Jeffrey D. Sachs's Blog, page 6

How China is catching up to the US

Geography, geopolitics, and policy in the performance of transition economies

“Geography, geopolitics, and policy in the performance of transition economies” in Economics of Transition, Volume 26, Issue 4: Special Issue on the 25 Years of Transition – A Symposium at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, pages 841-849. The economic performance of the transition economies as of 2015 is well explained by three variables: (1) years of [...]

Trump’s Policies Will Displace the Dollar

NEW YORK – Back in 1965, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, then France’s Minister of Finance, famously called the benefits that the United States reaped from the dollar’s role as the world’s main reserve currency an “exorbitant privilege.” The benefits are diminishing with the rise of the euro and China’s renminbi as competing reserve currencies. And now [...]

Kofi Annan protected us from our worst instincts

(CNN) In every generation we depend on a few people of supreme decency and intelligence to hold the world together. In Jewish tradition, there are at all times 36 tzadikim, righteous people, without whom the world would perish. Kofi Annan was one of the righteous people, a man of extraordinary intelligence, decency, warmth and joy of [...]

Billionaires reach for the stars while world suffers

(CNN) With all due respect to Jeff Bezos and other billionaires who plan to spend billions of dollars of their personal wealth on space travel, hundreds of millions of children who lack access to basic health care and schooling more urgently need help right here on Earth. The world economy is pumping trillions of dollars into the accounts [...]

Medicare for All makes a lot of sense

(CNN) The economics of Medicare for All championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders are actually quite straightforward. Under what advocates call “M4A,” health care coverage would expand while total spending on health care — by companies, individuals and the government — would decline because of lower costs. More would be paid through the government and less through [...]

We Are All Climate Refugees Now

NEW YORK – Modern humans, born into one climate era, called the Holocene, have crossed the border into another, the Anthropocene. But instead of a Moses guiding humanity in this new and dangerous wilderness, a gang of science deniers and polluters currently misguides humanity to ever-greater danger. We are all climate refugees now and must [...]

Trump is robbing America of what makes it great

American prosperity since World War II has been built upon science and technology breakthroughs spurred by a powerful innovation system linking the federal government, business, academia and venture capital. U.S. innovation policy has been successfully emulated in Europe and Asia, most recently by China. President Trump’s trade war against China aims to slow China’s technology [...]

Trump is taking US down the path to tyranny

July 23 (CNN)-  The United States was born in a revolt against the tyranny of King George III. The Constitution was designed to prevent tyranny through a system of checks and balances, but in President Trump’s America, those safeguards are failing. Donald Trump holds the grandiose belief that only he should rule America. Unchecked by cowed [...]

Q&A: Economist Jeffrey Sachs on jumpstarting lagging SDG progress

NEW YORK — New findings produced by economist Jeffrey Sachs’ organization UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network echoed the same concern that the United Nations voiced last month: Not one country is currently on track to meet the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The network released its 2018 SDG Index and Dashboards Report last Monday, at the launch of the U.N. High-level Political Forum. [...]