It is not a conspiracy theory that government foreign aid programs have accomplished more harm than good, with such institutions as the World Bank and the New York Times acknowledging the complete failure of various foreign development projects. While it may seem as though it is a righteous thing for the government to financially assist struggling nations abroad, it is the very act of doing so that enables such economies to continue their downfalls.

Countries with extreme government intervention in the economy, inhibiting a stable and prosperous free market from functioning, are frequently those that find themselves the recipients of foreign aid due to their often disastrous economic situations. When leadership of such nations–sometimes even dictatorships–receive foreign aid from other nations, this simply supports and sustains the policies that led to the dire situation to begin with, as evidenced by the fact that nations threatened with removal of foreign aid quite often quickly trend toward less government intervention in the economy.

More often than not, foreign aid can be likened to donating financially to a hopeless drug addict in hopes that they will use the money to sober up and begin a new life–only to discover in dismay a month later that it was used not to recover, but to feed and maintain the addiction further. What the drug addict needs is not money; sure, it could certainly be put toward necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter–but the money can also support the problem, and likely will. Likewise, governments throwing money at countries with economies struggling under crippling economic policies–think governments with an addiction to power and corruption–will do nothing but support the root cause of the problem. Both the drug addict and the foreign government of the economically challenged nation instead need a reform of mind, body, and spirit; throwing money at either will only worsen their respective problems, but resolving the root causes–be it dictatorial leadership or an addiction to drugs–will gradually improve and ultimately heal both.

Those who disparage capitalism often perceive rampant inequality as one of the primary factors–if not the leading one–that contribute to the unfair and altogether cruel nature of a free market economy. However, the actual connection between income inequality and a free economy can be easily disproved by a collection of readily available statistics. Income inequality, that is essentially, the percentage difference between what the poorest and the richest in an economy are earning, is actually greater on average in the world’s least free economies than in nations with relatively free economies, such as the United States. Moreover, the average income of the bottom 10th percentile in the least free economies comes out to over 10 times less than the same group in the most free economies; yet the poorest 10% in both the freest and least free earn roughly 2-3% of the national income.

Another statistic that dispels entirely the correlation between capitalism and inequality is the GINI coefficient, a scale which ranges from 0-100 with higher being less equal and lower being more equal, in terms of overall income distribution. The aforementioned least economically free countries average a GINI coefficient of 43, whereas the most free average 35. This indicates that, contrary to common anti-capitalist reasoning, income inequality is lower in nations where less government intervention on the economy takes place.

What about within the United States? It is said that the poor keep getting poorer, while the rich keep getting richer. It may even be acknowledged that since the 1960s, the income share percentage of the bottom 20% of earners has decreased from 4.7% to 3.8%. It can therefore be determined from this statistic that the rich are just becoming richer!

However, what is often overlooked is the total national income from which these percentages are drawn. Although there was a 20% decrease in their share of the national income, that income figure itself has jumped from around $3,000,000,000,000 in 1960 to $14,000,000,000,000 in 2010, an increase of over 300%. Thus, while the rich are indeed becoming richer, the poor are certainly not becoming poorer; they, too, are benefiting from the ongoing growth of America’s relatively free economy.🔹