Sessions of the United Nations General Assembly always end upgetting reduced to pleas for financial support. It’s like an annual telethonwithout the phone number on the bottom of the screen. No number is required,since you’ll be donating anyway through your government.
What’s most troubling about the current set of pitches is thateconomics are taking a back seat to politics. For example, U.S. President BarackObama and other leaders have committed to the U.N.’s 2030 Agenda forSustainable Development, which aims to “end poverty in all its forms everywhere,”with poverty measured as living on less than $1.25 a day.
So how will we achieve this proposed utopia in which no one inthe world is poor? This is where you, the taxpayer, come in. You’ll be expectedto throw more money into the collection plate, since the agenda calls on theworld’s better-off nations to “address the external debt of highly indebtedpoor countries to reduce debt distress.” Forget about your own debt distress.
And then there’s the fact that the agenda is being administeredby the United Nations. One of the gems in the Hillary Clinton email dump by theState Department was a note from daughter Chelsea during her 2010 visit to Haitito observe the U.N. in action.
“To say I was profoundly disturbed by what I saw — and didn’t see— would be an understatement,” Chelsea wrote to her parents. “The incompetenceis mind numbing. The UN people I encountered were frequently out of touch … anachronisticin their thinking at best and arrogant and incompetent at worst.”
Oh, but it’s the thought that counts, right? Wrong. This isn’t anugly sweater given to you by a fashion-challenged relative. The world is facingdire economic challenges that deserve serious attention, and we won’t solveanything by passing the buck (literally and figuratively) to an internationalagency whose “success” to date in addressing problems can only be measured interms of its perpetual failure.
Economics are at the root of all the current problems in theworld, including Middle Eastern terrorism and the Islamic State. The IslamicState problem was seeded years ago, with the funding and training of Syrian mercenariesto oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in an effort by the West and by oil-revenuecompetitors Qatar and Saudi Arabia to upend the economic alliance of Syria,Russia and Iran. If economics hadn’t been a consideration, the Islamic Stateprobably wouldn’t exist.
Gen. Lloyd Austin III, the head of U.S. Central Command, recentlytold the Senate Armed Services Committee that a $500 million program approvedby Congress to train Syrian rebels has no more than five active fightersremaining. Central Command admitted last week that some of the weapons providedto Syrian rebels wound up in the hands of an al-Qaida affiliate. Your taxdollars down the drain, America.
The contagion of economic disaster is now spreading through Europe via a flood of migrants. The European Union already has enough problems,with failing states such as Greece that can’t even pay the interest on theirdebt without perpetually borrowing from other European nations, which havetheir own cash- and job-strapped citizens to worry about.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and French Interior Minister BernardCazeneuve have announced that more than 2,200 refugees have been housed inParis alone, with the French government earmarking 279 million euros to fund migrantservices through the end of 2016. Now we’re talking about my tax dollars. Lookslike we’re all in this hole together. Kumbaya.
Not all migrants are fleeing conflict. Many see the gates toEurope being flung open under the pretext of humanitarianism and are heading toClub Europa for jobs that don’t actually exist.
So while we’re bleeding development aid into the countries themigrants are fleeing, we’re failing to translate our involvement into anyviable economic return. We’re also doing little to improve our own domestic jobmarkets. All this at a time when the commodities industries and oil-and-gasindustries — the go-to sectors for revenue growth — are in a slump.
None of the speakers at the General Assembly are addressing theelephant in the room: People all over the world need jobs and stability rightnow. No one is laying out a viable roadmap to a solution.
One by one, these leaders stand at the podium vying for ourhearts and minds. Our wallets should have a real problem with that.
(Professor Rachel Marsden is an internationally syndicated Tribune columnist, business and political risk intelligence and communications consultant, and former Fox News host based in Paris. She is a professor/lecturer at the Paris Institute of Political Studies and host of “UNREDACTED with Rachel Marsden”, Tuesdays 4pm PT / 7pm ET. Website: http://www.rachelmarsden.com/.) © 2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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