Professor Easterly of NYU claims in his book "The White Man's Burden" that a tragedy of poor nation aid over the past 50 years is that $1 trillion (in 1985 constant dollars) has been spent, with little to show for it. Easterly goes on to state that aid has been largely ineffective in combating poverty. Yet Easterly fails to put things in context.

Let us do a little math. Suppose there are two billion poor people in the world (a rather conservative estimate). Dividing $1 trillion by this amount, we get $500/person. Yet this amount is spread out over 50 years. Thus, dividing $500/person over 50 years, we get $10/person per year - a miniscule amount. When you add to that the aid money that is stolen or wasted, the actual aid reaching poor people is ridiculously small.

The answer to this problem is not to cut aid funding, but to restructure aid departments, increase aid, and use other development tools like military intervention(as should have been done in Rwanda), trade policy, and laws/charters. Easterly, in my humble opinion, is misguided.