The US should make new funds for the Water For The Poor Act to solve for the African water crisis.

First off, I would like to say something thats not particularly relevant to the debate, but I feel I should mention all the same. I want to commend you on the way you are approaching debate. You are 100% correct in saying that it is educational only, and people lose sight of that. On another note, I haven't ever written a paper on this subject, but I have done a fair share of research. I think that you have done a very good job in keeping with the arguments. Oh and as for the unstructuredness of this last post, I'll just assume that its a rebuttal, which needs no structure :) Anyway, I'll again make a little refrence to the points you made. Point 1 - Suffering People Subpoint A - Other people suffering in other countries Subpoint B - People in our country Point 2 - Lack of benefits Point 3 - Disadvantages to the Plan Subpoint A - US presense not accepted Subpoint B - Zero Sum Spending Disadvantage Point 4 - Spending I'll try to be as brief as I can while still covering the points. Point 1 - Basically tjzimmer asked two things: Why Africa? and Why not help the US instead? Well as to the first one, this debate is over the implementation of a mechanism to solve for water problems. To my knowledge, Africa has the biggest shortage of clean water in the world, at 300 million. I'm not sure what his pre-emptive attack on population was, but if I understand correctly, here is my response. When judging the lives of foreigners, outside your country, you should start them off on the same level. This is the most fair. Say there were 2 countries, one with 300 million suffering (Country A), and another with 10 million suffering (Country B). Regardless of the suffering people per non-suffering people, I think the decision is clear that Country A must be helped first. This is a direct parallel to Africa. It has the most suffering, and the most dieing, and is getting worse. I also think that nothing concrete was ever offered against my question of "why can't we help both?" I agree, this would be expensive, but the U.S. has a moral duty to help people attain basic human rights (clean water for instance). I think that you can't possibly put a price on human lives, and it only is arguable to not do this, if it pushes us over the edge economically. While I'm not an expert on economics by any means, I do not think 190 million will. Point 2 – I'm confused on this, and I hope he can elaborate some more,, but I'll respond to the question as how I understand it. I take it to mean that he says that the WFTPA has no advantages for the U.S. However this is untrue. I listed 3 advantages: Disease, Conflict, and Soft Power. Now obviously Disease only really helps Africa, but conflicts in Africa could spillover into international war. (http://www.globalpolicy.org...) Obviously to prevent them now would be advantageous. The second thing it helps with is America's lack of Soft Power. This is important because our soft power is waning, and America's global status is contingent upon its image. Point 3 – There were two disadvantages to the plan, according to tjzimmer. They were, US presence not tolerated (presumably leading to conflict and death of our people in the region), and a Zero Sum Spending Disadvantage. On the first one: I hate to be a evidence Nazi, but I disagree that our presence wouldn't be tolerated. I can't find anything to suggest that we wouldn't be tolerated, and if there were something out there I would love to see it. On the second one: This basically assumes that American help is zero sum, or a certain amount and cannot exceed that amount ever. So if it was zero sum and we helped Africa, help to American citizens would go down. However, I don't think that's true. I think we can effectively help our citizens and Africa's denizens effectively and efficiently. I think this debate really comes down to who our help should be prioritized to. I think that its impossible to gauge the lives of our people over the lives of people in another country, and therefore, we need to look at the quality and quantity of the suffering. The suffering of Africa is higher in both of these regards and therefore should have the most attention and the highest priority of U.S. Foreign Aid. However U.S. Foreign Aid in now way trades off with U.S. Domestic Aid. I think that regardless of the expense, we should help as many people as possible, as long as it doesn't result in economic stagnation. Overall a good debate, and I hope people take the time to weigh the arguments.