PROMISING THE WORLD

In the foreword to a bestselling book bravely titled The End of Poverty, world-famous rock star and human rights activist Bono declares that we are the first generation that can afford to end poverty, “that can unknot the whole tangle of bad trade, bad debt, and bad luck. The first generation that can end a corrupt relationship between the powerful and the weaker parts of the world which has been wrong for so long.” The book's author, Jeffrey Sachs, begins with the same message: “currently, more than eight million people around the world die each year because they are too poor to stay alive. Our generation can choose to end that extreme poverty by the year 2025.” Sachs argues that the massive disparity between the wealthiest and poorest populations is a problem of relatively recent origin, dating from the take-off of modern economic growth “around 1800” (p. 27) – that is to say, at about the time William Wordsworth's poetic career was entering its most productive and enduring phase.

Sachs's argument becomes more modest and more subject to familiar qualifications as one reads on: it is only “extreme” poverty, not all poverty, that can or should be subject to relief (p. 289); it is the means toward self-help and not simple charity that is to be offered (p. 291); it is our own self-interest and not pure altruism that should encourage us to allocate resources to debt relief and direct assistance (pp. 288f.).