The giveaway gang. (Correction, Please!).

ITEM: The global poverty debate "may delay a solution for the 'pre-eminent moral and humanitarian challenge of our age,' in the words of a United Nations panel...," reported the New York Times for March 18th. "Britain and the World Bank want rich countries to double their foreign aid and begin what Gordon Brown, Britain's finance minister, calls a new Marshall Plan to fight poverty."

CORRECTION: Though some povertycrats now extol accountability for foreign aid recipients, their latter-day lip service is unconvincing. More remain blunt, demanding a worldwide new deal or global taxation. Marxist redistribution of wealth, in one form or another, was the persistent mantra at the recent international poverty conference in Mexico.

Then there's wealthy currency speculator George Soros, who argues for more special drawing rights -- essentially low-interest credit cards for governments. Says Soros: "[I]t's like a credit line [that] enables you to do business ... it's a free lunch."

There are obvious motives to give away other people's money. World Bank officers, for example, are judged primarily by the number of loans they make, not by the quality of the loans, according to William Easterly, one of the bank's top economists and critics. The few success stories that the World Bank can point to, those involving long-term growth, "have been pitifully few," Easterly told the Washington Post. "And in some of those, it's far from clear that bank aid was a major factor, or even any factor at all."

Price controls, corruption, and state-run businesses are widespread collectivist practices among aid recipients, and there are few incentives to change. Brink Lindsey, in his book Against the Dead Hand, points out that state-owned enterprises remain a major presence in 74 countries which have a total of two-thirds of the world's population.

More dependency isn't a long-term solution for individuals or poor countries. The world's freest economies averaged a per-capita income of $19,800 and growth of 2.27 percent annually during the 1990s, reports the Canada-based Fraser Institute. Meanwhile, the least-free economies averaged but $2,210 and actually shrank 1.45 percent annually. That's part of the price of "free lunches."