Tag: William Easterly
-
Poverty is not a human rights violation
Aid Watch: Poverty is not a human rights violation The title of this blog will make many think I am callous, and yet I definitely agree that poverty is an EXTREMELY BAD THING. Perhaps some use the words “human rights violation” to be equivalent to “extremely bad thing,” but why? There are many different “extremely…
-
When Will There Be Good News? Does it Help There Already Was Some?
Aid Watch: When Will There Be Good News? Does it Help There Already Was Some? William Easterly Amid the general doom and gloom, fears about how the crisis will affect poor countries, and fierce criticism of markets, states, and aid agencies, perhaps it’s healthy to step back to the big picture and recognize there has…
-
Affluence and Ethics
Wall Street Journal: Affluence and Ethics by William Easterly Suppose you see a small child drowning in a pond. If you save him you will ruin your expensive suit. Do you save him? Of course you do. Now think about the world's extremely poor children who are going to die unless you give enough to…
-
Does Respecting the Individual Promote Prosperity?
Aid Watch (William Easterly): Does Respecting the Individual Promote Prosperity? I am covering in my Ph.D. development class today a fascinating new body of research by economists that studies the effects of cultural values on economic development (see some references at the bottom). To drastically oversimplify, values across different cultures lie along a spectrum between…
-
Easterly Reviews Collier
The New York Review of Books: Foreign Aid Goes Military! This is a book review of Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by William Easterly, the author of The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So…
-
Trust the development experts – all 7bn
Financial Times: Trust the development experts – all 7bn by William Easterly The report of the World Bank Growth Commission, led by Nobel laureate Michael Spence, was published last week. After two years of work by the commission of 21 world leaders and experts, an 11- member working group, 300 academic experts, 12 workshops, 13 consultations,…
-
William Easterly Interview
Tom Keene of Bloomberg News recently interviewed William Easterly of New York University and author of The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. (See my review) The blurb for the interview says: Easterly Says Bill Gates Has `Blind Spot' in Poverty…
-
Why Bill Gates Hates My Book
Wall Street Journal: Why Bill Gates Hates My Book by William Easterly This newspaper reported recently that Bill Gates hates my ideas. I have no hurt feelings, at least nothing that months of intensive psychotherapy can't cure. Mr. Gates, after all, has allied himself with the foreign aid establishment. … ………. Profit-motivated capitalism, on the…
-
Bill Gates Issues Call For Kinder Capitalism
Wall Street Journal: Bill Gates Issues Call For Kinder Capitalism Famously Competitive, Billionaire Now Urges Business to Aid the Poor. Free enterprise has been good to Bill Gates. But today, the Microsoft Corp. chairman will call for a revision of capitalism. In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the software tycoon…
-
The White Man’s Burden – Book Review
For nearly sixty years, the United States and Western governments have been giving aid to developing nations unilaterally through international organizations like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and non-governmental organizations. Economist Jeffery Sachs was all the rage in 2005 with his book The End of Poverty, making the case for a “Big Push”…