Analyzing Jeffrey Sachs's 'End Of Poverty'

In Ruby Payne's “A Framework for Understanding Poverty” she endeavors to provide educators with strategies to teach children from poor families, but Ruby Payne went wrong when she just took a mental image from a classroom and began analyzing on what she saw without enough evidence, her principal message was that poverty is not simply a monetary condition. She describes it to her audiences as a culture with particular rules, values, and knowledge transmitted from one generation to the next.

The end is approaching if I may say. Many dangers have approached earth and have surrounded our small planet. Yet we all wonder what the main or the most dangerous to human existence is. On May 28, 2008, Robert J. Samuelson, a columnist for The Washington Post, published the article "Rx for Global Poverty". Robert J. Samuelson claims that the greatest moral challenge the world is facing nowadays is global poverty. He stated that Poverty has left about 2.5 billion people, which makes up more than one-third of the earth’s population, in 2004 to survive on an estimated $2 a day. However, with time, statistics show that many countries have been able to eradicate poverty and have their economies flourish (Samuelson, 2008). According to Samuelson,

The novel, “The Working Poor” by David K. Shipler gives us an inside look into the lives of the lower class and he explores exactly what it means to do hard, exhausting but honest work in America. The working poor are working people whose incomes fall below the poverty line. While poverty is often associated with joblessness, a significant proportion of the poor are actually employed. Shipler teaches us that just because you have finally become employed does not mean that most or all of your worries are over, often times they are increased. Largely because they are earning such low wages, the working poor face numerous obstacles that make it difficult for many of them to find and keep a job, save up money, and maintain a sense of self-worth. Shipler did an amazing job bringing light to the “forgotten America”.

The 1960s were a time of change. The Vietnam war just erupted, the youth were rejecting the ideas of the elders, and jobs started to disappear with the advancements of technology. All these changes lead many Americans to fall into poverty. This then caused Lyndon B. Johnson to “declare war on poverty” and enact many welfare programs to raise the county out of poverty. These programs became known as “The Great Society”.

In the passage, “Planet of Slums” by Mike Davis, the author has a dystopic view on urbanization and argues that urban poverty is increasing and has a negative impact on the world. His dystopic vision can be written off as a society with undesirable traits such as poverty, oppression, and overcrowding. Davis’s vision on these people’s lifestyle can be compared and contrasted with Robert Neuwirth’s view of this lifestyle in his passage, “Shadow Cities” and the film “Sleep Dealer” by Alex Rivera.

Something that got my attention that Brain Mueller said during the Thrive Family Business Conference was how prominent poverty is in our community. His view of poverty is that God never intended for it, but it is an effect of our rebellion from God through sin. I have never thought of poverty in the sense of sin. I grew up in a very privileged suburb in Colorado and only dealt with poverty when I would go to Downtown Denver. I am surrounded or effected by poverty a lot more since attending Grand Canyon University. Having this culture shock has taught me to appreciate what I have and my opportunities. God has blessed me a lot in my life with a great family, house, and life. I have amazing parents who have taught me to do well for myself, the

Criticism of the economy can differ dramatically. Many might have very polar opposite ideas as to what needs to be done in order to better provide for a society's economic well-being. This is definitely the case between Karl Marx and Andrew Carnegie. Despite some basic similarities regarding the need for economic change, Marx's "Communist Manifesto" and Carnegie's "The Gospel of Wealth" prove incredibly different in how they claim to provide real solutions for economic problems. Marx demands that the people take back control of the means of production and redistribute wealth to all; while Carnegie insists that only an elite few in a society are responsible enough for handling the wealth and should remain in absolute control of it, even when determining how it is being redistributed into the society.

During the time of World War I, the United States was dealing with a lot of internal problems. At the time before the war, Darwinism is very prominent. The working class looked to those in poverty as if they were the scum of the earth. Then there was the gospel of wealth. The gospel of wealth believed the things that you have is a divine blessing and has favor in the eyes of God (Roark, Johnson, Cohen, Stage, & Hartmann, 2014, p.563). While the working class enjoyed themselves those in poverty was trying to make a living. Those in poverty could of ran to a settlement house. Settlement houses were sent up in poor neighborhoods to help with the progressivism (Roark, Johnson, Cohen, Stage, & Hartmann, 2014, p.563). Jane Adams and Lillian Wald started the profession of social work by living amongst the less fortunate and helping them get to where they were (Roark, Johnson, Cohen, Stage, & Hartmann, 2014, p.563).

Poverty within America has steadily been decreasing with it being at 14.8% in 2014, 13.5% in 2015 and the most recent statistic of poverty among Americans being at 12.7 during the year 2016.Although we should not yet claim poverty among Americans is no longer an issue as it is 1.4 higher than it was seventeen years ago. Poverty, although decreasing, is a blight on America and should be deal with to prevent suffering upon Americans. Poverty is a social issue and should be approached as such, a social theory that should be used to eliminate poverty is the social conflict theory as it takes the approach that we should not blame the poor for their situation instead we should blame the way society operates. Society does tend to give poor people benefits albeit, in the wrong ways, society should instead support the poor to obtain a better education and support the natural reconstruction of a neighborhood.

Poverty is a huge issue which never seems to ever go away or be fixed. There are many options as to what can be done to eliminate poverty but, not all options please everyone. John Kenneth Galbraith in his essay “The Position of Poverty” argues that “to eliminate poverty, we must invest more than proportionately in the children of the poor community (Jacobus). Money has been a very important tool that has divided the world and given humans labels as wealthy or poor. The wealthy seem to have worked hard for what they have but others not so much. Poverty has been growing and it has been spreading across the world. Those people who are poor sometimes have no chance to exit the poverty that have been in because of very little supplies or just not a great community or environment, some with very little food and they just give up and never keep trying to exit this moment in their lives. The rich must make an effort to try and redistribute the money in our nation to eliminate poverty for good.

Another concept that stood out to me was in the article Four myths About Poverty by David B. Grusky. Towards the end of the article Grusky provided an explanation for why there are entrenched interests at work that keeps the system afloat through poverty myths. The answer was simply that the well-off don’t have an incentive to open up high quality schooling to all and to expose themselves and their children to open competition. This concept was really impactful to me because it was simply straight forward and provided me the (reader) with the harsh reality of why the war on poverty seemed to be such a big failure. Some people have the mistaken notion that to help others means less for them and their families when in reality when we help other

Sachs stated that, “the gulf between today’s rich and poor countries is therefore a new phenomenon, a yawning gap that open during the period of modern economic growth” (sachs 28). He also believes that the rich did not rob the poor. We live in a world where each countries develops at their own growth. However, many factor influence the economic growth of a county such as the government. According to Sachs he stated that the many made assumptions that the United States used military force and political strength during and after the era of colonialism to steal the wealth from the poorest region. Since sachs did not believe in any of these assumptions he used factual evidence to defend the assumption. If the gross world product had remained constantly

Matthew effect has different meaning in each field. For example, in sociology is the where “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Robert K. Merton states in his book Social Theory and Social Structure “In both its original and typical usage it is meant metaphorically to refer to issues of fame or status but it may also be used literally to refer to cumulative advantage of economic capital” (Merton, 7) Matthew effect or the story of success can be the answer of same question that many people might have. Why some people are more successful than others? The answer couldn’t be just their intelligence or hard working, as Malcolm Gladwell explains in his book. There would be many more reasons to make a person successful. If we want to understand that we shouldn’t just research only about the person, also we need to spend more time and research about everything around him such as culture, family, and their habit. One of Gladwell mention in his book is about the hockey players. The players don’t have same situation and opportunities to be chosen in the team. It is hard to imagine the difference of the age for some months will effect on the young student chance to be elected on the team. As well Barnsley in Outliers argues that “these kinds of skewed age distributions exist whenever three things happen: selection, streaming, and differentiated experience.” (Gladwell, 25) However, Gladwell named many of the elements which will be effective such as date of birth, family, and

There are three main arguments believed to be the explanations for the existence and persistence of poverty. The first account is the Dependency-Based Explanation that puts the blame of poverty to the individual or to their cultural background. The Exclusion-Based Explanation and Structural-Based Explanation are the next two which establishes the society that condemns people to poverty.

Throughout, there is a keen sense that the IMF is completely guided by ideology which is focused on the free market and the markets’ ability to guide the economy properly at all times. It would seem that all those who work at the IMF are misguided and/or towing the party line in the form of the Washington Consensus. Moreover, of greater concern is perhaps that throughout this piece, it would seem that the World Bank could do no wrong. Stiglitz portrays himself and the World Bank as the white knight(s) who were championing the rights of those who could not fight for themselves against the US government, the US Treasury and even the Federal Reserve. He does so with little regard to any policies or actions that these organizations have done for positive reasons or with positive results. He displays unwavering support for governments to stimulate aggregate demand via social spending, so it is surprising that he is so punitive towards Western governments.