Category: Series: Cycle of Prosperity
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Prosperity: Final Thoughts on the Cycle of Prosperity
It is time to bring my Cycle of Prosperity series to a close. I began this series by discussing shalom's centrality to the biblical narrative. What we call "economic well-being" is an essential component of shalom. While we can talk of shalom for an individual, the biblical image is of shalom is community-wide. Next, I…
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Prosperity: Final Thoughts on “The Bottom Billion”
Over the past eight posts in this series on Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion, we have briefly surveyed four poverty traps and four instruments that free the poor from those traps. The four traps are: The Conflict Trap The Natural Resources Trap The Landlocked by Bad Neighbors Trap The Bad Governance in a Small Country…
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Prosperity: The Trade Policy Instrument
The final instrument for addressing the problems of the poorest nations, given in Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion, is trade policy. Collier acknowledges the complex ramifications of trade. He laments the good-intentioned but wrongheaded campaigns of many activist and Christian organizations who cast freer trade as a conspiracy of large corporations to take advantage of…
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Prosperity: The Laws and Charters Instrument
Paul Collier lists four instruments for addressing poverty in The Bottom Billion. We have looked at aid and military intervention. We turn now to the third instrument, laws and charters. Collier writes that far too often, “…the rich countries have been a safe haven for the criminals of the bottom billion.” (136) The idea of…
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Prosperity: The Military Intervention Instrument
Paul Collier starts his brief chapter on military intervention in The Bottom Billion this way: After Iraq it is difficult to arouse much support for military intervention. For me this chapter is the toughest in the book because I want to persuade you that external military intervention has an important place in helping the societies…
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Prosperity: The Aid Instrument
Probably the most intuitive response to the plight of the bottom billion is for the wealthy to give aid to the poor. Poor people lack resources, so let's give them more resources. The left champions this approach as reparations for colonialism, and the right equates aid with welfare for those who won't do what they…
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Prosperity: Instruments of Change
We've now glanced at the four poverty traps listed in Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion. To summarize, Collier writes concerning the people of the bottom billion: "Seventy-three percent of them have been through civil war, 29percent of them are in countries dominated by the politics of natural resource revenues, 30 percent are landlocked, resource-scarce, and…
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Prosperity: Poor Governance in a Small Country Trap
The fourth of Paul Collier's poverty traps in The Bottom Billion is the Poor Governance in a Small Country Trap. Collier writes: "Excellent governance and economic policies can help the growth process, but there is a ceiling to feasible growth rates at around 10 percent: economies just cannot grow much faster than this no matter…
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Prosperity: Landlocked With Bad Neighbors Trap
The third poverty trap in Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion is the “Landlocked With Bad Neighbors Trap.” The overwhelming majority of the world’s population lives in nations with access to the oceans. Yet Collier reports that 38% of the bottom billion live in landlocked countries and all but 1% of these folks are in Africa.…
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Prosperity: The Natural Resource Trap
In the previous post, we reviewed the Conflict Trap, the first of four poverty traps presented in Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion. Now we turn to the second trap: the Natural Resource Trap. It is common for folks to assume that the way out of poverty for a poor nation is to discover natural resources…