PRO OR CON?

Someone from The Economist sat down for an interview with Elon Musk. Aside from the usual discussion involving electric cars, space launches, artificial intelligence, and predictions for the future, the journalist does the predictable and accuses the guy of being a fascist or at least supporting those who are, claims he spends an inordinate amount of time fearmongering about the state of Europe, and also blames Musk and DOGE for killing people.

As everyone knows, the guy has a tremendous amount of transparent activity in the world and been pretty open about his politics, beliefs, and hopes for the world — which clearly place him on the spectrum of an ecofriendly Obama voter and someone pushed, like so many, by the depravities of the Democratic party and the Biden/Harris anarchy, into the arms of literally the only available alternative. Musk and friends spent the day following the interview posting videos of Democrats delivering speeches conveying similar policies, such as maintaining and defending borders, that the journalist says places Musk in the radical far-right category. Videos such as: Bill Clinton’s 1995 State of the Union address; Barack Obama’s 2006, 2008, and 2014 speeches on immigration reform; Chuck Schumer’s 2009 and 2012 speeches on illegal immigration; Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden spending a decade backing the fortification of the southern border to reduce the unrestricted movement of millions of folks into the country; Bernie Sanders pushing for “comprehensive immigration reform”… Ah yes, Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama: America's notorious and fringe, right-wing extremists.

Musk’s concerns about the state of the UK and many EU nations don’t appear to be ridiculous either, especially when places such as Sweden, formerly the most open, generous, and high-trust nation on Earth, has become chaotic and dangerous. As many have reported, a decade ago bombings were not even a category of crime tracked by police in Sweden because, of course, they simply did not occur. Since then, Stockholm, Malmö, and Gothenburg have become the bombing, gun violence, and child soldier capitals of Europe, reaching several IED and grenade attacks per week in 2019, with January 2025 landing almost one bombing per day, all coming from immigrant gangs and organized crime. The situation has gotten so bad that, for the first time since WWII, Denmark felt it had to impose border checks to stop criminals and terrorists coming in from Sweden. Sweden, who spent the last decade denying it, is now admitting there is a real problem and that the vast majority of criminals in the gangs perpetrating this violence have two foreign-born parents, largely from North Africa and the Middle East and that these gangs are actively recruiting young children as a novel form of gig worker: contract killers carrying out bombings and executions. That's just one country but no one would've believed any of this was even possible if you'd told someone just a few years ago. Still, the journalist from The Economist would have you believe that Europe and the UK in 2026 looks like Europe of 2006, except for the inexplicable rise of parties endorsing Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders-style changes to immigration and border policy across the continent.

I won’t get into the stuff around DOGE, whose mere composition the press was eager to lie about, and the baseless claims made regarding the harms they were allegedly unleashing upon the world. I’ve already beat that to death… So what's new?

EVIDENCE FOR DEADLY GOVERNMENT CUTS

What’s got me interested here is that there was a lot of discussion online after the Musk interview. One of those discussions was started by someone who regularly covers fashion-related happenings. They talked about DOGE being responsible for slashing federal funds for human rights watchdogs they care about. They shared how, for instance, the Worker Rights Consortium, a US nonprofit monitoring labour abuses in the garment industry abroad, had their funding cut thanks to DOGE. Of course, such cuts to funding are framed as directly reducing garment industry transparency and accountability everywhere in the world, hobbling efforts to combat human rights abuses and hold people accountable, and thus helping bad actors exploit labourers while, doubtless, imperiling lives.

INTERNATIONAL AID

As with the similar reporting about health-related funding from a year ago, I see what is framed as a critique of the Trump administration and their policies as, actually, a weird kind of endorsement. Forwarding this claim seems to me like support for the silly Trumpist argument that America (and US taxpayers specifically) disproportionately and unfairly keep the whole of the world afloat. Everything, from antiretrovirals getting to children in Sub-Saharan Africa to labourers in Vietnam getting fair pay, overwhelmingly relies upon — or so we are told — the contributions of over-taxed American workers. And this sort of thing has become a rallying cry for the America-first crowd and so many others. Only, this narrative is not true in the least.

The best known statistic in the aid and NGO world is that, as I’ve noted many times in the past, per capita the US contributes far less than peer nations. Not a little less but a tiny fraction of what far poorer and less robust economies contribute. From Canada to New Zealand, Sweden to Ireland, nearly every taxpayer in the western world looks to be contributing 2X or 20X or even 200X what US taxpayers do to key initiatives around the globe.

You'll recall the US demand for NATO member states to contribute 5% of GDP to military spending, largely buying from and embedding with US companies. Well, when the United Nations set a benchmark for developed nations to provide just 0.7% of their gross national income to “official development assistance” the US balked. During the Obama years the US failed to hit 0.2% and today the disbursement is below 0.1%, making the US the least generous provider of development assistance of all OECD countries. Of course, looking at it from a per capita lens only makes things look worse. While US citizens contribute around $85 per person, folks in Canada, the UK, and Belgium, are giving closer to $200-300; in Ireland, Germany, and Denmark they contribute around $400-500, and Norway is double that at around $900-$1,000 per person. That's just one metric. There are many more like it.

THE ORG

So what are the chances that the US taxpayer provides all, most, or even a sizable portion of the funding for this global garment industry watchdog? Well, I just went and looked up the named organization. Worker Rights Consortium, this tax-exempt nonprofit that began in 2000 and operates out of K Street in Washington, DC (a short stroll to the White House), doesn’t have good reporting of their funding or spending. They don't even publish or link to their public tax details on their website. So you have to do some real work to find out what's up. Just imagine doing the same with your own nonprofit or charity. Seems like poor form at the very least. Seems like they have something to hide.

From what I can tell, prior to 2010 they didn’t have even $100k in assets. By 2018 that jumped up to over $1M and then in 2020 they reached almost $5M. And only in the last few years their expenses jumped up proportionately, above $3M. Of those funds, more than 50% (~$1.9M) looks like it goes to “salaries, other compensation, employee benefits” and largely to just six people taking between $138,000 and $248,000 a year (who are very much for-profit), but also two overseas contractors, both earning six figures, one in London and another in Thailand.

Of the ~$3M in their annual budget, roughly $1M (about half their staff pay) is disbursed by Worker Rights Consortium to other organizations. In the US, most of their offerings, $185k, goes to Solidarity Center, who do work on women’s labour justice in Central America, and something called National Economic and Social Rights Initiative. The largest grants outside the US look to be: ~$160k. Just another $160k is said to go to their own field expenses or projects. Okay, but where does the money they get come from?

THEIR DONORS

In the FAQ section of their website they do offer a vague breakdown of their incoming dollars for the public, under the questions What is the WRC’s budget? What are the WRC’s funding sources? :

The WRC’s budget is currently about $3 million. Of the WRC’s total revenue, about 65% comes from university affiliation fees, 25% from federal and foundation grants, and the remainder from individuals and other partners for whom the WRC carries out monitoring work. The WRC does not accept contributions from for-profit corporations or from labor unions. Detailed budget information and audited financial statements from prior fiscal years are available to affiliate schools upon request.

What they call “university affiliation fees” above does not appear in their tax filings but, in their 2024 financial records at least, look to be spelled out as “membership dues.” The next largest contributor to their revenue, according to their tax filings, is a category labelled “all other contributions, gifts, grants, and similar amounts not included above.” There's nothing under “government grants” for this year, immediately prior to the Trump administration showing up and Musk and the DOGE team aiding in cutting USAID funding.

If it is true that only 25% of $3M (or $750k) comes from all "foundation and government assistance" then it looks like almost none comes from government. After much searching I was able to find only one direct federal contribution, in fiscal year 2022 (under Statement of Revenue) for $445,800. I don't think they tell us if this was a grant meant to be directed at a specific project, as often happens, or if the sum was intended to keep the organization afloat for a few years, or what. I can find no evidence that there were any other large direct federal grants or smaller ongoing sums coming from USAID or other government sources to sustain them.

Of course, I could be missing something. So how to corroborate the above? What about coming at it from the other direction, looking to see what foundations report supporting the Worker Rights Consortium. Well, I find almost two dozen organizations in the US and around the globe have contributed to Worker Rights Consortium, with significant sums coming from notable foundations, mostly all in recent years:

• The Ford Foundation - $300k (2022); $300k (2024)

• Oak Foundation - $1.675M (2022)

• Open Society Foundations - $200k (2020); $1.45M (2021); $1.25M (2023)

• Humanity United - $50k (2020); $650k (2021); $650k (2023)

• NoVo Foundation - $275k (2021); $250k (2022); and $162k (around 2023)

• Solidarity Center - $365k (2020); $130k (2021); $115k (2024)

• New Venture Fund - $80k (2020); $100k (2022); $100k (2023); $50k (2024)

• Tides Foundation - $50k (2022)

• Code for Science and Society - $30k (2020)

• Fundación Avina - $75k (2020)

That, as far as I can tell, doesn’t leave much room for government funds within the 25% ($750k) "federal and foundation" gift portion of their budget. In 2020 alone, the above records show $800k from foundations and 2021 hit $2.5M, 2022 saw $2.3M, 2023 brought in $2.1M, and 2024 landed them with another $465k. So it looks to me as though the organization got around $8M gifted to it between 2020 and 2024, and perhaps around $10M total since its founding in 2000. Though I cannot check all their tax filings, it looks like less than 5% of their funding has come from government, perhaps in just one offering in 25 years, and to a sum insufficient to cover the salary of one of their Washington executives for two years.

Though they talk a good game about all the fabulous work they're doing abroad, it's not clear at all what impact they are actually having or what of their total budget yields results for workers in the garment industry.

MY TAKE-AWAY

DOGE most certainly didn’t "cut the funding" for Worker Rights Consortium. They didn’t cut the 25% said to be “government and foundation funding” for this organization or even just the "government" portion of that sum in any real sense. That seems perfectly obvious. So, what are we talking about? And are we trying to make sense of things and help or make things worse?