END OF WORLD POVERTY

Sachs, Jeffery (2005) The end of poverty, TIME, 3/14, 46-54.
Zachary, G. Pascal (2005) Poor idea, NEW REPUBLIC, 3/16, 16-19.

The first book starts with 8 billion starve to death every year. Half of the world lives on a few dollars a day. Sach's suggest that the following big 5 be the center piece. They are: 1) Boosting agriculture 2.) Improving basic health 3.) Investing in basic education 4.) Providing clean water and sanitation and 5) Bringing in energy like electricity.

Sachs wants or hopes that foreign aid will fund the above and that is where the problem may begin and end. What's in it for the rich countries? One simpler more modest strategy is to make micro loans to WOMEN who have children and are subsistent farmers.

The second article is a critical review of C.K. Prahalad strategy. It is one that finds favor with a number of billionaires. Its basic premise is that markets create consumers, not the other way around. Thus a large multinational corporation turns the poor into consumers. Thus both prosper.

At first, this might be attractive as corporations build in an area with local laborers. To survive the corporations will need the 5 basics from the list indicated above. However, how does this sustain the private corporations? This assume somehow and some way that the poor will have discretionary income to buy things. Further it assumes that the poor will seek investment capital and make things or provides services that multi-nationals do not want to do.

That puts the cart before the horse If anything, productivity and consumer ship appear to rise together. Investment capital is not easily attracted to what appears to be a bad choice of investment money. Command socialism has been tried before in some of these areas why would command capitalism do remarkably better?