This thinking is at the base of today's order by the White House to the State Department to cut in half its foreign aid (including USAID).

I know that foreign aid has been pouring into Africa, for example, for a century at least: Billions of dollars; and in most beneficiary countries, we still can't see any tangible and long-lasting results. Africa is a black hole.

But US foreign help worked in Europe for reconstruction (the Marshall Plan) after WWII. You will probably agree with me that it was a very good thing: It re-created a new market for American goods and it kept Russia's influence under control. The Russians were the first to enter Hitler's bunker, not the Americans; they could have used their major role in Germany's defeat as a way to grab Western Europe (the way they did with Eastern Europe) if the US had not been active in reconstructing Western Europe.

Do you know if foreign aid worked in Asia where some countries were in bad shape after the Japanese occupation for example: Did foreign aid help them to recover?

Japan created its own development bank many decades ago as a way to keep some control over the poorest countries of Asia: Did it work?