The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time | Jeffrey D. Sachs

The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time | Jeffrey D. Sachs | Insightful and inspiring perspective on one of the great opportunities of our generation

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The End of Poverty...

	The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time Jeffrey D. Sachs Penguin Press, 2005 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 116 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

He has been cited by The New York Times Magazine as "probably the most important economist in the world" and by Time as "the world's best-known economist." He has advised an extraordinary range of world leaders and international institutions on the full range of issues related to creating economic success and reducing the world's poverty and misery. Now, at last, he draws on his entire twenty-five-year body of experience to offer a thrilling and inspiring big-picture vision of the keys to economic success in the world today and the steps that are necessary to achieve prosperity for all.

Marrying vivid eyewitness storytelling to his laserlike analysis, Jeffrey Sachs sets the stage by drawing a vivid conceptual map of the world economy and the different categories into which countries fall. Then, in a tour de force of elegance and compression, he explains why, over the past two hundred years, wealth has diverged across the planet in the manner that it has and why the poorest nations have been so markedly unable to escape the cruel vortex of poverty. The groundwork laid, he explains his methods for arriving, like a clinical internist, at a holistic diagnosis of a country's situation and the options it faces. Rather than deliver a worldview to readers from on high, Sachs leads them along the learning path he himself followed, telling the remarkable stories of his own work in Bolivia, Poland, Russia, India, China, and Africa as a way to bring readers to a broad-based understanding of the array of issues countries can face and the way the issues interrelate. He concludes by drawing on everything he has learned to offer an integrated set of solutions to the interwoven economic, political, environmental, and social problems that most frequently hold societies back. In the end, he leaves readers with an understanding, not of how daunting the world's problems are, but how solvable they are-and why making the effort is a matter both of moral obligation and strategic self-interest. A work of profound moral and intellectual vision that grows out of unprecedented real-world experience, The End of Poverty is a road map to a safer, more prosperous future for the world.

From "probably the most important economist in the world" (The New York Times Magazine), legendary for his work around the globe on economies in crisis, a landmark exploration of the roots of economic prosperity and the path out of extreme poverty for the world's poorest citizens.

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Inspiring, Intriguing, Engrossing

If you are like me, you may often worry about the poor and the underprivileged across the world. You may wonder what it would take to help them achieve sustainable livelihoods which is the first step to ending poverty for them. You may even be wondering what role you could play in ending poverty in this world. Well, look no further because here is the book that is a must-read for anyone concerned about global poverty and how to overcome it - "The End of Poverty" by Dr. Jeffery Sachs. Dr. Sachs, one of the leading economists of our times makes this book comprehensible for everyone even if you are not an economist. And what is even more wonderful is that he backs up most of his claims with well-grounded research and reasoning.
The book mainly talks about overcoming extreme poverty. Dr. Sachs defines a person as extremely poor if he/she cannot meet basic needs required for survival. He says that the extremely poor "are chronically hungry, unable to access health care, lack the amenities of safe drinking water, and sanitation, cannot afford education for some or all of the children and perhaps lack rudimentary shelter [..] and basic articles of clothing such as shoes. Unlike moderate and relative poverty, extreme poverty occurs only in developing countries." And 93% of the world's extremely poor live in East Asia, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Of course, when a country grows economically, it has a direct effect on reducing the extremely poor in that country. But the reason, that many of the countries have not been able to achieve the expected economic growth, as many statistical studies have shown, is due to a multiplicity of factors including fertility rates, education levels, diseases, trade policies and even climate and proximity to markets, some of which are not under the control of the governments of these countries .
As part of the U.N initiated Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the developed countries committed to contributing 0.7 percent of GNP every year to help the developing countries eradicate extreme poverty by the year 2025 through investments that contribute to sustained economic growth. By presenting a thorough analysis, Dr. Sachs shows that this is adequate money to reach the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2025. So, you may now be wondering where is the problem.
As Dr. Sachs skillfully presents in the book, the problem lies in the fact that the developed world has not kept it's promise although they make it sound that they are doing their best. So, the book is dedicated to making the case to convince the developed world, as to why they should keep their promise, why helping the developing countries eradicate extreme poverty is not just the right thing to do morally but also why it would benefit the developed world in the long term much more than many of the current foreign policies that are on the table. In the process, Dr. Sachs takes institutions like IMF, WorldBank and even the US federal government head-on. He even answers many questions and criticisms about his ideas and theories. On the whole, he makes the book a very engrossing, intriguing and inspiring read. At the end of it, you may even walk away with ideas on how you could help combat global poverty.

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Insightful and inspiring perspective on one of the great opportunities of our generation

Jeffrey Sachs uses his broad knowledge to frame the context of a call for action to end extreme poverty in our generation. He demonstrates through detailed statistical comparisons the evolution of the widening gap of economic opportunity between the world's regions, and provides interesting narrative examples to support his conclusions.

Although the statistics sometimes are mind-numbing, Sachs does a good job of creating graphical representations in the form of world maps, which serve to educate the reader and demonstrate the often overlooked connections between health, education and economic development. He has "done his homework" in providing a wealth of historic perspectives on the problems we observe in today's economy.

Sachs uses his groundwork effectively as a springboard to inspire our thinking about how we can help create a better world by doing relatively simple things. Again, he uses the narrative to demonstrate how small amounts of money, medicine or appropriate technologies, delivered to the point of need, can make a huge difference in the outcomes for people living in or near extreme poverty.

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From a professonal reader

I read. A lot. That said, only half this book is worth the time and energy it took me to read it. The middle half, to be specific. The first few chapters are dedicated to Sachs detailing to us that, no, he's not an idiot writing about something he's had no experience with and that, yes, he can help to solve macroeconomic problems. The end chapters are all Sachs recapping what he said in the rest of the book with charts and graphs that start to become meaningless if you're not a economist or a student with a couple econ classes under your belt. The middle, in my opinion, is the only redeeming part of this book that mentions far too often big-names Sachs has met and important jobs he's held. The middle actually talks about his plan for ending extreme poverty by 2015 and how we can do it. The rest of the book is just padding. So read chapters 8 - 15 if you want to "read" the book. Donate money to an NGO if you want to do something towards ending poverty with your time.

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