I work a job where I end up taking to a lot of people. When politics come up I usually hear a lot about how workers aren't getting their fair share and are being screwed over by the government (a good start) but then veers off into "the government doesn't pay nurses enough because we're giving it away to other countries!!"
Why is this misguided talking point so common? How do you respond to it without being dismissive and calling them dumb and wrong?
Most "foreign aid" isn't actually going to other countries in the form of aid anyway, at least not imperialcore countries. It's administration costs and porkbarrel projects for their own nation's industries.
you should ask them if they really think that if this money was not being used in a foreign aid it would be used for workers like the problem is not that even that there is enough money for it is just there is no political will towards workers
on the why this is so common imo: it is easier, we don't have to change, the only reason this is like this is because we are helping those foreigners the problem is not us but that we are too good to everyone else or something like that
foreign aid is a sleight of hand, its a tiny trickle to make the west look magnanimous to the global south (those poor countries who for some reason just cant get their shit together without the white mans help), and make you not notice the flood of extracted wealth coming in the other direction
People have a really skewed idea of where government money goes. Once you get past like a hundred thousand dollars then intuitively it's all just the same incomprehensibly large number, you have to learn how much goes where.
I'm not sure what you can do besides being like, "we send about fifty billion dollars in foreign aid every year, compared to spending eight HUNDRED billion on the military. That's sixteen times more, and instead of getting spent on food and infrastructure to make the world better that military money gets spent on bombs and tanks that either sit in a warehouse or get used to make the world worse."
edit: just noticed the sub, amend my numbers to 7.5 billion and 36 billion, 5 times more. The point still stands.
ask them how much of the budget they think is going to foreign aid. They will inevitably say like something nuts like 30%. Tell them it's around 1%.
