The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

published	2006 by Penguin (Non-Classics)
binding	Paperback
isbn	0143036580 (isbn13: 9780143036586)
pages	416
description	Celebrated economist Jeffrey Sachs has a plan to eliminate extreme poverty around the world by 2025. If you think that is too ambitious or wildly unre...more [close] Celebrated economist Jeffrey Sachs has a plan to eliminate extreme poverty around the world by 2025. If you think that is too ambitious or wildly unrealistic, you need to read this book. His focus is on the one billion poorest individuals around the world who are caught in a poverty trap of disease, physical isolation, environmental stress, political instability, and lack of access to capital, technology, medicine, and education. The goal is to help these people reach the first rung on the "ladder of economic development" so they can rise above mere subsistence level and achieve some control over their economic futures and their lives. To do this, Sachs proposes nine specific steps, which he explains in great detail in The End of Poverty. Though his plan certainly requires the help of rich nations, the financial assistance Sachs calls for is surprisingly modest--more than is now provided, but within the bounds of what has been promised in the past. For the U.S., for instance, it would mean raising foreign aid from just 0.14 percent of GNP to 0.7 percent. Sachs does not view such help as a handout but rather an investment in global economic growth that will add to the security of all nations. In presenting his argument, he offers a comprehensive education on global economics, including why globalization should be embraced rather than fought, why international institutions such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank need to play a strong role in this effort, and the reasons why extreme poverty exists in the midst of great wealth. He also shatters some persistent myths about poor people and shows how developing nations can do more to help themselves. Despite some crushing statistics, The End of Poverty is a hopeful book. Based on a tremendous amount of data and his own experiences working as an economic advisor to the UN and several individual nations, Sachs makes a strong moral, economic, and political case for why countries and individuals should battle poverty with the same commitment and focus normally reserved for waging war. This important book not only makes the end of poverty seem realistic, but in the best interest of everyone on the planet, rich and poor alike. --Shawn Carkonen
date added	12-13-06 edit book

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Maura rated it:

04/13/08

bookshelves: economics, non-fiction

I just finished this book and am feeling very conflicted about it, so it’s hard to review. This is my initial impression, but maybe I’ll amend it after I’ve had more time to reflect.

Sachs writes candidly and simply, but he's a bit too self-congratulatory on a few occasions. As a novice on these issues, I especially appreciated the fact that he explains economic concepts clearly but without dumbing them down too much. The case studies in the first half are a bit dry, and the second h...more I just finished this book and am feeling very conflicted about it, so it’s hard to review. This is my initial impression, but maybe I’ll amend it after I’ve had more time to reflect.

Sachs writes candidly and simply, but he's a bit too self-congratulatory on a few occasions. As a novice on these issues, I especially appreciated the fact that he explains economic concepts clearly but without dumbing them down too much. The case studies in the first half are a bit dry, and the second half is a bit repetitive, but he still kept me interested enough all the way through. I liked his arguments for eliminating poor countries’ debts, his observations about the US’s appalling spending priorities, and his criticisms of the IMF. I also like that he emphasizes that absolute faith in free markets is the wrong approach, and that the private sector needs to be regulated in order to protect people, rather than be given free reign.

I found his discussion of drugs a bit rushed. I was glad he acknowledged that high drug prices contribute to poverty, and that patents are largely to blame for this. However, he basically dealt with this issue by saying that while he was working on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS etc, drug companies just agreed to cut their prices. Huh? Given what I’ve been reading in the papers the last few years, it’s not so easy to just walk up to a drug company and ask it to ‘pretty please’ stop charging monopoly prices. I found this section very interesting—not to mention a key issue in ending poverty—and I wish Sachs had expanded on it more and explained how they went about negotiating lower prices, and if he sees it as a tactic that’s easily repeatable and sustainable enough to rely on as a permanent strategy for getting drugs to people who need them (my gut reaction is that it’s not, but I’d love to be wrong about that).

My biggest problem with the book is the way he dealt with agriculture, and his views on the subject seem inconsistent with his views in other areas. First, I found his portrayal of the Green Revolution highly questionable—his depiction was that the good ol’ Rockefeller Foundation came along and used technology to help Mexico and India feed their people. I’ve got a lot of books on this topic in my “to-read,” but my basic understanding of the GR so far is that US companies wanted to find commercial uses for the chemicals they developed during WWII, so they teamed up with philanthropists to encourage farming methods that required massive amounts of inputs, and in the meantime created huge new markets for US agribusiness firms… and that it raised yields in some cases, but without ending hunger among the poor sectors of society. Many people nowadays credit the GR with benefiting large farmers to the detriment of small ones, wreaking havoc on the environment, being a factor in the farmer suicides in India in recent years, etc, etc. Granted, the GR was a very tiny part of the book—he only mentioned it in passing a few times—but since he repeatedly stresses how important improved agriculture is to ending poverty, it surprised me that he devoted so little attention to investigating what kind of agricultural model would be most beneficial to the world’s poor. Secondly, although he doesn’t directly mention GMOs, I assume that’s what he meant when he repeatedly mentions the need for ‘improved seeds.’ This also struck me as odd, because I don’t see how making poor farmers pay royalties to, and buy inputs from, large agribusiness companies is going to help pull them out of poverty. When discussing drugs, Sachs acknowledges that patents hurt the poor, but he doesn’t do the same for ag/biotech patents. There may be potential benefits—raised yields etc—but, just as is the case with drugs, the poor will be tied to the prices established by the private sector. Along the same lines, when he discusses what kinds of goods & services should be the responsibility of govts and which should be left to the private sector, he puts agriculture largely in the private sector. However, he put other necessities (health, water, transport, etc) in the public sector for various reasons (fear of monopolies and high prices, etc), and he didn’t explain why those reasons don’t also apply to agriculture.

Overall, I felt like he puts too much faith in private philanthropy and governmental donations; he seems to think that rich countries or corporations can “donate away” poverty if they heed his advice on how to go about this. And I agree that that can certainly help, but he didn’t convince me that it’s a permanent solution. I’m also wary of his trust in corporations to be willing to negotiate a drop in profits to benefit the poor.

Basically, I think this the reason Sachs is so popular is because he says what many readers in rich countries want to hear—that with some effort, poverty can be alleviated, without having to make substantial structural changes to our economic system. He did convince me that implementation of his ideas would help alleviate some suffering, but he didn’t sell me on the idea that they would necessarily entail ‘the end of poverty.’ However, much of this is due to my own personal doubts about being able to end poverty within a framework of global capitalism. It doesn’t reflect on his writing, and the book really got me thinking about a lot of different issues, which is why I think it’s 3-star worthy....less

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