Oh FFS. Food banks are locally run, staffed, and financed.

I don't believe you.

Who's stopping you from writing a check?

It's not our responsibility.

I'll just have to learn to live with the knowledge that you disapprove.

Except that the cash is drying up anyway, per the article source. And it was inevitable that enrollment would slow down as soon as China ramped up their higher education system enough to provide for their own needs. That's been their M.O. in every other sector of their economy: get Western help until self-sufficient, then kick the West out to protect their own markets. Education is no different from factories in this case.

In 1950, most women were married and stay-at-home moms, with the female labor participation rate at just over 30%. Most men did the working. We have a vastly different social situation now. The women's labor rate is now 57%. Men are now under 67%. In the year you citied, 1950, men had an 86% participation rate. The male rate has been steadily dropping since the 60's. So there's definitely been a change in attitudes and work ethic since the 50's.

Such revolutions always end up with the revolutionaries killing the very people they were supposedly fighting for. Ask the French how that turned out for them.

That's not the argument. The argument is that simply giving people money all their lives with no requirements for work in return will make them permanently dependent on others. Worse, they'll come to have a sense of entitlement that their neighbor owes them a living. The West has always prospered with the worth ethic: He who does not work, shall not eat.

So, if AI takes that work away to an extent that will truly leave masses of people permanently unemployed? Then better a Butlerian Jihad than Behavioral Sink.

When work and purpose is taken away from Man, he rots.

Americans would have no problem temporarily helping a nation that had a crop failure one year, or had food supplies destroyed by a hostile force. What they have a problem with is permanently taking responsibility for feeding that nation, when that nation is more than capable of feeding itself. And that became the problem with USAID. It became a permanent burden, often with the expectation that US tax dollars were always going to show up to do the job that the native people and their governments should be doing themselves.

I also suspect that much of USAID wasn't for humanitarian purposes as much as it was for buying influence abroad, under the guise of humanitarianism. One of the primary objections to cutting the USAID budget at places like the Brookings Institution and CSIS is that if the US stops paying foreign food and medicine bills, then China will step in and play sugar daddy. Well, good. Let China drain their coffers then. As far as I'm concerned, that's not a bug, that's a feature.

The people of the United States are exceedingly generous in giving their money to charities, foreign and domestic. Americans sent almost 30 billion dollars abroad to foreign recipients in 2023. Americans pretty much have decency covered. But this isn't about decency. It's about responsibility.

So, I ask again: who is responsible for feeding those children abroad? The implication of the parent post is that the responsibility is squarely on US taxpayers, and not the parents of those children or their own governments.

I'm presuming here that you're speaking of the cutting of USAID's budget.

Why is the United States responsible for feeding the children of other nations? Shouldn't that be the responsibility of those other nations? Don't tell me that they can't do it, because you know that isn't true.

I don't know why people are surprised by any of this. None of it is new. SV has been selling gear and services to the Pentagon since SV existed. SGI was famous for providing high-end stuff for Air Force/Navy simulator systems. Microsoft famously tried to sell the Navy "Windows for Warships". And Sun made what at the time was the single biggest sale in their history to the Army.

At one point the Pentagon was the biggest customer Sun had. It was only until Google came along that you had the granola types bitching about the military, and they were always the exception to the rule in SV.

This is Slashdot. So no one else is going to hear about them either .

I used to work in the air travel sector. Airlines started nickel and diming fliers after 9/11, accelerated these practices during the financial crash of 08', and they've never looked back since. These "trends" are over 20 years old.

Curious that all those very rich and powerful people, including the likes of Barack Obama, have moved to beachfront properties. It's almost like all those rich and powerful people don't think their homes are going anywhere.

Heretic! I am reliably informed that Florida went underwater ten years ago. And it's all the fault of you stupid science deniers!

Of course I believe it. The science is settled. And then I bought beachfront property.