Bill Easterly on half a century of foreign aid proposal design

over at Chris Blattman's:

All aid proposals since the 60s follow the same script:

(1) announce an ambitious goal ('halving poverty')

(2) invoke Marshall Plan as a very promising precedent

(3) say you will double foreign aid (its always exactly double)

(4) ignore the historical record on previous aid programs that also did (1) through (3)

I was disappointed that Obama's advisors didn't come up with something a tad more fresh and different. Since the press mostly ignored Obama's aid proposals, I guess the political incentive to do something more than the same old pro forma proposal is not very strong.