policy I

Jeffrey Sachs is an economists that was working on the Millennium Development Project. His task while under UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was to come up with practical strategies through which countries will be able to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The end of poverty book starts with the history of poverty in the world and how, in his opinion, we got to where we are today. He then gives case studies of countries where he has worked to help change the economic outlook and number of people living in extreme poverty, or less than $1 per day. Finally, he outlines solutions that will allow our generation to wipe out extreme poverty. Throughout the book I took down some notes on things I wanted to remember, either because they stirred up questions to my brain. it made me plain oh sick to my stomach to know how people live in other countries far as Poverty no type of health coverage barely have food. A lot of the book is critical of the US and other rich countries because of their lack of initiative and action towards the goal of eradicating extreme poverty.
I was kind of amazed of the book because it seemed to skip some of history as causative of extreme poverty. For example, he didn’t give enough credit, in my opinion, to the effects of slavery and colonialism on the current economic and development situations faced by so many countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. However, after finishing the book I realize that his intent was only to help me realize that colonialism, for example, cannot be held solely responsible for the lower development level of a country, and that a solution must take many factors into account. And, he dealt with issues of colonialism and others later on in the book.

He also talked a lot about the way in which rich countries treat poor countries, and the expectations they have of them which their own countries are not even meeting. He gives many examples of instances in which developed countries used less developed countries for their own purposes, making it even more difficult for countries to move upward on the development ladder. I was happy to find Sachs discussing Iraq and the United States’ “War on Terror”. He explains some clear relationships between terror and development, and discusses the need for the US to tackle development issues to ultimately reduce terror threats against the country. Sachs also discusses the dangers of allowing the US to continue their