THE END OF POVERTY Economic Possibilities for Our Time. By Jeffrey D. Sachs. Illustrated. 396 pp. Penguin Press. $27.95.
'The End of Poverty': Brother, Can You Spare $195 Billion? By DANIEL W. DREZNER Published: April 24, 2005 EFFREY D. SACHS makes a bold declaration in ''The End of Poverty.'' He argues that if the wealthy countries of the world were to increase their combined foreign aid budgets to between $135 billion and $195 billion for the next decade, and properly allocate that money, extreme global poverty -- defined by the World Bank as an income of less than a dollar a day -- could be eliminated by 2025. Readers should fervently hope that Sachs is correct, and persuasive; the political, economic and ethical returns to improving the plight of 1.1 billion people would be enormous. Sachs brings a unique background to this issue. He is macroeconomist to the stars -- in the foreword the U2 frontman, Bono, characterizes Sachs as ''my professor.'' A tenured economist at Harvard in the mid- 1980's, he stumbled into the developing world by brashly claiming that he could tame Bolivia's hyperinflation. His success at that task led to consulting gigs in Poland and Russia. The experience in Russia did not turn out so well, but for this kind of work a 67 percent success rate borders on the miraculous. Sachs is now the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and a special adviser on global poverty to the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan. ''The End of Poverty'' is really two books. One consists of Sachs's recollections of his experiences as an adviser to distressed and developing nations. This memoirish part is not terribly gripping. One of the most dramatic passages consists of a Sachs colleague calling him from Warsaw a week after radical reforms were implemented in Poland to say, ''Jeff, there are goods in the stores!'' The heart of the book is Sachs's forceful analysis of the causes of extreme global poverty, his proposed solutions and his peroration on why his plan should be carried out. Boiled down to its essentials, the argument is simple. Too much of the globe is ensnared in a ''poverty trap.'' A combination of poor geography, poor infrastructure and poor health care renders some societies incapable of generating any economic surplus for the future. These places cannot afford investments that would boost their economies over the long term when bare subsistence is the short-term goal. For about 20 years now, the West's standard refrain has been that market-friendly policies stimulate greater economic growth and in turn reduce poverty. Sachs does not disagree with this view so much as declare it incomplete: ''Market forces, as powerful as they are, have identifiable limitations, including those posed by adverse geography.'' Intuitively, this makes sense; a Kenyan village struggling with AIDS, malaria, inadequate drinking water and a lack of electricity cannot grow out of poverty unless its health care system and physical infrastructure improve. Sachs says the first step should be to increase foreign aid in a way that would provide a greater return to private investment. Once these investments are made, private entrepreneurs will be earning a greater rate of return on their businesses, triggering market-led economic growth. He details a multidimensional plan for international intervention that goes beyond simple market economics -- involving human capital, business capital, natural capital, public institutional capital, knowledge capital and infrastructure. In these pages Sachs's technocratic enthusiasm bubbles over. At one point he writes that all of the challenges of extreme poverty ''can be met, with known, proven, reliable and appropriate technologies and interventions.'' He makes a powerful case: the kinds of technologies he calls for include fertilizers, cellphones, antiretroviral AIDS drugs and antimalarial bed nets. For cynics who doubt whether the international community has the will to accomplish such a monumental task, Sachs points out that global efforts on this scale have succeeded in the past: the eradication of smallpox and the Green Revolution in Asia are examples. He also notes that his proposed annual budget is still less than the pledge made by the developed world at the 2002 Monterey Summit to devote 0.7 percent of its gross domestic product to development aid. [] Courtesy: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/books/review/24DREZNER.html? ex=1272081600&en=600b1d4adc2c5209&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Give underprivileged students the materials they need to learn. 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