I don't understand the low-star reviews. The only explanation I can think of is that his views are too centrist to win support from either main political group in a pre-Trump world. 15 years after release, the book seems full of perfectly reasonable suggestions to eliminate extreme poverty - get nations out of "the poverty trap" - and they seem just as relevant today. He does use a copious amount of lists. Maybe the reviewers don't like books with lists...???

Sachs presents an argument to the world...but mostly the United States...that the time to take action to end poverty is now and has been for some time. Sachs frames his arguments from multiple perspectives and I have no reason to think other than the programs he very broadly outlines will perform their intended function. The trouble I have is that it does come across as pie-in-the-sky thinking. "If the donor countries...", "When developing country leader...", "As businesses grow...." I'm not an economist and I don't view the world and its people in a certain lens. I see billions of individuals that are loosely bound in small pockets of various factions. I don't share the same vision Sachs has that the world will move so collusively. And I also don't think many of the powerful forces are benevolent.

For me, there are only two reasonable arguments to be made. The first is that dire poverty is a death sentence not only for an individual, but for the community and the effects are generational. As such, I agree with Sachs that there is a duty of others (be it other countries or individuals) to do what they can to provide the basic sustenance and help build up the world's poorest out of that fundamental poverty trap. It is the right thing to do. At least in ideology. Second, I agree with Dr. Sachs that foreign aid, performed properly, provides greater safety to the world at large and the United States.

What I despise is the unabashed and naked ambition to take from those he feels are "wealthy enough" to foot the bill. There is no doubt that Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or his personal favorite, Bill Gates, can provide meaningful change overnight. Yet, Sachs speaks in terms of entitlement and avarice. Bill and Melinda Gates have done an extraordinary thing with their foundation and I do hope it is a trend among the super-rich. I do hope that it is as philanthropic as Sachs and others say that it is. My cynicism leaves me some room to doubt that there may be more nefarious reasons - and I truly hope these thoughts are unfounded and silly. Still, Gates personally elected to do something with his money. This is far different than taxing them because of what someone else wants. That is state-sanctioned theft and thuggery. Pull at the heartstrings all day long, but the moment we advocate for taxing the rich on the basis that they can afford it is on principle wrong.

The last couple of chapters I felt were the best. They discussed some of my internal criticisms if only just to underscore them in my own head. I'm unconvinced that corruption isn't worse in Africa just because Sachs says so. I'm unconvinced that the United Nations, the World Bank, and all the other international organizations are complete good actors. This book was written in 2006 and a LOT has happened since then. I just realized I meant to write this review only after I tried to find if there was a followup story on where we stand now that the mid-goal of 2015 is gone and the end goal of 2025 is so close. I don't think we've come very far.

I used to be generally opposed to foreign aid. When I saw the overall budget for it compared to GDP, I ignored the stories condemning the policy. It still must be applied with care and managed/audited properly. I fear everything is now part of the politics though - and this is decidedly non-political.

some excerpts

"Equality is a very big idea, connected to freedom, but an idea that doesn’t come for free. If we’re serious, we have to be prepared to pay the price. Some people will say we can’t afford to do it …. I disagree. I think we can’t afford not to do it.

When the preconditions of basic infrastructure (roads, power, and ports) and human capital (health and education) are in place, markets are powerful engines of development. Without those preconditions, markets can cruelly bypass large parts of the world, leaving them impoverished and suffering without respite.

One of the ironies of the recent success of India and China is the fear that has engulfed the United States that success in these two countries comes at the expense of the United States. These fears are fundamentally wrong and, even worse, dangerous. They are wrong because the world is not a zero-sum struggle in which one country’s gain is another’s loss, but is rather a positive-sum opportunity in which improving technologies and skills can raise living standards around the world.

The greatest tragedy of our time is that one sixth of humanity is not even on the development ladder.

The crucial puzzle for understanding today’s vast inequalities, therefore, is to understand why different regions of the world have grown at different rates during the period of modern economic growth.

Technology has been the main force behind the long-term increases in income in the rich world, not exploitation of the poor. That news is very good indeed because it suggests that all of the world, including today’s laggard regions, has a reasonable hope of reaping the benefits of technological advance. Economic development is not a zero-sum game in which the winnings of some are inevitably mirróred by the losses of others. This game is one that everybody can win.

First, British society was relatively open, with more scope for individual initiative and social mobility than most other societies of the world.

Britain’s advantages, in summary, were marked by a combination of social, political, and geographical factors. British society was relatively free and politically stable. Scientific thinking was dynamic. Geography enabled Britain to benefit from trade, productive agriculture, and energy resources in vast stocks of coal.

Most important, modern economic growth was not only a question of “more” (output per person) but also “change.” The transition to modern economic growth involved urbanization, changing gender roles, increased social mobility, changing family structure, and increasing specialization.

I believe that the single most important reason why prosperity spread, and why it continues to spread, is the transmission of technologies and the ideas underlying them.

Economists call ideas nonrival in the sense that one person’s use of an idea does not diminish the ability of others to use it as well. This is why we can envision a world in which everybody achieves prosperity.

Countries are often told that if their debts are cancelled, they will no longer be creditworthy. This argument is backward. If a country has too much debt, it cannot be creditworthy.

Rational investors will not make new loans. If debt cancellation is warranted by financial realities, is negotiated in good faith, and the country pursues sound economic policies afterward, then debt cancellation raises creditworthiness rather than reduces it.

At that point, George Soros helped me to meet a young Soviet reformer, Grigory Yavlinsky, who was a new economic adviser to Mikhail Gorbachev.

In November 1991, Boris Yeltsin asked Yegor Gaidar, a leading young Russian economist, to create an economic team. Gaidar invited me and David Lipton to a dacha outside of Moscow to work with the new economic team in putting together a reform plan for Russia.

One recalls Chinese Premier Chou En-lai’s quip when asked whether the French Revolution had been a success or failure: “It’s too soon to say.”

In China, the European incursion was especially disastrous. Great Britain attacked China in 1839 to promote British narcotics trafficking, launching the first of the Opium Wars of 1839–42 to force China to open up to trade. Among other things, Britain insisted that China agree to the importation of opium that British commercial interests were producing and trading in India. British policy makers were interested in China’s vast market, including solving the conundrum of how to pay for Britain’s national craze: Chinese tea. The solution was ingenious and utterly destructive. Britain would sell opium to China and earn the wherewithal to purchase China’s tea. It is as if Colombia waged war with the United States today for the right to sell cocaine.

Boring as it may seem, we need to fix the “plumbing” of international development assistance in order to be effective in helping the well-governed countries. Aid flows through certain pipes—bilateral donors, the World Bank, the regional development banks (such as the African Development Bank)—but these pipes are clogged or simply too narrow, not able to carry a sufficient flow of aid.

Redeem the Role of the United States in the World The richest and most powerful country in the world, long the leader and inspiration in democratic ideals, has become the most feared and divisive country in recent years. The self-professed quest by the United States for unchallenged supremacy and freedom of action has been a disaster, and it poses one of the greatest risks to global stability.

The lack of U.S. participation in multilateral initiatives has undermined global security and progress toward social justice and environmental protection. Its own interests have been undermined by this unilateral turn. Forged in the crucible of the Enlightenment, the United States can become a champion of Enlightened Globalization. Political action within the United States and from abroad will be needed to restore its role on the road toward global peace and justice.

Rescue the IMF and the World Bank Our leading international financial institutions are needed to play a decisive role in ending global poverty. They have the experience and technical sophistication to play an important role. They have the internal motivation of a highly professional staff. Yet they have been badly used, indeed misused, as creditor-run agencies rather than international institutions representing all of their 182 member governments. It is time to restore the international role of these agencies so that they are no longer the handmaidens of creditor governments, but the champions of economic justice and enlightened globalization.

Strengthen the United Nations It is no use blaming the UN for the missteps of recent years. We have gotten the UN that has been willed by the powerful countries of the world, especially the United States. Why are UN agencies less operational than they should be? Not because of UN bureaucracy, though that exists, but because the powerful countries are reluctant to cede more authority to international institutions, fearing reduction of their own freedom of maneuver. The UN specialized agencies have a core role to play in the end of poverty. It is time to empower the likes of the UN Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agricultural Organization, and many others to do the job—on the ground, country by country—that they are uniquely qualified to lead, helping the poorest of the poor to use modern science and technology to overcome the trap of poverty.

Harness Global Science Science has been the key to development from the very start of the industrial revolution, the fulcrum by which reason is translated into technologies of social advance. As Condorcet predicted, science has empowered technological advances in food production, health, environmental management, and countless other basic sectors of production and human need. Yet science tends to follow market forces as well as to lead them. It is not surprising, I have noted repeatedly, that the rich get richer in a continuing cycle of endogenous growth, whereas the poorest of the poor are often left outside of this virtuous circle. When their needs are specific—by virtue of particular diseases, or crops, or ecological conditions—their problems are bypassed by global science. Therefore, a special effort of world science, led by global scientific research centers of governments, academia, and industry, must commit specifically to addressing the unmet challenges of the poor. Public funding, private philanthropies, and not-for-profit foundations will have to back these commitments, precisely because market forces alone will not suffice.

Promote Sustainable Development While targeted investments in health, education, and infrastructure can unlock the trap of extreme poverty, the continuing environmental degradation at local, regional, and planetary scales threatens the long-term sustainability of all our social gains. Ending extreme poverty can relieve many of the pressures on the environment. When impoverished households are more productive on their farms, they face less pressure to cut down neighboring forests in search of new farmland. When their children survive with high probability, they have less incentive to maintain very high fertility rates with the attendant downside of rapid population growth. Still, even as extreme poverty ends, the environmental degradation related to industrial pollution and the long-term climate change associated with massive use of fossil fuels will have to be addressed. There are ways to confront these environmental challenges without destroying prosperity (for example, by building smarter power plants that capture and dispose of their carbon emissions and by increasing use of renewable energy sources). As we invest in ending extreme poverty, we must face the ongoing challenge of investing in the global sustainability of the world’s ecosystems."

A well written book with great stories to illustrate the economics behind poverty. It also does well to emphasize the west’s inaction and the minimal effort required to eradicate poverty. i do have issue with the negative and ignorant lights in which it paints the communist governments of today and the past, however, it’s not much surprise given this was written by a capitalist teet-sucker. that being said, there is still a lot of worthy information to be gleaned from this book (such as the ways in which landlocked geography impedes economic growth). i gave it 3 stars instead of 4 due to his oftentimes excuse making and refusal to acknowledge the systemic effects of colonialism and chattel slavery.

I think reading this type of content should be more related to form your own opinion than rating the content itself.
We all know poverty exists because we kind of choose to "keep playing" the economics and politics game.
Economics is not a science, and you can study its history and try to predict what will happen but in the end, you don't know what the outcome will be, so in my opinion, judging Sachs's arguments based on the fact they haven't happened or they cannot be proved makes no sense.
I personally think he has good ideas and at least in mostly coherent throughout his points.
However, I would have liked to see a chapter where he covers inequality and poverty nationally (or even in terms of cities).

يمنحنا المؤلف في الكتاب منهج لاستئصال الفقر من العالم بحلول عام 2025 ، عبر تحليل متميز وشرح منطقي للتجربة ..
الكتاب متميز قرأته للمرة الأولى من حوالي سنتين ،والآن أكتشف فيه الجديد بعد القراءة الثانية ..

An exploration of economic prosperity and how the world can escape from extreme poverty. This book is an insight into the dated & flawed mind of Jeffrey D. Sachs, one of the world's most influential economists.

The book starts with a conceptual framework and economic history of the modern world that tried to answer crucial questions. How did economic prosperity spread? Why some nations have failed to thrive? And how should we understand the modern challenge of extreme poverty?

These are all incredibly important questions, but I found myself shaking my head in frustration and disappointment as I read these first 4 chapters.

But, I carried on reading and found real value in following his journey through Bolivia, Poland, Russia, and more. Real world problems, deep insights, and behind-the-scenes knowledge of how deals got done.

As a whole this book is probably best considered a form of positive PR for Jeffery Sachs - as he tries to shape the way history will remember him.

Some notes:

- Jeffery Sachs isn't the worst kind of person - he shows compassion, empathy, and understanding of the complexity of the world. He cares about improving the lives of the least fortunate (those in extreme poverty) and is at least attempting to (both with words and action) create a better world for all those in it. There is respectable and shouldn't be taken for granted - especially when compared to others who are playing a more active and purposeful role in perpetuating the system (those covered in this book from the IMF, World Bank, US State Department, prominent international banks, etc...)

- There are also many insights and arguments in this book which will likely open the eyes of many audiences. Jeffery makes the argument that we (as Americans) should care about solving extreme poverty globally because extreme poverty is the root of the sorts of instability, chaos, and violence that breeds terrorism. I don't disagree that links exist there, but can sense that this argument was primarily chosen to persuade a recently post-9/11 audience who was filled with anxiety about terrorism and lacked much empathy or common sense.

- One of the recurring themes of the book is that the US provides a monumentally tiny amount of it's budget towards foreign aid and that both governments and NGOs from the developed world are rich on talk and short on real help. He goes behind the scenes of negotiations between the IMF and nations like Malawi where donor countries ask health care programs to be "realistic" by building them up from meager budgets instead of planning to achieve meaningful and stated goals. He compares the GNP of rich countries against their foreign aid and military spending and askes the honest and obvious questions -- why do we spend so much on defense and so little on development? When development is so obviously beneficial to the global community, why is there so little leadership from the rich world? Extremely valid. However, his end proposal to increase the foreign aid budgets of the rich world from 0.2% to 0.7% of GNP -- is lacking. Would it help - yes! Will doing this actually end extreme poverty and solve the development trap that affects billions of people - not even close. It doesn't address the root problems - what product should Bolivia export when world tin prices are down? Why is Mali paying so much in foreign debt service and so little on domestic welfare? How can countries integrate into the global economy on equal (or at least humane) terms?

- By focusing explicitly on extreme poverty - Jeffery makes a purposeful choice not to deal with systematic change or reckon with the banality of evil within a global capitalistic society. His argument essentially runs that we should focus on helping those with the most extreme challenges to survival - due to disease, nutrition, etc... So to reduce the most obvious and extreme suffering. This theoretically is the first steps - first extreme poverty, then poverty, then relative poverty. However this historical progression misses that these various forms of poverty are linked -- solving extreme poverty alone may not be possible. In many cases, we're picking a challenging, resource-intensive problem when more people could potentially be helped more sustainably in other initiatives.

- In Jeffery's interactions with Poland, Russia, China, and India - we see his profound bias against communism. Perhaps this is a necessity of being an economist in America during this time period - but he is incredibly dishonest with himself and the audience about what's happened. His discussion of Poland and Russia's different experiences with "Shock Therapy" post-communism were particularly revealing. Living now in the aftermath of these events - the Russia-Ukraine War has many roots in Jeffery Sach's policy advice - it's clear that Jeffery was wrong, his proposals enabled corruption on a difficult to imagine scale, and it's likely that ideological bias and politics was responsible.

- I had heard that Poland had gotten material debt forgiveness from the West in exchange for opening their economy quickly, but it's still stunning to see Jeffery speak about this so bluntly - perhaps it's history at this point.

- The book wanders into areas - China and India - where Jeffery has far less expertise - my feeling is he included these chapters to attract audience interest (this book was published around the time that the term BRICs was all the rage) - but they feel less deserved than the chapters on Bolivia, Poland, and Russia where Jeffery had direct experience. He doesn't do them justice at all.

- I quite liked his clinical economics chapter - in combination with his experience with Bolivia, I would say these two chapters are the two most valuable in the whole book.

EVERY 60 SECONDS IN AFRICA... A MINUTE PASSES.

A book that I was forced to read and present some time ago as requested by my boss at work. The ideas presented here were really not that exciting for me and amazingly I grew to like his biggest critics even more (Dambisa Moyo and William Easterly, so I would suggest them more).
The overly optimistic tone not only is boring (which doesn't say much) - but obviously not working, I mean one does not even have to be an economist to understand that to keep pumping more money won't really solve systemic problems.

By Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa.
By William Easterly, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good.

I expected to give this book one star, but I could get behind enough of Sachs' ideas to give it two. Sachs opposes IMF/WB austerity measures to promote development, and defends health care, education, and other services as public goods. He advocates taxing the rich and getting the world's wealthiest people to invest their money in the world's poorest people. He opposes Bush's excessive military spending because he thinks US and global security are more effectively guaranteed by cutting down global poverty. He emphasizes the need to understand and act on the vast range of factors that might contribute to poverty in specific countries and regions. But predictably, Sachs, guided by Enlightenment and Adam Smith-type rationalism and market logic, is misguided on the basic point of what constitute "wealth," "poverty," and "development" (e.g., for him, private property is a precondition for ending poverty and inequality). He also drastically downplays colonialism's role in global inequality, posing it as purely a matter of economic relations.

Overall, there are some decent ideas here, but Sachs isn't changing the terms of the development debate.

Extremely detailed analysis pointing towards why and how extreme poverty still pervades in the 21st century. Professor Sachs cites actionable steps that can eradicate extreme poverty in this lifetime. There needs to be more like-minded influential policymakers/economists championing this cause like Professor Sachs.

Sachs just might be the most over-rated economist of his generation, although he'll have to mud-wrestle Krugman for the all-time title. The tragedy of his over-grazed commons is rooted in blind obedience to Keynes, an all too common affliction. The downside for all of us is the loss of an otherwise brilliant mind, with an ability to rally world leaders and pop icons to a critical cause only doing damage in the end. His core assessment seems to rest on the notion that if we had only unloaded more dump trucks of cash into the quicksand, eventually the pit would've been filled and we could then build on the newly congealed surface. Well, that little multi-trillion dollar experiment has failed at every attempted scale, from village to continent. Time for new analysis, a new approach. Keynes is dead and Sachs' ideas should be co-entombed.

Sachs is a world reknowned economist who goes into detail about his work in Guatemala, India, Poland, and Russia, which put him on the map. Many of these countries face hyperinflation, and he guided them to stabilize their money, and receive debt cancellation from other countries – a very controversial issue at the time. In the beginning he explains what the poverty trap is – how some countries cannot even get on the first rung of the economic ladder because of their lack of natural resources, propensity to disease, geographic location, and lack of social and economic infostructure. One of the most valuable parts of his book is when he dispels many of the misconceptions about why sub-Sahara African countries remain so poor while Asian countries are thriving. Now, on the committee to rid the world of malaria and Aids as part of the United Nations, Sachs, carefully and thoughtfully explains how the world could truly rid itself of poverty and hunger if the rich nations donated 0.7% of the gross national product, something sorely lacking in the United States where we spend much more on defense. While the middle of the book and the constant nagging can get wearisome, Sachs is a famous and intelligent economist who knows what he is talking about, and his ideas would certainly improve the world if not save all human peoples. All of today’s leaders should pick up this book.