Poor Nations Littered With Old PC’s

Posted by Jim on November 18, 2005

The New York Times Laurie Flynn at the Business/Financial Desk did a piece on October 24th, 2005 on the problems of low end technology and shipping it off to other countries.

We know that sooner or later these developing conutries will get flooded with a mix of their own economic growth getting them current state equipment, charities sending over new products to run operations or programs - they can only buy new stuff anyway, and the prices today for new stuff makes it silly to buy junk for a funded program. Then we have the charities that send over used equipment as donations - aka tax deductions - to be legal in tax code eyes, they must actually send the stuff overseas. Of course you are going to have people dumping broken trash on them. Here we run into the tax fools who think a deduction is why a business does this.

Businesses already have a deduction, it is called depreciation. What a business wants is a tax credit. Consumers and individuals want tax deductions - these assets are normally not deductable for the typical consumers. So what happens? Charities get used equipment, usually in some state of broken or slow and unwanted. And the consumer goes out and buys a new PC at the Black Friday sale at Wal Mart for $299, or orders one from DELL for $399.

Much of the used computer equipment sent from the United States to developing countries for use in homes, schools and businesses is often neither usable nor repairable, creating enormous environmental problems in some of the world’s poorest places, according to a report to be issued today by an environmental…

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