The End of Poverty Quotes

“The vast differences in power contributed to faulty social theories of these differences that are still with us today. When a society is economically dominant, it is easy for its members to assume that such dominance reflects a deeper superiority--whether religious, racial, genetic, cultural, or institutional--rather than an accident of timing or geography.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“Deep down, if we really accept that their lives - African lives - are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. Its an uncomfortable truth.”
― Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“The rich world dominates the training of Ph.D. economists, and the students of rich-world Ph.D. programs dominate the international institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which have the lead in advising poor countries on how to break out of poverty.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“world is not a zero-sum struggle in which one country's gain is another's loss.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“The Great Rupture At the beginning of the twentieth century, globalization was viewed as so inevitable that some thought war itself was probably passé, and certainly so irrational that no right-thinking leader in Europe would ever take his country to war. In 1910, a leading British pundit, Norman Angell, wrote The Great Illusion, which rightly argued that national economies had become so interdependent, so much part of a global division of labor, that war among the economic leaders had become unimaginably destructive. War, Angell warned, would so undermine the network of international trade that no military venture by a European power against another could conceivably lead to economic benefits for the aggressor. He surmised that war itself would cease once the costs and benefits of war were more clearly understood. Angell tremendously underestimated the irrationalities and social processes that lead to devastating outcomes, even when they make no sense.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“La mala salud causa pobreza y la pobreza contribuye a empeorar la salud”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“reason why prosperity spread, and why it continues to spread, is the transmission of technologies and the ideas underlying them.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“Knowing that an economy is in decline is not enough. We must know why the economy is failing to achieve economic growth if we are to take steps to establish or reestablish it.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“The current situation reminds me too much of the fable of the
farmer whose chickens are dying. The local priest gives one remedy af-
ter another—prayers, potions, oaths—until all of the chickens are dead.
"Too bad," says the priest, "I had so many other good ideas.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“sweatshops are the first rung on the ladder out of extreme poverty”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“The first cut at the problem—the simplest but still eye-opening—is to ask how much income would have to be transferred from rich countries to poor countries to lift all of the world’s extreme poor to an income level sufficient to meet basic needs. Martin Ravallion and his colleagues on the World Bank’s poverty team have gathered data to address this question, at least approximately. The World Bank estimates that meeting basic needs requires $1.08 per day per person, measured in 1993 purchasing-power adjusted prices. Using household surveys, the Ravallion team has calculated the numbers of poor people around the world who live below that threshold, and the average incomes of those poor. According to the Bank’s estimates, 1.1 billion people lived below the $1.08 level as of 2001, with an average income of $0.77 per day, or $281 per year. More important, the poor had a shortfall relative to basic needs of $0.31 per day ($1.08 minus $0.77), or $113 per year. Worldwide, the total income shortfall of the poor in 2001 was therefore $113 per year per person multiplied by 1.1 billion people, or $124 billion. Using the same accounting units (1993 purchasing power adjusted U.S. dollars), the income of the twenty-two donor countries of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in 2001 was $20.2 trillion. Thus a transfer of 0.6 percent of donor income, amounting to $124 billion, would in theory raise all 1.1 billion of the world’s extreme poor to the basic-needs level. Notably, this transfer could be accomplished within the 0.7 percent of the GNP target of the donor countries. That transfer would not have been possible in 1980, when the numbers of the extreme poor were larger (1.5 billion) and the incomes of the rich countries considerably smaller. Back in 1981, the total income gap was around $208 billion (again, measured in 1993 purchasing power prices) and the combined donor country GNP was $13.2 trillion. Then it would have required 1.6 percent of donor income in transfers to raise the extreme poor to the basic-needs level.”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: How We Can Make it Happen in Our Lifetime

“Adam Smith”
― Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: How We Can Make it Happen in Our Lifetime

“In rural societies, large families are almost always the norm. In urban societies, families choose to have fewer children. This is the crux of the demographic transition, one of the most fundamental of all social changes during the era of modern economic growth.”
― Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: How We Can Make it Happen in Our Lifetime

“La situación actual se parece un poco al chiste que hacían los trabajadores de la antigua Unión Soviética: «¡Nosotros hacemos como que trabajamos y usted hace como que nos paga!»”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“Una combinación de inversiones en sintonía con las necesidades y condiciones locales pueden permitir que las economías africanas escapen de la trampa de la pobreza”
― Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time

“autarky,”
― Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: How We Can Make it Happen in Our Lifetime