Free People Create Prosperity

Star Parker has written an excellent response to Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs plan to cut world poverty by half. Her entire article can be read here. So what is his plan?

"Quadruple U.S. foreign aid. Add a total of about $130 billion to foreign-aid expenditures of the world's industrialized countries and recycle these funds into spending programs in developing nations. According to Sachs, these programs will reduce global poverty by 50 percent by 2015."

"Sachs talks about "ending poverty in our time," which we can do by adopting his "new method." Tax and spend to end our problems? A new method?"

"But government spending programs do not create prosperity. Free people do."

"Regarding U.S. generosity, Sachs seems to have little interest in work done by Carol Adelman of the Hudson Institute, who has shown that U.S. philanthropy going abroad from private sources is three-and-a-half times larger than official U.S. government foreign aid."

"Sachs is promoting exactly the wrong message in parts of the world that need to hear the opposite of what he is telling them. I hope our own government does not cave in to his demands. We should listen to President Bush that freedom is the message America should be sharing with the rest of the world."

This is mighty powerful stuff.