Amazon.com
Celebrated economist Jeffrey Sachs has a plan to eliminate extreme poverty around the world by 2025. If you think 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 explains in great detail in The End of Poverty. Though his plan certainly requires the help of rich nations, the financial assistance 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 great 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 important 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
Book Description
A landmark exploration of the way out of extreme poverty for the worldÂ's poorest citizens
Among the most eagerly anticipated books of any year, this landmark exploration of prosperity and poverty distills the life work of an economist Time calls one of the worldÂ's 100 most influential people. SachsÂ's aim is nothing less than to deliver a big 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.
Customer Reviews:
The End of Poverty?.......2007-10-16
I recently read Jeffery Sachs' The End of Poverty. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but was excited to pick up at development best-seller- not a common combination! While I usually try to avoid non-fiction when I'm not at school or working, and tend to have a fiction addiction, I think TEOP will find its way onto my 2007 top ten list.
The book does a great job of summarizing most of my four year international development degree, from discussions of absolute versus relative poverty, to the best way to address the issues of environment, health, education and livelihoods in the developing world. And Sachs does it in a way that makes development concepts accessible: he looks at development as a ladder, and those facing extreme poverty have not been able to get their feet on even the first rung. Thus, the requirements of aid can be seen as inputs to help that group reach the bottom of the ladder and begin to work their way up. He also brings down the issues to a single number: $75billion dollars a year until 2025, at which point he believes that all human kind could be on the development ladder and extreme poverty would be eliminated. Hence, the End of Poverty!
Situated, as he is, in the heart of American development politics and economics, Sachs was also able to do a good job of explaining the successes and deficiencies of his country's aid contributions. Like the discussion in the previous post, this has helped to give me a more detailed view of America's role in the development world, which I find really interesting. He called on a number of American thinkers and activists to give power to his arguments for the potential of the end of extreme poverty. Paraphrasing Martin Luther King, Jr, Sach's says "The bank of international justice is not bankrupt," and explains how people like King, Gandhi, and Mandela "transformed the impossible into the inevitable." While many people think ending poverty is impossible, and that we in the West can't afford it, Sachs is busy making us realize that we can, and we should.
His point is obviously more and better action, which is heralded over and over again by poverty activists like Bono, Angelina Jolie or Bob Geldof. But the good thing about Sachs is that he manages to mainstream his ideas about aid and development, and introduce them in more conservative economic circles than would usually listen to the rockstar rolemodels. In his final "to do list", Sachs calls everyone to "make a personal commitment," something I believe in very strongly. He ends the book with this quote:
Let no one be discouraged by the belief that there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills- against misery and ignorance, injustice and violence...Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. -- Robert Kennedy
Passionate, but conveniently ignores historical reality.......2007-10-15
Sachs passionately promotes the Millenium Development Goals devised by the UN and pleads that if the developed economies of the world commit the resources they've promised these goals will be met. The book is well written and very engrossing.
Unfortunately, much of what Sachs promotes does not relate well with historical reality. The UN and its associated aid agencies have consistently developed grandiose goals which are never met, mainly because the personnel developing the goals are not the same ones determining the contributions and don't determine their objectives based on financial limitations. Sachs does not indicate how the developed world's contributions will be more effectively managed than in the past. Also, since it's apparent the developed world is not going to provide the funding required by the MDGs, he provides no suggestion on how the MDGs can be scaled to provide the most effective use of resources. It's an all or nothing proposition.
Sachs links too many items simply to dollar figures and fails to take into account ethnic conflicts, religous and societal beliefs, as well as any of a number of other factors that can derail aid providers' well-intentioned efforts. He brushes aside poor governance in Africa by stating there are a select few other countries around the world that are even worse. Poor governance and corruption prevent development regardless if it's the worst in the world or not.
Regardless, Sachs does promote a number of ideas that are valid and likely to be successful, such as malaria nets and debt relief to countries that have shown they have taken steps to govern their finances in an acceptable manner, especially if applied and monitored separately and not part of a comprehensive plan to fix everything at the same time.
This book should be read with William Easterly's "White Man's Burden", as Easterly provides the counterpoint to Sach's big Planner approach to foreign aid, and suggests that a more market-based approach, with limited, clearly defined goals would provide a better use of the limited resources available to aid providers.
Smarter than I'll ever be, but still..........2007-10-12
Sachs makes some great points but spends way too much time patting himself on the back. He really has amazing ideas, if you can put that stuff in the back of your mind. He focuses a TON on the successes he's had, and tends to gloss over the countries and economies he made mistakes with. But it's a captivating read- you'll want to pick yourself up and change the world.
Read with a grain of salt. .......2007-10-05
This book covers some concepts that at face value and first read - especially people like me who are not economists - seem quite enlightening. But the more you read, the more you have to question how it seems that the view he presents is a seemingly simplistic solution to what is in reality a complex problem. One of the reviews on here talked about how it is not "infrastructure" that is key to solving the problems, but rather an access to market. I'd have to agree. Companies are not flocking to sub-Saharan Africa to utilize the labor there. Companies are moving to China and India. This is not a simple matter of infrastructure, but a matter of economic policy and much more.
The book points to some villages in rural Africa where things appear to be improving - a choice village or two where Jeffrey Sachs and the Earth Institute at Columbia pour in their resources (these are subsequently called Millennium Villages to coincide with the Millennium Development Goals) - and it makes you think that he might possibly be making some sense. However, what about generalization to a whole country? Of course if you take all your resources, all the scientific knowledge accessible to you from the Earth Institute, and then some, and pour these into a village, what village will not transform? But is it sustainable? Is it generalizable to the whole country? Change needs to occur at the policy/governmental level concurrently, in order for real success and improvement.
While this book may be interesting, it is important to remember that it is not THE way; it is A way, and along with it, it has its flaws. Ask some other economist what they think - I did, and got an earful. The opinion was that Jeffrey Sachs is just recycling his ideas that he used decades back during the 80s, and that to counter this viewpoint, I must read William Easterly. I'm sure there are others out there to read. But again, one good read does not solve all the world's ills. If you don't have access to an economist, read ALL the reviews on here because there are some other points that need to be considered. And I don't appreciate the impression I get that ideas for solving poverty in places like sub-Saharan Africa comes from a simplistic seemingly-enlightened Westernized view of "this is what is wrong with Africa".
We need to end poverty.......2007-09-28
The book is great. It puts the poverty of the world, including America into light. It lets the reader know that poverty can be ended in our lifetime. It is very serious topic and book. We have the opportunity to end poverty, but will we be the generation that sits by and watches our fellow humans starve and die of disease or not?
The book got to me in a very timely manner and was inexpensive.
Amazon.com
More than a decade after presidential candidate Bill Clinton floated the idea of ending "welfare as we know it," the changes to the system have become so accepted and entrenched that it is difficult to remember the heated controversy surrounding the issue of reform. Jason DeParle, a social policy reporter for The New York Times, forcefully brings the subject to life in American Dream, a moving and informed examination of the challenges, complexities, successes, and failures involved in fixing our nation's ailing welfare system. Tracing the lives of three women and their children as legislative changes are pushed through Washington and the state of Wisconsin, DeParle puts an extraordinarily human face on a subject that is too often prone to ideological oversimplification. As DeParle adeptly shows, their story "of adversity variously overcome, compounded, or merely endured ... embodies the story of welfare writ large."
The three compelling women at the heart of DeParle's narrative are vastly different temperamentally, yet they share the abstract qualities of strength and endurance, as well as extended family ties. DeParle paints their portraits with respect and sensitivity, and he provides a marvelous family history that reveals how "the story of welfare" is painfully "tangled in the story of race." Our glimpse at these difficult lives and the forces that profoundly shape them inspire an equal measure of hope and disappointment, and a large measure of outrage. As these remarkably resilient women struggle to raise their families, corruption is exposed in the very offices charged with implementing the newly adopted reforms. DeParle accepts that removing nine million women and children from the welfare rolls represents enormous progress. However, he simultaneously recognizes that we are dismally failing to confront a consequence of welfare reform: a new class of working poor. --Silvana Tropea
Book Description
In this definitive work, two-time Pulitzer finalist Jason DeParle cuts between the mean streets of Milwaukee and the corridors of Washington to produce a masterpiece of literary journalism. At the heart of the story are three cousins whose different lives follow similar trajectories. Leaving welfare, Angie puts her heart in her work. Jewell bets on an imprisoned man. Opal guards a tragic secret that threatens her kids and her life. DeParle traces their family history back six generations to slavery and weaves poor people, politicians, reformers, and rogues into a spellbinding epic.
With a vivid sense of humanity, DeParle demonstrates that although we live in a country where anyone can make it, generation after generation some families donÂ't. To read American Dream is to understand why.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting look at social policy........2007-09-07
I found this to be a page turner. The book is actual history that reads like fiction. There is a fair amount of repitition that bogged the story down a bit but I still recommend it.
Must Read!!.......2007-01-22
I have to read this book for my Social Welfare Policy class but I can't put it down! The writer is incredibly engaging even when talking about all the backstage drama surrounding the 1996 welfare bill, which I think is a huge accomplishment of and in itself. It is a great blend of legislative history making AND seeing the effects on the welfare recipients.
An immensely moving, informative, entertaining book.......2006-11-10
I really loved this book. Its a very quick read and its also extremely informative. You will learn so much about what its like to live in poverty in the US. It also details the history of welfare in America, how it was changed, and where it stands now. The book is no liberal propaganda either. The NY Times reporter who wrote the book comes to some very surprising, often conservative-leaning conclusions. You will be amazed at what he found and often moved to tears by the stories of the three women. An absolutely essential read.
More than a 'policy' book.......2006-10-20
A friend recommended this book. I picked it up, expecting it to be hard to read (public policy books usually are), but this was nothing like that because the author shapes the story around the lives of real people, including 3 women in Milwaukee who have been receiving public assistance. What amazed me, after reading the book, was how little changed in their lives even when 'welfare as we know it' ended. Two of them became steady workers, for the most part, but they were still poor, still struggling to buy food and pay the utilities, and still had troubles with the men in their lives.
Did Welfare Reform Work?.......2006-09-05
I still do not know. The women in the book seemed to find a way of providing for their kids when there was a welfare system or when there was not. When tragedy or personal irresponsibility struck one of these women somehow a freind or relation took up responsibilty for the kids. This is a realistice portrait of drugs, poverty, crime, and working the system in the ghetto. How much and what should we give the poor to take care of themselves and establish their independence--never-ending question. I also have to wonder after reading this if every man in the ghetto is a hustler or loser.
Amazon.com
One of the unsettling facts that emerges out of Making Ends Meet, by Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein, is that mothers who work outside the home spend twice as much per month as welfare mothers on such necessities as transportation, health care, day care, and housing. Yet many women continue to move--or are being pushed by politicians--off welfare into jobs in the forlorn hope that those positions would one day lead to better careers. Almost inevitably, the economic realities of trying to raise families on the wages from low-paying jobs would force them back on government assistance. Making Ends Meet is a study commissioned by the Russell Sage Foundation, and its disturbing conclusions expose as myth the view prevalent in Washington, D.C., and the country at large that if people would just get jobs they could pull themselves out of poverty.
Customer Reviews:
Must read before you comment on welfare.......2006-05-07
Bill Clinton ran for President campaigning to end "welfare as we know it" and Republicans cheered him on, arguing that welfare mothers (since America's only real welfare program -- Aid to Families with Dependent Children or AFDC -- goes to single mothers raising children) were simply being lazy and had to be forced to work. The TV pundits and the politicians argued about this perhaps, but nobody challenged the fundamental premises.
Edin and Lein decided to do something different. Instead of squabbling about politics, they went out into the field and actually interviewed mothers on welfare. Their study was as rigorous as can be imagined -- they visited four cities, talked to dozens of mothers, and went over the books with them until all the numbers balanced out, finding exactly where they got their money and what they spent it on.
What they found was shocking. Far from being lazy, mothers on welfare in fact all worked. In addition to putting in time raising their children (or getting family members to do it, since expensive daycare was out of the question) and waiting in line to pick up welfare checks, they worked serious full-time jobs under-the-table. There simply was no other way to make ends meet. In their entire study, Edin and Lein only found one mother who didn't work any other jobs -- and her son was taken away by social services for neglect (she couldn't afford to buy him enough food to eat).
After looking at this evidence, it's hard to think of the politicians who cut AFDC in an attempt to move welfare mothers into the workforce they already clung to for survival as anything other than heartless monsters. And their number is well-represented in the introduction by Harvard professor Christopher Jencks, who diddles away the facts in an attempt to avoid seeming partisan, and has cautiously endorsed welfare reform in other forums.
Anyone who wants to be taken seriously on the topic of welfare must read this book and understand the realities of the subject they're discussing.
Who'll Stop the Rain?.......2003-07-16
3 1/2 stars
During the early 1980s, social scientists noticed that welfare mothers were spending three to six times their official incomes. In his exquisitely written foreword, Harvard sociologist Christopher Jencks argues persuasively that in a "conspiracy of silence," conservatives didn't want to admit that mothers could not survive on welfare checks alone, while "liberals" didn't want to admit that clients had unreported resources. Jencks and his colleagues asked where the additional money was coming from. Making Ends Meet provides some answers.
Aided by over thirty research associates, sociologist Kathryn Edin and anthropologist Laura Lein interviewed 379 single welfare AND poor working mothers in Chicago, Boston, San Antonio, Charleston and rural Minnesota. The authors compared the groups, with the purpose of undermining welfare reform.
Virtually all of the mothers studied derived income from their children's fathers, from boyfriends, relatives, off-the-books jobs (e.g., babysitting), selling stolen goods, prostitution or dealing drugs. Despite unreported income, uneducated, unskilled women working at "dead-end" jobs were barely treading water.
The authors report that single, working mothers have more cash, yet suffer greater hardships than their non-working counterparts. Working mothers must pay for additional transportation, and for services such as medical and child care that welfare mothers get free. Edin and Lein thus conclude that poor women are usually worse off working than being on welfare.
The authors tend to exaggerate the difficulty of finding affordable child care. Although a respondent told of getting babysitting services from a welfare mother for a bag or two of groceries per month, the authors speak of "market-rate" (read: exorbitant, state-licensed) child care. As NYU political scientist Lawrence Mead noted in The New Politics of Poverty (1992), as Jencks corroborates, and as I know from direct experience, poor working mothers are able to negotiate affordable, unlicensed child care without "service-providers" from inflationary, government programs. The supposed lack of child care is a rehearsed response that welfare mothers know to give to credulous, "Suzy the social worker" (a term a foster-care caseworker colleague taught me) types and socialist/radical multicultural academic researchers: "I really want to work, but ..."
Edin and Lein alternate between the role of "Suzies" and that of dogged interviewers. They re-interview respondents who initially gave unrealistic budgets, or ambiguous or misleading answers on whether they were receiving child support, or engaging in casual prostitution. The pervasiveness of casual prostitution matched my own observations in New York's slums; that of informal child support surprised me. However, when it comes to the mothers' rationalizations for not working, it's "Suzy time" again. The conflicted authors emphasize mothers' concern with avoiding criminal activity, despite chronicling their involvement in prostitution, and in contracting with shoplifters to steal clothing for their children.
Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, and the Democrats' ensuing Northern Strategy's revolutionary anti-morality put dunce caps on millennia-old moral teachings prohibiting premarital sex. Armies of sexual "educators" and "helping" professionals and their university and media apologists told girls they had a right to "non-marital births," and demanded that hardworking, married folks support those children. Implicitly re-defining a family as an unwed mother and child(ren), the authors are shocked, shocked, that this results in a poor, unskilled girl raising her fatherless child(ren) in poverty.
(As liberal Democratic historian Fred Siegel (The Future Once Happened Here) has chronicled, the Marxist National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) sought to bankrupt New York City, and precipitate a revolution. From 1966-73, liberal Republican Mayor John V. Lindsay's social services commissioner, Mitchell "Come and Get It" Ginsberg, more than doubled the welfare rolls, from 538,000 to 1.165 million. At the same time, the NWRO pursued a politics of racial polarization, a politics it later attributed to Republicans. Instead of a revolution, the NWRO precipitated the moral collapse of urban black society.)
In seeing life in "some of the country's most dangerous neighborhoods" as driving concerned mothers onto the dole, rather than leave their children unsupervised while they work, the authors confuse cause and effect. It is the spread of illegitimacy and welfare, and their accompanying vices, that has made such areas so dangerous.
In Why Nothing Works (1987), "liberal" anthropologist Marvin Harris "explained" that welfare clients raised their sons to be violent, the better to protect the mothers (from other women's sons). Hence, to the degree that poor young blacks and Hispanics embrace crime, they do so not in response to (white) racism, or lack of opportunity, but to their rearing.
Millions of American couples avoid poverty through pooling modest paychecks, one spouse working extra hours, sharing responsibilities, relying on relatives for child care and limiting their wants. The authors have unwittingly made a compelling case for demolishing the welfare state and its "alternative" family models. The solution is marriage.
When I was a foster-care caseworker, one of my clients almost always missed agency visits to see her seven children. "I didn't want to leave the house, 'cause it was rainin,'" gradually became "It looked like it MIGHT rain." Edin and Lein deny the morality of work and responsible living, yet portray welfare clients as always a government program away from employability. But government will never be able to stop the rain, just as it will never be able to guarantee uneducated, unskilled women "good jobs."
I doubt that Making Ends Meet will cause an uncommitted reader to suddenly empathize with welfare clients. In a New York Times puff piece, Edin inadvertently clarified the book's (for me) peculiar sensibility. Reporter Jason DeParle related that while Edin, who is white, found black children beautiful, "white children at times began to look 'homely'" to her. Rather than caring about ALL poor kids, Kathryn Edin apparently feels a blind loyalty to poor black women and their children, and a corresponding obligation to be repelled by children of her own race. How sad.
Originally published in Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, February, 1998.
Who'll Stop the Rain?.......2003-07-15
3 1/2 stars
During the early 1980s, social scientists noticed that welfare mothers were spending three to six times their official incomes. In his exquisitely written foreword, Harvard sociologist Christopher Jencks argues persuasively that in a "conspiracy of silence," conservatives didn't want to admit that mothers could not survive on welfare checks alone, while "liberals" didn't want to admit that clients had unreported resources. Jencks and his colleagues asked where the additional money was coming from. Making Ends Meet provides some answers.
Aided by over thirty research associates, sociologist Kathryn Edin and anthropologist Laura Lein interviewed 379 single welfare AND poor working mothers in Chicago, Boston, San Antonio, Charleston and rural Minnesota. The authors compared the groups, with the purpose of undermining welfare reform.
Virtually all of the mothers studied derived income from their children's fathers, from boyfriends, relatives, off-the-books jobs (e.g., babysitting), selling stolen goods, prostitution or dealing drugs. Despite unreported income, uneducated, unskilled women working at "dead-end" jobs were barely treading water.
The authors report that single, working mothers have more cash, yet suffer greater hardships than their non-working counterparts. Working mothers must pay for additional transportation, and for services such as medical and child care that welfare mothers get free. Edin and Lein thus conclude that poor women are usually worse off working than being on welfare.
The authors tend to exaggerate the difficulty of finding affordable child care. Although a respondent told of getting babysitting services from a welfare mother for a bag or two of groceries per month, the authors speak of "market-rate" (read: exorbitant, state-licensed) child care. As NYU political scientist Lawrence Mead noted in The New Politics of Poverty (1992), as Jencks corroborates, and as I know from direct experience, poor working mothers are able to negotiate affordable, unlicensed child care without "service-providers" from inflationary, government programs. The supposed lack of child care is a rehearsed response that welfare mothers know to give to credulous, "Suzy the social worker" (a term a foster-care caseworker colleague taught me) types and socialist/radical multicultural academic researchers: "I really want to work, but ..."
Edin and Lein alternate between the role of "Suzies" and that of dogged interviewers. They re-interview respondents who initially gave unrealistic budgets, or ambiguous or misleading answers on whether they were receiving child support, or engaging in casual prostitution. The pervasiveness of casual prostitution matched my own observations in New York's slums; that of informal child support surprised me. However, when it comes to the mothers' rationalizations for not working, it's "Suzy time" again. The conflicted authors emphasize mothers' concern with avoiding criminal activity, despite chronicling their involvement in prostitution, and in contracting with shoplifters to steal clothing for their children.
Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, and the Democrats' ensuing Northern Strategy's revolutionary anti-morality put dunce caps on millennia-old moral teachings prohibiting premarital sex. Armies of sexual "educators" and "helping" professionals and their university and media apologists told girls they had a right to "non-marital births," and demanded that hardworking, married folks support those children. Implicitly re-defining a family as an unwed mother and child(ren), the authors are shocked, shocked, that this results in a poor, unskilled girl raising her fatherless child(ren) in poverty.
(As liberal Democratic historian Fred Siegel (The Future Once Happened Here) has chronicled, the Marxist National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) sought to bankrupt New York City, and precipitate a revolution. From 1966-73, liberal Republican Mayor John V. Lindsay's social services commissioner, Mitchell "Come and Get It" Ginsberg, more than doubled the welfare rolls, from 538,000 to 1.165 million. At the same time, the NWRO pursued a politics of racial polarization, a politics it later attributed to Republicans. Instead of a revolution, the NWRO precipitated the moral collapse of urban black society.)
In seeing life in "some of the country's most dangerous neighborhoods" as driving concerned mothers onto the dole, rather than leave their children unsupervised while they work, the authors confuse cause and effect. It is the spread of illegitimacy and welfare, and their accompanying vices, that has made such areas so dangerous.
In Why Nothing Works (1987), "liberal" anthropologist Marvin Harris "explained" that welfare clients raised their sons to be violent, the better to protect the mothers (from other women's sons). Hence, to the degree that poor young blacks and Hispanics embrace crime, they do so not in response to (white) racism, or lack of opportunity, but to their rearing.
Millions of American couples avoid poverty through pooling modest paychecks, one spouse working extra hours, sharing responsibilities, relying on relatives for child care and limiting their wants. The authors have unwittingly made a compelling case for demolishing the welfare state and its "alternative" family models. The solution is marriage.
When I was a foster-care caseworker, one of my clients almost always missed agency visits to see her seven children. "I didn't want to leave the house, 'cause it was rainin,'" gradually became "It looked like it MIGHT rain." Edin and Lein deny the morality of work and responsible living, yet portray welfare clients as always a government program away from employability. But government will never be able to stop the rain, just as it will never be able to guarantee uneducated, unskilled women "good jobs."
I doubt that Making Ends Meet will cause an uncommitted reader to suddenly empathize with welfare clients. In a New York Times puff piece, Edin inadvertently clarified the book's (for me) peculiar sensibility. Reporter Jason DeParle related that while Edin, who is white, found black children beautiful, "white children at times began to look 'homely'" to her. Rather than caring about ALL poor kids, Kathryn Edin apparently feels a blind loyalty to poor black women and their children, and a corresponding obligation to be repelled by children of her own race. How sad.
Originally published in the February, 1998 Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
Throw away all the old data and read this.......1998-07-01
Excellent statistical and investigative work that predates, but informs, much of the information we will get about the efficacy of welfare reform. Supports of both Charles Murray and Christopher Jencks will find materials in here that support and challenge their views. There are a few methodological problems with this book, however. Because the authors rely on word-of-mouth for their data sample, they over-sample those poor mothers who have social ties, and this probably skews their sample away from society's most *truly* destitude. Nonetheless, this remains an essential read given the extreme weakness of other data on the subject.
Mr. President, Members of Congress, Governors Read This Book.......1997-08-20
This book is a year late to influence the Congressional welfare reform debate.
It is on time for the state level debate and policy development that must follow federal reform.
This book acts as a smart bomb to mythic misconceptions, nostalgia and ideology surrounding welfare reform.
Edin's research and writing were formerly available through the Wisconsin based Institute for Research on Poverty. Her work proved a significant resource in my advocacy for effective and compassionate welfare reform in Tennessee. You will encounter the real world of American poverty in this book.
The President and Congress should read it with regret for their actions and Governors should read it for courage as they bear the weight of devolved welfare responsibility. Advocates and policy wonks should read it as essential.
Book Description
In the 1790s, for the first time, reformers proposed bringing poverty to an end. Inspired by scientific progress, the promise of an international economy, and the revolutions in France and the United States, political thinkers such as Thomas Paine and Antoine-Nicolas Condorcet argued that all citizens could be protected against the hazards of economic insecurity. In An End to Poverty? Gareth Stedman Jones revisits this founding moment in the history of social democracy and examines how it was derailed by conservative as well as leftist thinkers. By tracing the historical evolution of debates concerning poverty, Stedman Jones revives an important, but forgotten strain of progressive thought. He also demonstrates that current discussions about economic issues -- downsizing, globalization, and financial regulation -- were shaped by the ideological conflicts of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Paine and Condorcet believed that republicanism combined with universal pensions, grants to support education, and other social programs could alleviate poverty. In tracing the inspiration for their beliefs, Stedman Jones locates an unlikely source-Adam Smith. Paine and Condorcet believed that Smith's vision of a dynamic commercial society laid the groundwork for creating economic security and a more equal society.
But these early visions of social democracy were deemed too threatening to a Europe still reeling from the traumatic aftermath of the French Revolution and increasingly anxious about a changing global economy. Paine and Condorcet were demonized by Christian and conservative thinkers such as Burke and Malthus, who used Smith's ideas to support a harsher vision of society based on individualism and laissez-faire economics. Meanwhile, as the nineteenth century wore on, thinkers on the left developed more firmly anticapitalist views and criticized Paine and Condorcet for being too "bourgeois" in their thinking. Stedman Jones however, argues that contemporary social democracy should take up the mantle of these earlier thinkers, and he suggests that the elimination of poverty need not be a utopian dream but may once again be profitably made the subject of practical, political, and social-policy debates.
Customer Reviews:
Brilliant Historical Underpining to Sachs' Current Work.......2006-04-04
It is very disappointing to see so little information provided by the publisher on this book, not even a table of contents. The time has come for Amazon to demand a higher standard of due diligence by publishers.
For those who wish to immerse themselves on the pros and cons of the debate over poverty, this is an essential intellectual foundation to the current work by Jeffrey Sachs who is both the advisor to the Secretary General of the UN on the Millennium project, and the head of the Columbia Earth Institute.
Thomas Jefferson said that "A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry." He probably would have agreed to amend that to say an educated, healthy citizenry able to work. A historical appreciation of the phrase "pursuit of happiness" suggests that Jefferson actually meant, in lieu of selfish pleasure, the pursuit of self- actualization.
This book completes a circle with C. K. Prahalad's "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid," which suggests that there is a four trillion a year marketplace among the five billion poorest, and that unleashing their entrepreneurial initiative could save the world, and the definitive work by Jeffrey Sachs, on how can end poverty for $70 per year per person.
Product Description
The Truth is the most painful thing to experience. One would rather hear a lie and feel good than face the truth-This is the soul of the weak.
Customer Reviews:
Why I Wave the Confederate Flag.......2006-06-07
This book is one of the best I have read, not only does the author write with passion, but he brings the truth to you. This book allows you to look at your soul, it gives you an understanding of how we have been conditioned to think and act instead of taking responsibility for ourselves. It is a wonderful read.
Book Description
The Human Development Report 2003 discusses the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)--the targets set for reductions in poverty, improvements in health and education, and protection of the environment around the world by the year 2015. In September 2000, world leaders pledged to achieve the MDGs, including the overarching goal of cutting poverty in half by 2015. This report examines the progress made towards reaching these goals on a country-by-country basis. The Human Development Report 2003 also features a wide variety of national development indicators for 174 countries including demographic trends, educational levels, gender disparities, and macroeconomic indicators. It is an important tool in the formulation of government policy.
Book Description
Imagine ending poverty at home and around the globe in our own lifetimes. Imagine your actions combining with others’ actions to make poverty history. With originality and imagination, this book invites us to look at our very ordinary days, from waking up in the morning to going to bed in the evening, and to begin to think about poverty in new and creative ways. Our Day to End Poverty is organized into 24 "hour/chapter" segments. Each chapter/hour of the day proposes a variety of fun and practical actions one can take to help overcome domestic and global poverty. The chapters are short and pithy — full of specific facts and a menu of alternative action steps. Each chapter connects with your day, from breakfast to bedtime, relating these simple steps to ending poverty to our common daily routines. Sometimes a problem as large as poverty gets to be so big, we feel there is nothing we can do about it. Our Day to End Poverty reminds us that if we all do just a little, a lot can get done.
Customer Reviews:
We Can All Make a Difference.......2007-08-13
Have you ever felt the urge to "do something" when faced with searing images of poverty? Perhaps you have lingered for a moment over photographs of a starving child in Africa, a flood victim in Asia, a poor family coping with a natural disaster or illness in your own neighborhood, or a hundred other reminders of poverty on our planet. Like most of us,you may feel helpless. This book is aimed directly at people who want to help but don't know how. It includes links to poverty-fighting organizations that need donations, but it goes way beyond money. Examining each of the 8 UN Millenium Summit goals, it lists numerous simple activities we can initiate in our families, our communities, our places of worship, and on our own. Clearly written ideas, grouped under the headings "Learn," "Contribute," "Serve," and "Live," should prompt all of us to "do something," starting right now.
I Am Now a Daily Poverty Fighter.......2007-06-04
Thank you to the authors for bringing local/global poverty issues and solutions to the front door step with urgency, actions and respect for what is already in our hearts. You have created an awareness and checklist that transform concern into action. May I say that I'm stunned to find the UN Millennium Development goals new to me after seven years of activity. Such a global common good should be front page news and top of mind for all of our work and life efforts. With this smart guide, schools, book clubs, libraries, individual citizens and all public and private institutions have a way to make a daily difference that suits them. Your book enlists all of us in a war with no opposition but inaction and ignorance - a war we can win. And your approach shows us how efforts of any size contribute. I am now a daily poverty fighter.
Moving Beyond Concern.......2007-06-01
Like many people, I have had a longstanding concern about poverty and the related problems people face on a daily basis (preventable deaths, unnecessary suffering, and inadequate education just to name a few). Our Day to End Poverty provides a wonderful opportunity to move beyond concern into action.
Written in a style that brings forward the immediacy of poverty-related issues, Our Day to End Poverty is a diverse and interesting guidebook, providing hundreds of possibilities for actions anyone can take.
Discussing an issue like poverty that continues to have such wide-spread and devastating impacts it would be easy for the authors to drown or overload you with the enormity of the task we all face. Instead, they treat poverty, with the turn of every page, as a problem we can beat through individual and collective action.
Exploring the actions laid-out in the book opened doors to other possibilities, and has started to help me uncover new ideas about new places I can help and encourage others to join me. All of this, and I am truly only beginning to explore the depth of this book.
I would venture to say that this book also provides a tool equal useful for an idealistic young graduate or someone considering how they could give back in their retirement years.
Simple, powerful ways to make a difference.......2007-06-01
This book is a must read for anyone who wants to make a difference in the world. It draws you in and grabs you with the idea that we can do something to make the world better. It begins with making a personal connection to poverty, helping us understand that it is real people who suffer and those people are directly connected to us. When they suffer we must see that it is our responsibility to help them ,because we do live in one world, that we were all meant to share. The book then goes on to outline the UN Millennium Goals and shows us how they can be achieved if we get inspired about what we can do. In a world where we are constantly bombarded with images of what is wrong with the world and few stories of what we can do, this amazing book is a guide for what we can do. Laid out in simple, practical terms, it goes through a day, and shows us how we can do "little" things that can end up making a big difference.
This book can be used by teachers in schools, by business leaders who want to inspire their people, by parents in creating family projects from the 24 ways you can make a difference.
I hope this book becomes a viral brand and spreads hope and inspire millions to see how be a better citizen of the world can fit into anyone's day.
Average customer rating:
|
On. Job Security: End of Unemployment and Poverty
William, W Morgan
Manufacturer: William W Morgan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Free Will & Determinism
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ASIN: 0977849252 |
Book Description
Interestingly and unexpectedly, job security is the key to ending poverty for the individual and society. Crucially, it is the key to controlling pollution and handling the societal effects that will result from global warming. It can lead to the solution to all our societal problems. It is requirement for the survival of Homo sapiens. To prevent us from becoming extinct. Everything you believe about how to acquire job security is almost certainly wrong. Yet it is simple to acquire it. And by doing so you also gain control over your own life and the realization of life's dreams. It provides the solution to employment of the handicapped. It can put money in your pocket almost instantly. By thinking and a little bit of hard work each individual can totally revolutionize their life. The summation of which is society.
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