The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

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It's a hit!

If you think your life's been successful read from the guy who single handedly stopped hyperinflation in Bolivia, wrote the national policy for Pol... (show more)

If you think your life's been successful read from the guy who single handedly stopped hyperinflation in Bolivia, wrote the national policy for Poland's democratic transition overnight, and constructively helped China through their rapid reforms and growth. This is the guy your president gets on his knees and begs to fly him in first class when your country’s last round and going down for the count.

Ok yeah the book is dry, loads front chapters with graphs and charts mainly to give you a base knowledge but also to show he knows his stuff – so he’s arrogant but it’s not distracting. Then you get a half economics lesson half memoir of his critical high level involvement in key world economic disasters and events. Then it gets interesting. He turns and berates everyone from the Chinese government to the World Bank to our military campaigns down to each free market politician who has taken up any other causes than the UN Millennium Project which helps the poorest countries achieve economic sufficiency by 2015. This could be a little heavy handed…. anyway he doesn’t seem to mind. He makes his case by a logical cost benefit analysis showing that we can’t afford not to meet these goals and any dollar spent in contrast is money wasted. The point is hard to swallow and he knows it. Still you can’t say he’s not logical and you definitely can’t say he’s not well-founded.

He also draws a painful picture reminding us what extreme poverty looks like. It’s not the guy on the subway, it’s not even the guy missing a leg on the subway who drunkenly fell off his seat and peed himself. It’s whole villages working every daylight hour to till fields that they can barely eat from because they’re depleted of nutrients. The medical, dietary, financial policy, agricultural and social effects of less than $2 a day is something you almost can’t fathom unless you’ve been in it firsthand. He shows the catch 22 hopelessness of the poverty cycle and how countries can’t work themselves out of it alone. How that gives us a duty to help and helping less than a certain amount is no help at all. Yes and then he names numbers.

$75 billion a year by 2025 will end poverty, it’s a revolutionary thought and Bono apparently thinks it’s interesting too because he wrote a very cool forward about them on a private plane. If you can stand slogging through data, do. (show less)

 

 

by Facebook User

No, it's a flop!

Jeffery Sachs is probably one of the most important people of our time for the world of large scale economic development. However this book disappo... (show more)

Jeffery Sachs is probably one of the most important people of our time for the world of large scale economic development. However this book disappointed for two reasons. First the book read like a resume of Mr. Sachs' incredible accomplishments, almost as though it was an autobiography; and I didn’t want to read a biography, I wanted to know more about poverty and it’s solution. Second, Mr. Sachs feels that the developed world should pay to the developing world, just because it’s what’s right. While I agree with him, it’s my opinion that the end of poverty will come when economic development of poorer countries becomes understood as the biggest marketing opportunity in the history of the planet. That development could turn out to be a bigger boon for richer countries than even the economics of war. There are billions of potential consumers out there. When we learn to invest in them because it will be the best thing for ourselves…that will be the end of poverty. (show less)

 

 

by John Dale

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  Jeffrey Sachs has done his work. He created a plan that can save the world from its own selfishness. There's one major flaw though: he's given no ultimatum for the layperson-reader to help with these problems. Before I discuss this further, I'm going to air one other grievance.

  Roughly 35-45 percent of the book is dedicated to his field experiences in foreign countries. These would be useful anecdotes were they actually serving a purpose. Unfortunately, they're verbose, poorly structured c... (show more)

  Jeffrey Sachs has done his work. He created a plan that can save the world from its own selfishness. There's one major flaw though: he's given no ultimatum for the layperson-reader to help with these problems. Before I discuss this further, I'm going to air one other grievance.

  Roughly 35-45 percent of the book is dedicated to his field experiences in foreign countries. These would be useful anecdotes were they actually serving a purpose. Unfortunately, they're verbose, poorly structured chapters that are perfect places for him to interject comments about the influential people with which he has close relationships. It's irritating that a book titled "The End of Poverty," digresses to discuss the alcoholic habits of a Polish economist and how Sachs has the savoir faire to reject something as unprofessional as alcohol while structuring an economic blueprint. Sure, it may be a petty complaint, but it's irritating nonetheless. Why have those in there?

  The pompous self-touting aside, Sachs is a smart man. His approach to the problems of poverty clearly comes from the American "rich country" educational upbringing that he has had. That's okay though. I truly think, though overly optimistic, that his plans could be possible. To someone not raised in a Capitalist Western society, people may see many of Sachs's ideas as too foreign to be applicable. There may be multiple problems with the current US economy, but these are rich country problems; as thousands are not dying every day from preventable diseases in the US. The American/Western system works. Luckily Sachs has done enough research to avoid unintentional ethnocentrism that would make his ideas void. He wants to work directly with the people in foreign countries, and understand how Official Development Assistance and other forms of monetary injection can aid in drawing a country's population out of extreme poverty. An utterly brilliant and heartwarming plan. With one humongous flaw.

  The End of Poverty may be a New York Times Bestseller, but Sachs really didn't intend for everyone to read it. He wanted his big-name, influential political friends to read it. This is overwhelmingly obvious as you get to the last few pages and find that he has failed to give the typical reader, (a college student, a waiter, a mother, a doctor...etc) who is desperate to help change these horrendous atrocities, a plan of action. There is NOTHING we can do. He makes a brief mention that bilateral NGO donations are relatively helpful, but adds with acerbic candidness that such donations do too little to help the seriousness of the problem. The only way of solving this is multilateral injection through organizations like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. If he wants us to read his book, he needs to give us, the people, a means of helping in the completion of the Millennium Development Goals. If not, keep the name-dropping, sycophant behavior to yourself, (show less)

   

   

  by Anthony P. G. Berger on Jun 09, 2009 at 10:43PM

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  Dr. Sachs places a reasonable set of circumstances to allow for the elimination of absolute poverty on our planet in our lifetime. Just the demonstration of disparity between the income of first world nations and what third world nations have to overcome to find just a basic balance in their economies.

  I understand the desire to write down Dr. Sachs professional autobiography to explain his credentials, but the book could have been shorten to get to the point a bit more, or to spend more ... (show more)

  Dr. Sachs places a reasonable set of circumstances to allow for the elimination of absolute poverty on our planet in our lifetime. Just the demonstration of disparity between the income of first world nations and what third world nations have to overcome to find just a basic balance in their economies.

  I understand the desire to write down Dr. Sachs professional autobiography to explain his credentials, but the book could have been shorten to get to the point a bit more, or to spend more of the written effort to show how those of us in American and Europe can get involved to make that difference more quickly.

  Even though the premise is rather straight forward, there are emmense political barriers to overcome. Some of them are wrought with blatant racism against other nations (especially Africa). I wish he had spent more time writing about the social issues that encumber his economic planning, too. (show less)

   

   

  by Facebook User on Jun 04, 2009 at 04:46AM

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