New Forces to Consider in Ending Poverty

New Forces to Consider in Ending Poverty: A Review of Full Planet, Empty Plates by Lester R. Brown, contributed by guest reviewer, Libby Earle. 

This summer the Hopedale Community engaged in a discussion of the book The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs. This book approached the need to end extreme poverty through market forces such as debt forgiveness to nations that carried an unserviceable debt burden. Mr. Sachs saw manufacturing investments in impoverished countries by foreign companies that benefited by low labor costs as a positive mode of raising the income level of the very poor workers. [“See how much better off they are.”] This improvement in income would encourage smaller families therefore result in a gain in personal and national gross profits with more money for investment and individual sustainability. Additionally he emphasized the need for donor nations to live up to their donor commitments to poor countries in order for them to develop needed infrastructure to support economic growth and the need for recipient countries to provide transparency in how donor money was used…(to read more, press here)