Learning from Bill Gates

Everyone – from elected officials and bureaucrats to voters and taxpayers – can learn from the world’s largest charitable foundation about effective development spending. And these lessons are particularly relevant at a time when 56% of Europeans believe their governments should focus solely on domestic issues and let recipient countries deal with problems as best they can (opposition to aid is even higher in France, Poland, Italy, Hungary, and Greece).

The United Kingdom’s largest-circulation Sunday newspaper recently launched a petition calling for an end to ring-fenced aid spending (worth 0.7% of national income). Prior to his election victory, US President Donald Trump railed against “sending foreign aid to countries that hate us,” reflecting a widespread belief that aid needs to be cut. The United States allocates less than 1% of the federal budget to aid, but the average American believes this figure to be thirty-one-times higher.