the young to pay for older workers who were retiring earlier and earlier. But under the new system, there's been a 30 percent increase in the labor force participation by workers in their 60's, according to two economists, Estelle James and Alejandra Cox Edwards.
Best of all, Chileans who control their own private-account pensions don't have to count on politicians or groups like AARP to decide when they can retire. It's a personal choice, not a public battle, and the Chileans I interviewed had a saner attitude about retirement than the American baby boomers dreaming of retiring to decades of golf.
A 57-year-old schoolteacher, Maria Clara Meyer, told me she was thinking of spending her 60's running her own tutoring program or setting up an ecotourism business in Chile. "I'm a little tired of my teaching job," she said, "but I'm not stupid, so I shall keep doing something. It's not healthy for you to stop working if you're still able." And not healthy for your country, either.
Question: How many live-at-home objectivists does it take to make it seem as though the "youth" of America disagrees with paying a virtual pittance in order to assist in quelling a raging pandemic?
Answer: Up to this point, about four. (The post from the propaganda machine known as "Students for Saving Social Security" does not count)
For those folks out there who find it difficult to care about others, and those Bible-thumpers on the Right who missed-out on Jesus's entire message of economic justice, I exhort you to think about AIDS aid to Africa in a national security framework.
If you don't think that rampant disease, poverty, and unrest on a continent of 800 million is going to have an impact here in land of apple pie and TRL- you're in for a surprise.
As far as the government being a "charity" is concerned, according to President Bush the new mission of America is to spread freedom and democracy around the world. With AIDS terrorizing Africa, it seems that one of America's priority foreign policy objectives should be to get on the ball and shovel coal into the furnace of the development train.
Or, we could just repeal all taxes, return to a brutal state of nature, run about nude on the streets, and pitifully try to eat one another.
The choice is yours.
What?
To the above anonymous:
Anyone who looks at the history of how international groups (like the UN) have spent money in Africa knows that these big government scams do nothing to help the people of Africa. The UN has, time and time again, botched the situation in Africa, and so has the United States government.
Why should we be FORCED to pay these organizations to do work over there inefficiently and corruptly, when we could instead donate money to private charities that actually GET THINGS DONE over there?
Charity through taxation is disingenuous and corrupt. Let charity be charity, and let those who care- and those who can afford it- send money to the organizations of their choosing. That way, people can send money to EFFECTIVE organizations, instead of blindly being forced to pay our pathetic governments to try to complete goals which they are clearly incapable of completing.
"For those folks out there who find it difficult to care about others, and those Bible-thumpers on the Right who missed-out on Jesus's entire message of economic justice, I exhort you to think about AIDS aid to Africa in a national security framework."
So using one's faith in politics is ok for African aid? Tell me when do liberals draw the line at faith based initiatives? Prayer in school is out, ok, God Bless America is out, ok, but deny aid to Africa for a preventable disease and all of the sudden its WWJD? Make up your mind.
I'm completely against any further aid to Africa for AIDS when all thats required to prevent one from contracting it is protected sex (tainted blood transfusions and babies born with AIDS are another matter). Any aid to Africa to prevent poverty should be stopped until we know for sure that the money is getting to those who need it, and obviously the UN has a pitiful track record in this area.
Prayer in school is out, ok, God Bless America is out, ok, but deny aid to Africa for a preventable disease and all of the sudden its WWJD?
We're trying to have a serious discussion here....
AIDS is preventable in a prosperous country like ours where we have access to contraception. But people living on 2 dollars a day or less don't necessarily have those options. If the only organizations that are able to help you have their hands tied due to the 'Global Gag' rule, then it is very easy for things to get out of control. Quite a few of these organizations depend on aid from our prosperous nation to continue their work and if they promote anything besides abstinence-only, they lose that money. Until our government changes their stance, these organizations will find it very hard to help people help themselves. There is nothing wrong with lobbying the government to change those policies that have such a huge effect on others, whether in this country or somewhere far away. Demand that the money be accountable, demand to know where its going and be involved in making sure that happens. I personally believe that the United States had a hand in the continent of Africa's dispair along with Europe, so there is a responsibility that needs to be dealt with.
"AIDS is preventable in a prosperous country like ours where we have access to contraception. But people living on 2 dollars a day or less don't necessarily have those options."
When did abstaining from sex begin to cost money? I missed the memo. Condoms aren't the only answer, that logic is like telling Hollywood actors that their favorite bottled water might be poisoned, but because they won't drink anything else its ridiculous to expect them to stop drinking and possible be killed by their actions. If touching the stove will burn you, don't touch it!
"We're trying to have a serious discussion here...."
Thank you for pointing out the ridiculous nature of the original post:
"... and those Bible-thumpers on the Right who missed-out on Jesus's entire message of economic justice, I exhort you to think about AIDS aid to Africa in a national security framework."
I didn't bring up religion, but apparently some think that AIDS funding in Africa is what Jesus would have done therefore any Republican or right-winger is being hypocritical for opposing it. Like I said, thanks for pointing out the ridiculous nature of that post.
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