- ISBN13: 9780143036586
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Groundbreaking New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
A landmark exploration of the way out of extreme poverty for the world’s poorest citizens
Among the most keenly anticipated books of any year, this landmark exploration of prosperity and poverty distills the life work of an economist Time calls one of the world’s 100 most influential people. Sachs’s aim is nothing less than to deliver a huge picture of how societies emerge from poverty. To do so he takes readers in his footsteps, explaining his work in Bolivia, Russia, India, China, and Africa, while offering an integrated set of solutions for the interwoven economic, political, environmental, and social problems that challenge the poorest countries. Marrying passionate storytelling with rigorous analysis and a vision as pragmatic as it is fiercely moral, The End of Poverty is a truly indispensable work.Amazon.com Review
Celebrated economist Jeffrey Sachs has a plot to eliminate extreme poverty around the world by 2025. If you reckon that is too ambitious or wildly unrealistic, you need to read this book. His focus is on the one billion poorest individuals around the world who are caught in a poverty trap of disease, physical isolation, environmental stress, political instability, and lack of access to capital, technology, medicine, and education. The goal is to help these people reach the first rung on the “ladder of economic development” so they can rise above mere subsistence level and achieve some control over their economic futures and their lives. To do this, Sachs proposes nine specific steps, which he clarifies in fantastic detail in The End of Poverty. Though his plot certainly requires the help of rich nations, the financial help Sachs calls for is surprisingly modest–more than is now provided, but within the bounds of what has been promised in the past. For the U.S., for instance, it would mean raising foreign aid from just 0.14 percent of GNP to 0.7 percent. Sachs does not view such help as a handout but rather an investment in global economic growth that will add to the security of all nations. In presenting his argument, he offers a comprehensive education on global economics, including why globalization should be embraced rather than fought, why international institutions such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank need to play a strong role in this effort, and the reasons why extreme poverty exists in the midst of fantastic wealth. He also shatters some persistent myths about poor people and shows how developing nations can do more to help themselves.
Despite some crushing statistics, The End of Poverty is a hopeful book. Based on a tremendous amount of data and his own experiences working as an economic advisor to the UN and several individual nations, Sachs makes a strong moral, economic, and political case for why countries and individuals should battle poverty with the same commitment and focus normally reserved for waging war. This vital book not only makes the end of poverty seem realistic, but in the best interest of everyone on the planet, rich and poor alike. –Shawn Carkonen
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Jeffrey D. Sachs is internationally renowned for his work as an economic adviser to governments across the globe. But, I question you, ‘what does he know about poverty?’ If you’ve never been there, I guess you might need ‘a road map to a safer, more prosperous world for the rich.’ You can follow the governor of Tennessee (originally from New York) and kill off as many of the wretched poor by denying them the medicines they need to keep alive. I know, because I am one of them. The problem is indeed grave; it is devastating in the United States alone which is one of the most prosperous countries in the world. This is not India, though it is becoming more foreign than domestic and that will be out downfall. Disagree, Arthur.
Mr. Sachs looks well fed to me. After all he is the director of an institute at Columbia; should be for the mental patients, not as special advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General. I question again, ‘what does he know about being poor and hungry?’ Just giving opinions to governments will do no excellent toward relieving poverty. I have lived in poverty for 27 years, possibly when I was young also, but I didn’t know it then. I had a greedy, selfish father who spent his railroad salary on himself — even to giving a ten dollar bill (a lot in that time) at church singings to show out. He wasted a lot of his hard-earned money on the ‘ladies of the street.’ Is that a way out of poverty? Or a Catch 22 where the children are caught doing without necessities while ancient dad has his fun. Most of the time he did not spend it on liquor, the way most Knoxville men do.
The only ‘economic possibilities’ out of this mess is to send all the poor back where they came from and try to help the abandoned ancient people who were born here to survive and live. Their families, young and well-off, won’t help them. So, they rely on the government of the United States to help pay for housing and some of us have to rely on public transportation because we are too poor to buy a car. The wealthy have multiple cars and vans and ATMs; I have been too poor to have a car for the past 27 years. I have never really owned one; those ancient things we had when I was married had only the husband’s name on the title. He refused to buy a house, either.
Once, when I was on the State PTA Board, I had to drive the ancient Ford to Nashville for a three-day meeting and I questioned the parking attendant to place it someplace in a corner so no one else would see it. He questioned ‘Is it a 64?’ I pretended I had not heard him properly, and remarked that I had come up on I65. At other times, when attending smaller meetings in the daytime, I’d park it far away and walk to the meetings, as I did not want to be looked down on. Intellectually, I was as excellent (or perhaps superior, Arthur) but financially, I was hurting even then when I had credit cards and food to eat to stay healthy. And three sons to influence. Yes, the ‘influence’ of living through poverty influenced them to get educated and have what I had not, and still don’t have. Children today do not help their parents. It is expected to be the other way around. Oh yes, the ancient man is still living and spends most of his money on insurance so he can live forever. He still settles for the worn out cars which won’t go a fantastic distance, and eats at the ancient folkses govt. sponsored meals at the Senier Citizens Center.
There is no way out of poverty unless you are not in it. The rich reckon they rule this world. But some of us won’t let them.
Rating: 3 / 5
Poverty will exist as long as bone idle people exist. Many governments don’t help the situation, I hope Mr. Sachs’ life-work helps change minds and increases the number of free markets and democracies in the world, but the thought that a bunch of hippie intellectuals will end poverty is ridiculous.
Rating: 3 / 5
the man who has brought destruction to the Russian economy through the “shock therapy” and preparing the ground for his zionist jewish friends in Russia to own all the key national assets, now goes on to tell us what to do with the rest of the world…his books should be prohibited
Rating: 1 / 5
Jeffery Sachs is no social justice activist. If your looking for real ways to end poverty, and dismantle the systems that make poverty, look somewhere else. What Jeffery does offer is a salve for the conscious of the worlds wealthiest.
You see the problem with poverty is not that people have been ruthlessly exploited for years under colonialism and later capitalism. The real problem is that people don’t have access to the market. In fact that exploitation, such as sweatshops and slave labor, are really the key to moving up the economic ladder! At least people are making something, we are told. Those women and children are so lucky to be chained to their workstations.
This book is more an example of how to cherry pick data than how to raise a country or community from poverty.
Rating: 1 / 5
While I reckon Jeffrey Sachs’ work is critically vital, there is something equally vital I have learned from my studies of systems thinking (specifically the work of Drs. R. Buckminster Fuller, W. Edwards Deming, and Russell L. Ackoff). That is – we must know what we want to “have”…not just what we “don’t want to have”. The joke is, you could get rid of poverty and wind up with something else that you also don’t want. I know this might sound crazy, but systemic improvement is about more than knowing you want less (or none) of something in the new system you are designing (or the ancient system you are redesigning). We could get rid of poverty and wind up with a totalitarian society, where everyone is physically alive…but their spirits are dead. (I reckon Star Trek: TOS did an episode like this at least once.)
Taken from a human psychology perspective, while you can be motiviated by wanting less of a terrible thing (less weight if you are overweight), there’s an additional kind of motivation available when the motivation is making something positive in the future (not just less “terrible stuff”).
Rating: 4 / 5