The End of Poverty

Mixing it up a little bit, I decided to raid Michael's bookshelf (well, pile really) and grabbed The End of Poverty, by economist Jeffrey Sachs. I'm just reading excerpts, but it's enough to grasp the core of the book. He explains the root causes of poverty in the third world, exonerating many of the reasons given by liberals - making me a little uncomfortable with his analysis, but willing to buy in, since he isn't justifying the things we did wrong in the past, just arguing that there's more to the problem. Namely lack of access to technological change, and how both growth and stagnation spiral until you have a stratified world.

Then, and this is the part I'm reading now, he does a little tour of the world, with short chapters on his role in saving (or trying to save) the economies of various countries. Unsurprisingly, this reads like a memoir replete with name-dropping and transitions between false humility and utter pride. That's okay though - I want to know about how Poland's economy transitioned from Iron Curtain to free market.

Next, he's going to do something with the millenium and 9/11 - I'm curious to see what - and make the radical argument that not only do we have to solve poverty, but we actually can do it. And in twenty years. It's "our" (meaning his, not my) generation's challenge.

I am heartened by the fact that Sachs sees the impoverished as people, not just numbers. And that he believes in the free market, but sees a role for governments and institutions in breaking the cycle of poverty. And I hope that he is going to do what he says, provide a step-by-step plan to ending poverty. (It will be interesting to see how "liberal" and humanitarian this is, and also how well it meshes with last week's G8 discussions. I know he believes in debt relief.)

Oh, I forgot. Foreword by Bono. He's kind of a funny writer. But he is lavish in his praise for Sachs, and credits him for providing the kinds of insight and knowledge that have made the rock star a credible speaker for third world debt reduction.