Are We a Stingy People?

I applaud The Times for your Jan. 23 editorial, “Tight With a Buck.” Americans need to know how little our country is really doing to help eliminate poverty in the world.

However, I think you failed to mention one very important point, your Jan. 18 article, “Ending Extreme Poverty Is Realistic, Economist Tells U.N.” The article states that in 2000 the United States and other developed countries agreed to give 0.7% of their gross annual product to eliminate poverty. Five years after we, the United States, made that promise we are giving only .015%. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

In his inaugural address, our president said we were going to help to bring freedom and liberty to oppressed peoples. How can we be believable if we don’t keep our promise to help liberate people from poverty? I hope you will continue to keep your readers informed on this issue because most Americans think we are doing a lot to help poor countries when we really are not. I suggest you inform your readers more about the U.N. Millennium Project.

Ron Plue

Encino

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Good for pointing out the overall stinginess of U.S. foreign aid. If it weren’t for world criticism, our current tsunami aid would undoubtedly be even a much punier amount. Now many of us homeless advocates in the U.S. are waiting for the editorial that points out that no one in Congress is bothering to even mention the homeless, let alone do anything about the growing number of impoverished individuals in our own backyard.

What kind of conscience does a country project, that spends a billion dollars per day on a war that causes its citizens to be less secure day by day, while ignoring the growing homeless war veteran and children problem inside its own borders?

Richard Aberdeen

Nashville, Tenn.

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I have tried very hard to read all the articles The Times has published over the years about the horrendous record many charities and governments have in using donated money for the purposes it is generously given. Your editorial failed to mention this, so perhaps this abuse has changed for the better.

Please let us know if we are the only government whose largess is abused, or if there are no longer leaders like Marcos, Amin and Arafat, to name a few, who stashed away countless amounts of donated funds for their own personal use or to be spent in ways it was not intended to be used.

Lawrence Berk

Ventura