Who has got all the Money?

[blackprince]

Reginal Perrin wrote: cnosni wrote: raveydavey wrote: Reginal Perrin wrote: China. They also go into countries who are stuggling and built infrastructure and built trade relations. We join US wars and steal oil. You are right about China. They recently bought a kings ransom in Greek government bonds.We chose to provide millions in "aid" to countries like India, who managed to find £1.4 BILLION to spend on staging the recent Commonwealth Games.It's funny how these things work, isn't it? Funny that isnt it,we send £1.4bn to India for the games and in 2009/2010 the budget for their (ahem)much needed space program was £1.31bn.All of that extreme poverty and they wish to stage international games and go into space.I think we are mugs. The practice of giving aid of any kind to a nuclear power with a space program generally accepted to be a future world power is a strange one. We read everyday int he papers of Indioan takeovers of British companies (Blackburn rovers being the most high prfile this week), we lose call centre job to them all the time.I can't see how it is justified. They clearly don't need it. India is a wealthy country it's just not that evenly distributed. That isn'y our fault. Historic guilt complex perhaps? Do we feel we owe them it? We probably do. Both China and India are military and civil nuclear powers . Both have ambitious space programs. Both have nuclear submarines ( India launched its first this year and China has a large nuke sub base on Hainan Island) and both still receive overseas aid from the UK. WHY?

[Leeds Hippo]

Interesting article on the BBC today about the geographical influences on the economy over the past few thousand years.One surprising fact - China has had the largest economy for 18 of the last 20 centuries!http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11721671