Columbia’s Jeffrey Sachs knows that Africa’s economic woes have nothing to do with poorly defined property rights institutions. They have everything to do with not enough wealth transfers from rich countries to the poor.
What Africa needs, then, is not more scolding from the West. It needs a ‘’big push’’ — a flood of foreign aid — to boost its prospects and carry it into the developed world.
Amazingly, this constitutes original thinking (I call it “Cheap Sachs”), even though it ignores the disastrous effects of foreign aid programs over the last several decades. More from last Sunday’s NYT Magazine.
