Various arguments are often given for thinking that aid agencies do no overall good to the poor. The economic and political grounds for thinking this are surveyed in this chapter. It is argued that the claims needed for a cogent objection to humanitarian aid are too strong to be plausible. And even if they were right, they would at most show that we should be helping in some ways rather than others: they would not show that there is nothing we can do to help.
Keywords: aid, economic objections to aid, helping, humanitarianism, political objections to aid, poverty