"Elon Musk boasted in early February that, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.” Musk is gone but the White House budget request for next year pencils in a cut of two-thirds to global health and humanitarian funding. Foreign aid has a mixed reputation, it is true, but that cut would plausibly cause a million deaths in the next 12 months alone." Stats from @TimHarford https://timharford.com/2025/07/the-many-tragedies-of-ending-us-aid/ #usaidcut #dogecuts #musk
The many tragedies of ending US aid

One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic. If Stalin ever said such a thing, he wasn’t the first — but the ghoulish claim has stuck to him because he is one of very few politicia…

Tim Harford