Personally, this horrifies me on so many levels: Arkansas Family Expecting 16th Child

How can someone justify this large a family as a moral imperative? Our country consumes the bulk of the world’s resources in fossil fuels and yet are behind other nations in the percentage of our gross national product that we donate to poor countries. We don’t donate 0.7% like some of our peers.

“Extreme poverty can be reduced, and indeed eliminated, in our generation,” Sachs told journalists last week in a national conference call. “What it will take is increased investment.”

How much? To the American who would mutter, “Uh-oh, more handouts,” Sachs offered background and perspective.

In lending support to British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s recent call for a doubling of aid to Africa to $50 billion a year, he pointed out that the well-off countries are nowhere near their goal of 0.7 percent of gross domestic product in foreign aid.

And whereas the European Union has agreed to hit 0.5 percent by 2010 and 0.7 percent by 2015, the United States — second to last in foreign aid as a percentage of wealth — stands at 0.16 percent and has refused so far to set a numerical goal even though it signed off on the 0.7 declaration in 2002. While AIDS funding has been hiked by the Bush administration, total U.S. aid to Africa is $3 billion a year.

“The image Americans have that we push huge amounts at Africa and it all goes bad or goes away is simply wrong,” Sachs said. “It is one of the great American myths.”

I thought about this for a couple of days. People don’t like criticism of parents, no matter how irresponsible the parents are, no matter how screwed up their motives. Even so – sixteen and not done yet is just too disturbing to let pass without comment.