E-mail a friendJeffrey Sachs
airdate February 27, 2009
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a leading voice for combining economic development with environmental sustainability. He is director of Columbia's Earth Institute and co-founder of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit aimed at ending extreme global poverty. The Detroit native previously spent more than 20 years at Harvard, where he received three degrees and was one of the youngest economics professors in the school's history. His book Common Wealth is the follow-up to his acclaimed '05 best seller The End of Poverty.
Economist says that the Obama administration's emphasis on science, technology, and education will pay off. (1:22)
Full interview. (12:39)
Jeffrey Sachs
Tavis: Jeffrey Sachs is a noted economist and best-selling author who serves as the director of The Earth Institute at Columbia. He has twice been named by "Time" magazine as one of the world's most influential people. His latest book is now out in paperback. It's called "Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet." He joins us tonight from New York. Jeff Sachs, nice to have you back on the program, sir.
Jeffrey Sachs: Great to be with you, Tavis. Thanks so much.
Tavis: Let me start by going right at it. You argue in the book that we have to start thinking and acting as a global community. I don't ask this question out of any naiveté, but why do we have to think and act globally when for years we've been taught to think and act locally?
Sachs: Because every problem we face is a global problem and even problems that start as a local problem, a subprime mortgage crisis on Wall Street, becomes a global problem these days. The world's so interconnected that there is absolutely nothing that happens of importance one place that doesn't spread all over the world.
We've got climate change problems. We've got political instability and terrorism problems. We've got financial crisis problems. We have populations on the move, a lot of displaced people, migrants, people desperate to go from one place to another. So everything is crossing national boundaries right now except our very local politics often.
Tavis: What happens if we don't unite as a global community and start to solve these problems?
Sachs: Well, you see, the world is not working very well if we got a great president and he's got absolutely the right vision of getting to the core problems, a new energy system, a new green economy, thinking about how to pull us out of our short-term rut through the long term. But to do that - and the president said it in his speech this week - we're gonna need a lot of global cooperation.
One of the amazing things and very worrisome is that our stimulus that has just been put in place could be cut by half in its effect because the rest of the world is now falling so fast economically that our exports to the rest of the world are also really starting to plummet. So we have a global crisis and need a global cooperative approach for the economy, for the climate, for the energy systems, for the security.
Tavis: You argue, Jeffrey, in this text rather adamantly that we are on the precipice of - my word, not yours - but the precipice of the end of American dominance. Some would regard that as anti-American thinking.
Sachs: Well, what's happened is that some of the things that we pioneered and invented are now worldwide knowledge, so the technology systems, the information technology, the way to mobilize energy, this is now worldwide.
And there's something very positive about that also because hundreds of millions of people who were trapped in poverty before coming out of poverty and even in some of the very poorest places in the world - I'm working in a lot of villages in Africa - the cell phone has made a revolution in the most positive way. So this is pulling up places that were really out of the game before and that's what's changing the nature of the world economy.
We had, Tavis, you know, really an extraordinary scene actually. It really shook me as the new era of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Beijing publicly saying to the Chinese, "Please keep buying our Treasury Bills. We need your money. We need you to keep lending us the money."
That's a change of the world economy that we're out there publicly saying, "Help," because we're running deficits and we need you to keep financing them. It means that the world is now interconnected much more of equals, of course. The U.S. is still the largest economy in the world by far, but a lot of places are catching up and power is definitely defusing all over the world.
Tavis: I don't want to read, Jeffrey, too much into your last comments, but can I take your last comment to read that you're not bullish on America right about now?
Sachs: Look, I'm so bullish on this new administration, I can't tell you. So I think we've got a great way forward, but I think that it's not the U.S. standing alone. That was the neocon philosophy which I frankly always thought was very naïve, that the U.S. could go it alone, decide its own way. I think we're way beyond that and I do think we have tremendous capacity.
What I love of all things about the Obama administration is the emphasis on science, technology, education because that's a home base for America and recovering that means a lot of great American leadership, but it is leadership that's gonna be in partnership with other countries because we're five percent of the world's population.
We've got a worldwide crisis. We have a worldwide need to get on top of this climate change issue, to get on top of this energy issue, for the planet to get on top of a water stress issue because California's got drought, China's got drought, India's got drought, Africa's got drought. So this is, again, another example of a global issue where we need cooperative approaches.
Tavis: I want to bounce around here for a minute and I'll come back and tie this all up before our conversation ends. But you said a couple of things that are somewhat disparate, but I want to go back and pick them up one at a time.
Sachs: Right.
Tavis: Let me start with a comment you made a moment ago, Jeffrey, about the work you're doing in villages in Africa. I just read a piece, saw a piece, the other day. The author's name escapes me, but it was in "The New York Times" magazine. I see you nodding your head, so you know the piece.
Sachs: I sure do.
Tavis: The writer of a new book here - and she's not the only person making this argument. There are others who've made the argument that we, the U.S., and others, for that matter, but the U.S. needs to stop, s-t-o-p, stop spending so much money in Africa that is propping up dictators, it's leading to thievery and raping of the people economically. It's causing other problems in the planet. It's making them codependent. You know the arguments. Talk to me about that since you spend so much time in Africa.
Sachs: If she says stop, I'll say she is w-r-o-n-g, wrong, completely wrong because the kind of aid that is really working right now is helping children to sleep under insecticide-treated bed nets to save their lives from malaria that's really working, to help people that were HIV-infected get the medicines that they need. That's what that global fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria - I'm proud to have had a role in getting that started - is doing and it's having a fabulous effect.
I'm seeing how aid directed to the impoverished farmers can help them triple the amount of food that they eat. All of a sudden, there's enough food for their families, enough food for the market, enough food for the local school. So what I'm seeing is, if we're practical in partnering, empowering people, not giving handouts, not giving envelopes of money to dictators, that's not at all what needs to be done.
We need to help farmers grow more food. We need to help people have the basic medicines and the basic nutrients they need to be healthy. We need to make sure the children are in school getting a midday meal, able to stay in school through secondary education at a minimum just as the president said, again, this week, that there's basic infrastructure, solar panels for schools, for clinics, for farmer organizations.
So if we're practical, if we're focused, what help can do is to provide the base for self-empowerment and that's the kind of aid that I've been championing, I've been helping to design. I see it working with my own eyes. To try to pull back on that would actually devastate now hundreds of millions of people whose lives are improving when we help them in specific, targeted, measurable ways.
So she's frankly a Goldman Sachs investor living in London and saying things not about the people in the villages, what they really need.
Tavis: You mentioned a moment ago, Jeffrey, hundreds of millions of people. Indeed, there are many, many people on the continent of Africa. There are many people in the country of China that you referenced earlier in this conversation. Your take on what is becoming a more and more talked about subject and yet not any less controversial, the notion of population growth in certain parts of the world.
Sachs: I can't tell you how important it is that poor places right now where women are still having six or seven children absolutely need to get the fertility rates down. Voluntarily, absolutely, but by empowering women, by making sure there's family planning available, by making sure the girls are staying in school at least through high school education, by making sure the children are surviving so that parents aren't saying, "Oh, we need six or seven children because we don't know if they'll survive."
So by putting together the framework in which households can say, "We're gonna have two children. We're gonna raise them very well. Even with our meager incomes, we can help those two get a full education, proper nutrition and so on."
That would improve the situation in the impoverished countries where farm sizes are cutting in half every generation because of the rapid population growth and would make the situation much easier for the planet as a whole because there's such tremendous stress right now of 6.7 billion people adding net 80 million a year right now, going up to 9 or even 10 billion people by mid century when we have climate stress, water stress, too small farm sizes, food insecurity.
The world can't afford it. Neither can these poor households, but they've been left alone without family planning, without contraception, without a secondary school so that the girls can become empowered and get a proper education. We've got to talk about this subject. As sensitive as it is, it's absolutely crucial right now. The world is filled up.
Tavis: Let me offer this as an exit question, Jeffrey. You were talking about a moment ago that the world can't afford not to do what you're suggesting needs to be done. I guess the question is, how can the U.S. afford it?
I'm sure there's somebody right now watching and itching for me to ask you how it is, with all the problems that we have, you're bullish on Mr. Obama, he laid out an expensive and in-depth domestic agenda earlier this week, but how do we do what's on our domestic plate and get to any of the stuff that you're putting on our international and our global plate?
Sachs: Well, one thing is, we end up spending a trillion dollars in war because of instability in places where, if we had spent 1/100th of that on peaceful development, we would have saved ourselves a lot of trouble. So one thing is, our imbalance between the military side and the development side got way out of kilter. We waited until crises hit and then we sent in the military at unbelievable cost in money and blood without success because hungry unstable populations can't be stabilized that way. That's number one, Tavis.
Number two is, you know, it's struck me and it pains me, I have to tell you When Merrill Lynch gave these bonuses out of our money in December, $4 billion dollars of bonuses after they wrecked the economy, that's about what the U.S. gives for aid to Africa. So if you can imagine, our aid for 800 million people is what Bank of America and Merrill Lynch - Merrill Lynch especially - paid itself in bonuses at the end of last year.
I want to go back after those bonuses, frankly. I think we ought to retake them because they were absolutely inappropriate. Unethical at a minimum, perhaps illegal as well, but absolutely unethical. That's the kind of scale of money that we're now putting into Africa. We could double it with that bonus money that never should have been paid. So the money is here, but it's just going to the wrong places right now.
Tavis: He's a "New York Times" best-selling author. More importantly, he's committed to the work that he's been doing for so many years, all the years I've known him. His book now out in paperback, his latest, is called "Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet." Jeffrey D. Sachs, author of "The End of Poverty." Jeff, as always, I appreciate your insight. Thank you for your passion and your compassion.
Sachs: I love being on your show, Tavis.
Tavis: Glad to have you on, sir.
Sachs: Thanks a lot.
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