Jeffrey D. Sachs's Blog, page 29

The End of AIDS

The AIDS pandemic claimed around 36 million lives between 1981 and 2016, and a similar number around the world currently live with the HIV virus. Some 1.2 million people died of AIDS last year, and another 1.8 million were infected. Those statistics are daunting, but the startling news is that the goal of an “AIDS-Free [...]

Big innovations require big investment

Of all of the purposes of government, one of the most important but often neglected is to mobilize science and technology to solve critical challenges. Modern society depends on highly complex technological systems for our safety and prosperity. Without these advanced technological systems, we’d have no chance to sustain national prosperity, much less to meet [...]

US must transition to low-carbon energy

Energy is the lifeblood of the economy. Without ample, safe, and low-cost energy, it is impossible to secure the benefits of modern life. For two centuries, fossil fuels — coal, oil, and natural gas — offered the key to America’s and the world’s growing energy needs. Now, because of global warming, we have to shift [...]

Donald Trump and the rebuilding of America

Donal Trump becomes president of a nation that is deeply divided by class, race, health, and opportunity. In his acceptance speech, he pledged to be the president of all Americans. He also gave a promising hint of how to pursue that objective in practice. Trump is a real estate developer, so it’s not surprising that [...]

Prosperity in sustainability

President John F. Kennedy inspired Americans to great undertakings by setting bold goals: to go the moon, to overcome racial discrimination, to make peace with the Soviet Union. “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him [...]

Investment for Sustainable Growth

The big disappointment in the world economy today is the low rate of investment. In the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, growth in high-income countries was propelled by spending on housing and private consumption. When the crisis hit, both kinds of spending plummeted, and the investments that should have picked up the [...]

The fatal expense of American imperialism

The single most important issue in allocating national resources is war versus peace, or as macroeconomists put it, “guns versus butter.” The United States is getting this choice profoundly wrong, squandering vast sums and undermining national security. In economic and geopolitical terms, America suffers from what Yale historian Paul Kennedy calls “imperial overreach.” If our [...]

Jeffrey Sachs receives UCD Ulysses Medal, speaks of “moral obligation” to help achieve SDGs

Professor Jeffrey Sachs has been awarded the UCD Ulysses Medal for his global contribution. He is widely considered to be one of the world’s leading experts on economic development, global macroeconomics, and the fight against poverty. His work on ending poverty, overcoming macroeconomic instability, promoting economic growth, fighting hunger and disease, and promoting sustainable environmental [...]

Disparities and high costs fuel the health care crisis

America’s health crisis is really three crises rolled into one. The first is public health: America’s life expectancy is now several years below that of many other countries, and, for some parts of the population, life expectancy is falling. The second is health inequality: The gaps in public health according to race and class are [...]

Jeffrey Sachs on meeting the Sustainable Development Goals – ‘we need a victory of ideas’

It might be the most ambitious agenda set by the United Nations yet: transforming the world we live in by 2030. But more than a year after the UN announced the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), are member states in a position to use them in framing domestic policy? The SDGs – made up of 17 goals, [...]