Eight Democrats are gearing up for their first presidential debate tonight in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

A recent national poll showed that Obama was narrowing his lead with Clinton (see Wall Street Journal graph to right). But do these early polls of scarcely informed voters merely reflect the media’s obsessions with a horse race rather than candidates’ policy nuances?

One of the major horse stories driving whipping the media into a frenzy is the fund raising race. The media – especially the Washington Post – seem to use these financial disclosures as a proxy for voter intentions come November 2008. And so the cycle begins. “Obama Exceeds Expectations!” “Hillary Harnesses Bill’s Fund Raising Network!”  Perhaps these headlines simply keep the rich candidates’ names in the minds of would-be voters.

But if we’re going to talk about the fund raising race, we should examine the three states that will have a disproportionate effect on the national electorate: Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. So where are their campaign contributions going? By examining the campaign contributions to each candidate by state, we see that three Democratic candidates emerge: Clinton, Obama, and Edwards.

Edwards has pulled in 1 in 3 dollars given to Democratic candidates in from donors in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, 50% more than Obama and almost double the contributions to Clinton.

This contrasts sharply with national contributions. Is Edwards the dark horse that the media has forgotten? In South Carolina he still trails by a wide margin to Clinton and Obama. Tune in tonight to see whether his fund raising stacks up to his policies.
.

.

President Bush’s 2008 budget hit the Hill yesterday to a frosty reception (so much for global warming). The budget is like having an accountant hold a mirror up to American society, and that society is simultaneously warlike and childish.

Almost half of your income taxes will be spent on national defense, and that doesn’t include the interest on debt from previous defense overspending. The Pentagon will spend 6% of its budget repairing and replacing equipment (mostly for Iraq), but it’s still more than the entire foreign affairs budget for 2008. Diplomacy from the barrel of a recently-repaired gun.

The budget also reveals that we are spending money like spoiled trust fund kids - but without the trust fund. Paying for the $261 billion in interest payments on our past indulgences takes up most (83%) of the revenue collected from corporate taxes. Lest you think that we should cut taxes to spur the economy, may I remind you that tax cuts still don’t pay for themselves no matter how many times Bush insists that they do. In fact, between 2008 and 2012, the Bush tax cuts will cost the Treasury Department more than one year of unemployment and welfare benefits combined.

Gift and inheritance taxes collect enough revenue to pay for nearly all of our national science and technology budget. So if you actually are a trust fund kid and think that so-called death taxes are unjust, consider that they might help keep grandma alive for a few more years. Or was that the point of cutting them?
.

Source: Washington Post

Car-sharing is gaining popularity in cities across the United States. The idea is simple: car-share companies or cooperatives park hundreds of cars in convenient locations that any member can rent by the hour. Most car-share programs cost about $8 to $12 per hour, including gas, insurance and maintenance.

On the face of it, car-sharing is a economical and eco-friendly way to get around. Zipcar has about 40 members sharing each car in their national fleet. That’s certainly better than 1 car per person, right? Perhaps. If your goal is to reduce the total area dedicated to parking a vehicle, it does indeed free up valuable urban space. If, however, your goal is to reduce traffic congestion, smog, or reliance on fossil fuels, the jury’s still out.

Car Sharing Increases Mobility - and Traffic - Amongst Urbanites

Car-sharing is most appealing to urbanites who choose to live in densely-populated cities in part to avoid car ownership. Zipcar and Flexcar have both built a business model on enhancing the mobility of these groups. The consequence of increased mobility, unfortunately, is that more urbanites are driving alone. According to a study sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration, 26% of users reported driving more as a result of car sharing.

Flexcar and Zipcar are for-profit companies, and each has recently received $20 million in investments. Those investors expect profit, and that profit will be generated largely by getting more people to drive more of their cars. Most privately-owned cars spend 95% of their time parked. Shared cars have much higher usage rate - most users are unlikely to pay $10 per hour to just to park their car somewhere (which is why commuters who drive to work are unlikely customers for car-sharing). In short, car-share companies generate revenue when people drive those cute little Zipcars around town. (Sorry, but the Flexcars are significantly less attractive. It looks like their marketing department went out for a drive and had a fender-bender with their new logo).

Like public transportation, the economics of car-sharing only make sense with high urban density. In fact, car-sharing is a substitute for other transportation options, many of which are better for the environment. When asked what people would do if a shared car were not available, nearly half of respondents said that they would have taken public transportation or not made the trip at all. It appears that half the time shared cars are used, they have the potential to increase traffic.

This is balanced by another effect of car-sharing: People are more aware of how much they drive. If a user factors in the cost of a Flexcar for a quick trip to the grocery store, the price of a gallon of milk could soar from $3 to more than $10. And that suits the car-sharing business model. Flexcar and Zipcar need high usage rates to remain profitable. But forty members sharing a single car means that each week, a member can only reserve a car for an average of 4 hours. If a member wants a car during premium hours after work or on the weekend, car-share members had better plan ahead: members have an average of about 1 premium hour per week.

Getting Suburbanites Out of Private Vehicles and Into Shared Cars

Although urban car-share members may drive more, suburban users help account for the 46% of drivers who reported that they drove less after they started using car-sharing. Although the FTA report concluded that, “many studies show no statistically significant change (in vehicle miles traveled),” car sharing helps fill a mobility gap created by insufficient public transit in the car-centric suburbs. Suburban two-car households can significantly reduce their expenses by switching to one car plus what Zipcar calls a “fractional second car.” And this may help reduce vehicle miles driven (VMT). Arlington, a northern Virginia suburb of DC, reported that the average car-share member reduced their VMT by 43% between 2005 and 2006.

For now, shared cars are focused on the more densely populated areas with populations that are inherently less reliant on car culture. Flexcar and Zipcar have about 75% of their total fleet in the District of Columbia despite the fact our 515,000 residents make up only 10% of the total DC metro population. Even in close-in suburbs like Arlington, 83% of the 3,500 car share members live in the densely populated Metrorail corridor.

Car Sharing Eases Parking Pressure

Densely populated areas stand to gain the most from car-sharing for a reason that may not be immediately obvious: parking pressure. Despite what urban dwellers may believe, even un-metered street parking is not free. Street parking is public land where private citizens are allowed to store their vehicles. Any taxpayer without a car is effectively subsidizing vehicle owners. All parking spaces have an opportunity cost. That is, there is the opportunity to use that space for something else that is forfeited when we park our cars on the street.

Convenient parking also reinforces America’s car culture. Albuquerque, New Mexico, for example, devotes more land to parking than to all other land uses in the city combined. According to Donald Shoup, the author of The High Cost of Free Parking, 15% of parking spaces must be open at all times or people will be dissuaded from driving. Car share minimizes this problem for neighborhood street parking because its parking spaces are permanently reserved. This means less time, and less traffic, caused by people driving around looking for a spot near home.

How Shared Cars Can Create Bike Lanes

Eliminating the need for free street parking is indeed a worthy goal. Anyone experienced with urban biking has had nightmares about a driver’s door whipping open in front of them. Bike lanes alleviate some risk by granting a wider berth to cars parked curbside, but according to WashCycle, U.S. cities often build bike lanes too close to parked cars. Michael King at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill advocates at least 14′ from the curb to the edge of the bike lane, but this guideline is ignored by many U.S. cities. This may explain why many cyclists refer to bike lanes as “suicide lanes.”

So what would happen if U.S. cities accepted shared car culture as the norm? Statastic used a Northeast Capitol Hill neighborhood as an informal case study to find out. Assuming that the neighborhood has the same average density as the rest of DC, there are about 4,000 people living in an area about 6 long and 11 blocks wide.

Now for the assumptions. According to census data, about 18% of DC residents drive by themselves to work. We’ll let them keep their cars. Another 28% are car owners who either carpool or don’t drive to work. We’ve decided that one-third of them will be converted to car sharing and will give up their cars. The remaining 32% of DC residents over age 18 don’t have a car, so let’s assume that 100% of them become car share members. The result is that 1,600 of 4,000 residents in this neighborhood are now full-time car share members.

Using the Zipcar ratio of 40 members per car, the neighborhood will need an additional 33 shared cars, bringing the total to 40. Zipcar claims that each shared car replaces 15 to 20 private vehicles, and that means more available street parking. Those 40 shared cars in northeast DC could replace 800 private cars, freeing up twelve miles of street parking. Eliminating street parking on one side of a 44′ wide road would also liberate about 16% of the pavement. Wider bike lanes could be added, existing traffic lanes could be widened, and wider lane for street parking would eliminate risk of getting doored while biking by.

The best part is that by increasing the density of shared cars, there would likely be a tipping point where it would become increasingly popular. As people convert to shared cars, the distance between the average resident and a shared car shrinks. Another way to look at it is that with a high conversion rate, the number of cars within three blocks of any resident would increase from 2 to 15. That means more cars to choose from: hybrids for quick city trips, trucks for hauling, or a convertible Mini for a weekend away.

How could we get to this tipping point? Taxing the free parking along city streets would be a start. To give an idea of how valuable the land is that DC residents park their cars on, consider that the going rate for a private parking spot is about $200 in the Dupont area of DC. Taxing street parking could be done in conjunction with proportionally lowered property taxes to avoid political backlash from homeowners. Although cities won’t necessarily generate more income from street parking taxes, residents would understand the real cost of parking and could make a rational economic decision about car ownership.

Shared cars and biking everywhere. Does the car-free life sound like a pain? It’s easy to get used to - Statastico does it every day.

Throughout history, walls have been built primarily for the purpose of defense (The Great Wall of China), politics (Berlin), religious separation (Northern Ireland), ethnic divide (Cyprus), or some nasty combination of all four (Israel). But rarely are walls built purely to rebuff wage invaders.

Illegal immigration is an economic issue, thus the rules of supply and demand apply. If the demand for illegal workers is cut, wages for illegals will fall, and the supply of immigrants will fall as well. Right now it is a challenge for employers to verify the legal status of some workers (although, our policy of turning a blind eye doesn’t help).

The immigration bill currently in Congress addresses this by adding $1.6 billion for a computerized system to verify the eligibility of applicants for lawful employment. Once this is in place, fines could be increased for employers caught employing illegal immigrants. Voila, demand for illegal immigrants falls and so would the number tempted to cross an open border.

But the immigration bill directs twice as much money to the Department of Homeland Security. DHS is being authorized to spend $3.3 billion on border defense that consists of 370 miles of fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers that will only cover 47% of our border with Mexico. Construction of one foot of the fencing alone will cost $568.

Israel has spent billions of dollars on walls, trenches, even a proposed sunken highway. Meanwhile, smugglers between the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza spent just $76 per foot to tunnel underneath. We should count ourselves lucky to only have impoverished day workers trying to cross our border (I discount the terrorism threat - terrorists could more easily cross our 5,500 mile border to the north).

By employing a historically military tactic to a primarily economic issue, we will spend ourselves into a hole.  At least there will plenty of illegal immigrants to help us dig it.

Sources: Sunken road: Cornell University, The Current; U.S. Mexico Border Fence: Congressional Budget Office estimate; Isareai Wall of Separation: Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network; Fourth generation of Berlin Wall: Berlin Wall Online; Smuggling Tunnels: Defense Update; Vinyl Picket Fence: Hoover Fence, Co.

Notes: According to Berlin Wall Online a 3.957 foot wide segment of the Berlin Wall cost 359 East German Marks in 1975. Because this was not a freely traded currency, historical exchange rates are hard to come by. However, as a note of comparison, Berlin Wall Online mentions that a loaf of bread cost 1.04 East German Marks at the time. Thus the store of value in a segment of the wall is equivalent to 345 loaves of bread. In 2006 in the price of a loaf of bread in the U.S. averaged $1.30, so each 4 foot segment of the Berlin Wall was valued at $448.75. It’s not perfect, but you get the idea.

State fairs are in full swing, and presidential hopefuls are getting acquainted with Iowans. As the first state to hold a caucus in the 2008 presidential primary, politicians take advantage of the state fair’s 1 million visitors to test the political waters.

It’s an odd setting for DC politics. The Iowa State Fair is a demonstration of how agriculture has helped shape a quirky Midwestern culture. Today’s events, for example, include a Mom Calling Contest, hot beef sundaes, rubber stamp art techniques, “Focus on Ostrich,” by the Iowa Ostrich Association, at least two goat milking competitions, and a titillating program entitled “How’s My Wienerschnitzel?” Ambivalent fairgoers can escape to the Iowa Wine and Cheese Garden starting at 11 am.

For anyone born and raised in Iowa, the real highlight is the butter cow. Lines typically snake around the Agriculture Building as eager Iowans wait for look at the cow crafted from 500-600 pounds of butter. While the Butter Cow Lady, Norma “Duffy” Lyon, has sculpted a new butter cow annually for the last 45 years, this year she gave up the reigns to her 29 year-old apprentice, Sarah Pratt. Over the years, Norma has also sculpted butter objects to keep the cow company in her refrigerated showcase. These butter creatures hold a funhouse mirror to Iowa culture: Grant Wood’s “American Gothic,” Elvis Presley, Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” John Wayne, The Peanuts Gang, Tiger Woods holding a tiger (really), and this year, Superman.

The Iowa State Fair also has another proud tradition: politicians eating fair food. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich visited the fair last week and ate a pork chop on a stick. Delaware Senator Joseph Biden, who first visited the fair 20 years ago during his bid for president, was reportedly devouring a hoagie in one hand and an ice cream cone in the other.

Other politicians couldn’t help but compare the Iowa State Fair to home. Indiana Senator Evan Bayh commented that “I see you serve beer at your fair and we don’t” in Indiana. (Wait until he finds out what time the wine garden opens.) George Pataki observed that, “We have a great state fair in New York but… we don’t have pork on a stick.” Republican Senator Sam Brownback was at the Iowa State Fair yesterday and Senators John McCain and Bill Frist are expected today or tomorrow. Iowa Governor, Tom Vilsack, has also visited several times - no word on what he’s been eating, but as a native Iowan it’s unlikely to make much news.

So are the state fair visits paying off? According to WHO-TV’s informal “Cast Your Kernel” poll taken on August 16th, not really. Of the Republicans, Senator John McCain came out on top with 24 percent, followed by Rudy Giuliani and Condoleezza Rice each with 20 percent. Neither of the leading Democrats has yet paid a visit to the butter cow. John Edwards and Senator Hillary Clinton were tied at 33 percent, while Iowa’s own governor Tom Vilsack came in third with 13 percent.

It seems that the 500 pounds of butter in the butter cow are enough to sustain the hopes of at least eight politicians. It is a copious amount - about 2000 sticks in all. That’s enough buttersticks to nickname 2,000 baby pandas, or draw butter for 2,000 lobsters. Or, you could butter 4,000 tubs of popcorn, or 16,000 pieces of toast.

And if you get addicted to shaving with butter like Kramer, you can get 16,000 close shaves out of this year’s butter cow. Those 500 pounds of butter would also fuel a very successful bake sale: 20,000 pieces of fudge, 35,000 of my mother’s famous brownies, 60,000 Toll House cookies, or 64,000 Rice Krispies Treats. Of course, if you’re in Iowa, you would most likely use 500 pounds of butter on 32,000 ears of sweet corn.

In a letter about his trip to Iowa, Newt Gingrich closed with this:

“…the process of electing the President of the most powerful country on earth passes through a state fair in rural America where more than one million people come with their families to eat nearly anything that comes on a stick, compete in numerous agricultural competitions and contests, ride the rides, enjoy the shows and see the ‘butter cow,’ but that is how we do it in America, where a free people get to put their candidates to the test face to face.”

Fair enough.

Notes: According to the new butter cow lady, Sarah Pratt, this year’s butter cow is a Jersey and requires about 500 pounds of butter.

Assumptions: One ear of Iowa sweet corn only requires half a tablespoon of butter. Popcorn needs 1/4 cup per tub. Lobsters apparently require 1/2 a cup. Statastic does not advocate sautéing pandas, no matter how delicious that might be. Butterstick was blogosphere’s attempt to name Tai Shan, the baby Panda at the National Zoo.

The GOP fell short of forcing Democrats to vote for a raise in the minimum wage. Why? The Republicans cleverly couched a raise for this country’s working poor in a distasteful estate tax cut for the super rich. Among other things, the bill would have exempted estates worth $5 million or less from any estate taxes whatsoever, costing the government $268 million in revenue over 10 years.

The Republican strategy of sweetening their death tax cut with a Democrat-friendly minimum wage increase reminds me of when we used to wrap our dog’s heartworm pill in bacon to get him to swallow it. But the estate tax cut is no remedy - it’s just a bitter pill for poor Americans.

There’s been plenty of hot air in Washington, DC this week, thanks to our politicians, Al Gore’s movie (which causes global warming), and our forefathers (who paved a swamp and called it the capital).

So Statastico set out to see what could possibly hold more hot air than a politician. Ironically, it’s a pet project of the U.S. military that holds the most hot air (ok, it’s helium): the proposed High Altitude Airship. It’s conceptual, but the plan was to build 500 foot-long blimps that hovers 65,000 feet over the earth to “detect and track incoming ballistic missiles as they approach U.S. coastal regions.” Dear god. Makes those those ubiquitous Goodyear blimps that hover 1,500 feet over domed football stadiums seem downright sensible.

So how many breaths does it take to fill up some common things that are full of hot air? The average adult lung capacity is about .18 cubic feet (5 liters) of air. So it would take one breath from about half a million politicians to fill up the average hot air balloon. There aren’t enough politicians to get the job done, but I’m betting that they can call in some help from the lobbyists.

Sources: Statastic research, wikipedia, balloonhq, Goodyearblimp.com, missilethreat.com

Notes: Wikipedia now estimates adult lung capacity at 6 liters. This comparison used 5 liters which was previously cited in Wikipedia. Average hot air balloon has a basket with a capacity of 3-4 people.

As U.S. casualties continue to mount in Iraq, there are increasing calls for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. Democrats remain divided on withdrawal as a viable strategy for the midterm election. Our involvement in Iraq is a political issue in Washington to be sure, but not for the right reasons.

Even if you support troops and want to prevent the further loss of American lives, it’s imperative to look beyond our own losses. Iraqi civilians are dying at the rate of 100 per day according to the United Nations. In June alone, more than 50 Iraqi civilians died for every one of our soldiers. And their deaths are increasingly cruel.

These questions might help frame the debate over a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq:

1. Are our troops exacerbating the problem or are they preventing further violence in Iraq? An Army commander in the documentary “Operation: Dreamland” commented that (paraphrased), “At this point, we are here to protect one thing: ourselves.”

2. Will the withdrawal of American troops increase the bloodletting in Iraq and lead to a full-scale civil war? If so, our current investment of troops and money might look like child’s play compared to our later involvement in a civil, or even a regional war.

3. If we left Iraq immediately and it turned into a flourishing democracy and ally, would our military credibility still be permanently weakened? Withdrawal also writes a recipe for how to engage our military in asymmetric tactics such as the use of IEDs. Iraqi insurgents have clearly learned that we didn’t stay the course in Somalia in 1994 after our troops were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.

Unfortunately, our involvement in Iraq is more likely to be determined by domestic politics rather than by considering the hard questions.

If we divide the U.S. into Bush states and Kerry states based on the 2004 election, we can gain some insight into how troop casualties might affect the elections. Of the 11 states that were competitive in the 2004 presidential election (less than 5% difference between winner and loser), all but two states have higher troop losses per capita than the average of the states that Kerry carried.

With support for the war in Iraq slipping and the plummet of Bush’s approval rating, those red swing states with higher-than-average fatalities are unlikely to have the stomach for U.S. troop losses that they did two years ago.

Consider this: on a per capita basis, 585 times more Iraqi civilians than U.S. troops were killed in the month of June. Redeployment is more complicated than short-term domestic politics. Let’s hope the politicians realize that by considering how our policy will affect troop losses well beyond the midterm elections.

Notes: U.S. troop losses as of 7.26.06

Sources: Statastic research; Iraq Coalition Casualty Count; USA Today; U.S. Census

Bush announced that he would be sending more troops to Baghdad at the request of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Bush commented that “Obviously the violence in Baghdad is still terrible, and therefore there needs to be more troops.”

This comes on the heels of the United Nations reporting that Iraq averaged more than 100 civilian deaths per day in June. The UN report was surprisingly precise in its numbers which were based on data provided by the Iraq Ministry of Health and the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad.

The UN report included grim, yet matter-of fact, examples of the violence: “On 10 June, 7 bodies were found in the river ‘Malih,’ in Wasit Governorate. The victims wore civilian clothes; some were handcuffed, tortured and shot in the head. Dead bodies are regularly found in the same river.”

At Iraq Body Count (IBC), academics and peace activists have been keeping a separate record of civilian deaths based on news reports from at least two media sources. This tally includes detail that was noticeably absent from the UN report: Iraqi violence seems to be increasingly cruel. According to statastic.com analysis of IBC data, 1.4% of deaths of deaths in April, 2006 involved beheading or decapitation. This rose to 3.5% in May, and 4.4% in June.

These grim excerpts help reveal the scope of the brutality in June alone:

• June 29: Two decapitated bodies found in Kirkuk
• June 10: Severed heads of two brothers kidnapped in Baquba found
• June 10: Seven bodies found beheaded, tortured in Al-Maleh river
• June 6: Nine severed heads found in Hadid
• June 3: Eight severed heads of a Sheik and cousins who were construction workers in Hadid, (found) near Baquba
• June 1: Four men, some of whom detained by police in north Baghdad, found beheaded in Hibhib, near Baquba

It’s impossible for us to imagine death by decapitation. Such a murder would make the U.S. national news, talk shows and media swirl for days, if not weeks. But in Iraq this summer, an average of one civilian is beheaded every day .

Notes: The IBC Web site states that it underestimates the true number of casualties, although they do attempt to incorporate aggregated data from morgues that was not accounted for in media reports. IBC reports minimum and maximum civilian deaths, both are determined by discrepancies in media reports about the same event. The chart above uses the minimum monthly toll.

Because IBC data relies on media reports, any difference in reporting will naturally affect the nature of the data. For example, increased violence may inhibit journalists from reporting some civilian deaths. If violence reduces mobility of journalists, they minght inadvertently over-report especially brutal civilian deaths, thereby increasing the percentage of reported deaths that involve torture or decapitation.

Sources: Statastic research; Iraq Body Count Database; United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI)

Yesterday, the Washington Post ran an editorial that put the estimated death toll from the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo at 3.9 million, the equivalent of the entire San Francisco Bay Area population.

The war, which has involved as many as six nations, started in 1998 and continues to this day. The International Rescue Committee and The Lancet found that 98% of the deaths were due to treatable disease and malnutrition, largely the result of displacement during conflicts in the east. The remaining 160,000 deaths were a direct result of fighting.

The quality of the data in the editorial and the reports on which it is based are very impressive; the results are not. By comparing our response to the conflict in Congo with other recent wars and natural disasters, we find a discouraging record:

• -On a per capita basis, 30 times more United Nations Peacekeepers were deployed to Kosovo, where 12,000 people died, than to Congo where 3.9 million people have died this far.
• -The dollars of international aid distributed to Aceh, Indonesia in the wake of the tsunami was almost 100 times higher than the aid that has flowed to Congo.
• -In 2005 the media reported on Darfur more than 5 times more often than on the conflict in Congo.

The lessons from the data are clear:

1. 1. The media is more likely to report on wars that have been labeled genocide.
2. 2. The media is less likely to report on festering wars with no apparent good guys and bad guys.
3. 3. Media reports drive world attention. World attention drives donation rates, the reaction of our governments, and the deployment of U.N. Peacekeepers
4. 4. Citizen donations are fickle.  Governments are ultimately responsible for addressing conflicts such as that in Congo.

To learn more about the war in Congo, visit the IRC web site. There is also a link to take action by writing your Senator (assuming you’re not a Washington, DC resident).

Sources: Statastic research, International Rescue Committee, Wikipedia, Washington Post.

Every so often, Jeffrey Sachs tries to humiliate the U.S. into increasing its foreign aid. It’s true: While we give away about $19 billion annually in foreign aid, it’s not much relative to our Gross National Income. The Dutch give away about 5 times more, and we’re usually toward the bottom of the rankings for industrialized nations.

But even our Official Development Assistance - grants that promote economic development in low income countries - doesn’t really get to the poorest countries on earth. The United Nation’s Human Development Index (HDI) helps quantify a country’s progress in areas such as health, education, and general economic welfare. One might think that this would be a pretty good guide to foreign aid benefiaries. But the five most under-developed countries on earth only receive $186 million in aid from the U.S., about 7% of what Israel receives annually.

At more than $10 billion in 2005, Iraq alone accounts for 45% of our total foreign aid. So the U.S. is spending about half of its development assistance solving a problem that we helped create. Actually, if you look at the top 4 countries that we give assistance to, it reads like a who’s who of failed U.S. foreign policies: Iraq is devolving into civil war, Israel has lost our roadmap to peace, Afghanistan cultivates poppies and terrorists, and we have outsourced Sudan’s genocide.

The bottom ten countries on the HDI index are miserable, conflict ridden places. But are they better off with or without our so-called aid?

Sources: Statastic, Wikipedia, United Nations Human Development Report

Notes: The “least developed countries on earth” is based on the 2003 United Nation’s Human Development Index.  Several countries that might have appeared near the bottom of the HDI were not ranked in 2003, many because of recent conflicts.  Statastico would like to give proper credit to the abject underdevelopment of the following countries that may have made the top 10 most miserable places to be a citizen, had they been ranked: Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Liberia, Afghanistan, and Monaco.  Ok, maybe not Monaco.