The United States Should assume Primary Responsibility of the rebuilding of Haiti Options

[BamBamBoogie]

Agree or disagree?: The United States Should assume Primary Responsibility of the rebuilding of Haiti

[creole]

what about chile?

[Blyat]

what about chile?

They said they didn't need help
plus Chile's buildings were more built for the earthquake compared to haiti

[kryogenix]

Haiti needs to take care of their own shit. The only nation we should be rebuilding is our own crumbling country. Not the victims of a natural disaster in Haiti, nor the victims of our man made disaster in Iraq.

[nyaa---]

Why would we try to rebuild Haiti? The government there is so corrupt that they would just pocket any money we donate and wouldn't put any towards future rebuilding. If anything we should evacuate their country.

[Blyat]

There is a point where it's nice for U.S to help
But like you two said, Haiti is also corrupt and they might not even be using our money to help rebuild themselves
and we are also already corrupt and have many problems

[AbbeyMarie]

We should destroy and conquer. Like in the oldin days.

[Mikeplyts]

We should move to U.S. Version 2.0, where the water is cleaner, the economy is better, the jobs are cooler, and all the people that live there are of every ethnicity.

[synatribe]

US should take an active role but shouldn't be the sole participant. Right now the US is backed in a 1 trillion 600 billion dollar deficit with a potential to grow with the current debate over healthcare legislation. Also, we just moved into a recovery period for the US from the recession of 2008 the last thing we want to do is increase spending and foreign nation building. The prime reason for the failure of the Bush administration was the nation building in IRAQ. We have the UNDP and the IMF to be the major forerunners for this issue. It would be a positive thing if the United States could bring some influence over Haiti but their government is the least of concerns compared to their natural inhabitance of some of the worst environmental conditions which is a major reason why foreign direct investment is very subtle. However on the positive note, at least France is doing something about it, they recently cutback a $90 million interest from the time Haiti was still colonized because of Haiti's recent earthquakes.

[Mikeplyts]

That's so nice.

[BamBamBoogie]

To spice things up a bit:

Do you all feel as though the U.S. has some level of a moral obligation to Haiti, being as though we once inhabited Haiti in the early 1900s for personal gains, and we have also been like their 'big brother' for a while, being their top financial supporter for the past decades. If we leave now, it seems like we're leaving in the time they need us most. Not to mention the proximity of Haiti to the U.S.

[brooklyneast05]

we're not going to leave though, every american in haiti helping isn't going to just up and leave all at one time. i think we have a moral obligation to help haiti as humans who empathize with other humans, but not as a country. it should be individual charity. if bill clinton or any other individual wants to go all out and help then they should, i'm all for it. but the US as a country shouldn't assume "primary responsibility" for any country other than our own imo regardless of circumstances. i'm for us helping, just not having to take on the primary responsibility title. especially since it's not like we are sitting around tapping our feet wishing we had something to be doing, our plate is pretty full.

[SoleShine]

Agree or disagree?: The United States Should assume Primary Responsibility of the rebuilding of Haiti

DISAGREE! why should we have to take on that kind of responsibility? isnt our economy failing? isnt our nation in crisis from things too? people dont run to our rescue like we run to everyone else's its crazy to expect the us to do that for Haiti, WHO, might it add, had some crap with us not to long ago. just saying.

[mipadi]

isnt our economy failing? isnt our nation in crisis from things too? people dont run to our rescue like we run to everyone else's its crazy to expect the us to do that for Haiti

Haiti is one of the poorest nations on earth. Despite our own economic problems, Haiti is a whole new level of poor. No one runs to our rescue because the US is one of the richest nations on earth, so we really don't need anyone else's help.

[vehvih]

Yes we do have an obligation because we f*cked them up.

Before I begin, keep in mind that Haiti, before the country started dwindling down in the 1990s, they were living a sustainable life. Right after they achieved independence from colonization of the French? The large scale agriculture was diminished and all the lands were distributed to the Haitian people. And they stopped exporting goods, instead they grew their own food. They didn't have a commerce economy but they were able to sustain life because they grew their own food. And also some tourism supplemented their economy.

In the 1990s, I believe, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank (their objective is to supposedly help countries advance their economy) offered Haiti a loan. Than loan was going to be used I guess to do whatever Haiti on some infrastructures, industrialization, etc. It's basically like a stimulus package.

On return, Haiti not only has to pay the money AND the interest back, they have to abide some laws. It's called the Structural Adjustment Plan (or SAPS). Under that law it states that

1. Cutting in spending for health, education, and all forms of social welfare
2. Privatizing of all state-owned enterprises
3. Opening the economy to foreign competitors and direct foreign investment
4. Allowing the market TO DETERMINE INTEREST RATE
5. Managing currency exchange rates to keep them stable
6. State gov. having to broaden the tax base in order to collect more revenue, deregulate labor markets, and stop using public monies to subsidize commodities

(http://www.mnstate.edu/anthearth/facultys/Gooding/Chapter%2017.pdf)

Then they started doing large scale agriculture, and grew commodities. The lands that were domestically owned were put into the market. And then a series of chain reactions occur.

Remember that since 1970s we started SUBSIDIZING for corn, soybeans, wheat, rice. So when we started subsidizing them, the prices of of those commodities went absolutely down.

SO basically what happened was under the SAP policies, import tariff was LOWERED from 35% to 3% when the agreement policies took into place in 1995

(http://www1.american.edu/TED/haitirice.htm)

On top of that, they have to follow some capitalistic agendas with little to almost no welfare programs (those welfare programs are incentives for people to work) AND REPAY the loans with interest CONSIDERING, the commodities they were growing were worth a dime.

I believe they still have some money the owe to those monopolizing/globalizing banks, while they clean up the debris from the earthquake.

WE have help them. WE issued them those loans.

And Haiti was not the only country that had been issued loans by those bitches. They're all over the world. If Haiti was located just right below America, most Haitians would probably have immigrated.

The same shit happened to Mexico.