Mr. Brian Beutler complains that the Iraqi government has not spent much of its reconstruction funding. I find it interesting that so many people seem so obsessed with using the amount of money that the government has spent as their prime metric rather than, say, whether it built anything worthwhile.
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Well, one hopes and presumes that there's enough of a monitoring system in place to ensure that they can't just steal the money, or spend it on a bridge to nowhere while skimming off 90% for bribes. The ability to actually spend the money one has been allocated for aid is one standard measure which aid organizations use to assess the competence of recipient governments. Much of the time, if they're not spending it, it's not because they're being prudent. It's because two different people's cousins are insisting on getting kickbacks from the water purification plant contract, and the money can't move until the patronage and corruption issues are resolved.
Countries with lower corruption and greater competence tend to be better at getting the money spent. That's obviously not the only indicator one wants to look at, but it's one of them.
Indeed. A government that can't spend money is a pretty weak government.
In addition, it is a very subjective judgment as to whether something is worth the money. If someone posted a list of construction projects, and someone else listed reasons why none of them were useful, we'd be likely judging a pissing contest.
It seems like almost any building project in Iraq would be worthwhile. After all, being invaded and then descending into civil war doesn't do much for your physical infrastructure. That the government can't find anything to spend it on really speaks poorly of the government.
In the American context, yes, many are very guilty of looking at inputs instead of outputs. Shame on them. But there's no need to project.
Yeah, I don't know how to make a "reconstruction" metric that wouldn't be riddled with problems, but maybe someone could figure that out. The complaint that Iraq isn't spending money it has makes sense-if it isn't funding building contracts, then nothing is getting done at all, and surely anything would be better than that. Also, more cynically, the doling out of largesse in the form of contracts is one of the ways a government builds its legitimacy. People collecting a check that ultimately comes from the government tend to have much warmer feelings about that government. Not that this alone would represent a solution to the problems there, but every little bit counts.
If they are not spending any money it is very hard for them to be building anything worthwhile.
OK, tell me how they build anything worthwhile without spending any money.
On the bright side, they cannot build anything harmful without spending money.
There are far more worse things you have not heard about and yes English and the Americans, because of their political interests, call the parties in the area democratic and followers of human rifgts overlooking all the disasters they have brought to people in the area along with their corrupt system.
There are far more worse things you have not heard about and yes English and the Americans, because of their political interests, call the parties in the area democratic and followers of human rifgts overlooking all the disasters they have brought to people in the area along with their corrupt system.
Eyewitnesses say the building materials are stolen before anything can be built.
Can anything good come out of Iraq?
Besides oil and the better educated refugees?