November 16, 2007 —
Fareed Zakaria: Can we actually end the world’s worst poverty? There’s an emerging consensus that says yes from Bono to Jeff Sachs that if we fight it with the right approach it will work. William Easterly is the author of The White Man’s Burden, and says it’s not so simple. Let’s start with this moment we’re at; it does seem as though there is a convergence from the left and the right--the left saying look, of course you have to have markets and you have to have growth. Redistribution is not going to solve this problem and--and on the right there is a--a sense of we are willing to provide economic aid whether it’s for reasons having to do with Christian Evangelicals or the problem of AIDS; there is a much greater sense of generosity on the right and a much greater sense of accountability if you will on the left. Is that something that you think came out of failure; you know the failure of these past aid efforts?
William Easterly: I don’t think it’s learned enough from the failure of the past aid efforts. The--the new consensus continues to embrace just throwing more money at the problem of poverty and the sad lesson of history is that we--for--for example in Africa, aid has already spent $600-billion in today’s dollars and yet Africans are very little above the living standards that they were at independence 50-years ago. With that kind of tragedy just having everyone come around the consensus of let’s just spend more money and end world poverty--it’s kind of a disappointment frank--frankly because the lesson of history is that we’ve tried that already and that didn’t work.
Read the entire interview transcript.