THAT interesting title is a subhead in Dr. Jeffrey D. Sachs’s fascinating and highly instructive best-selling book, The Price of Civilization, published in 2011 by Random House, which captured the American imagination and the world’s millennial generation.
He began in that section of his book, page 9, with one of Socrates’s famous quotations, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” and then added his own: “We might equally say that the unexamined economy is not capable of securing our well-being. Our greatest national illusion is that a healthy society can be organized around the single-minded pursuit of wealth.”
Sachs said: “The ferocity of the quest for wealth throughout society has left Americans exhausted and deprived of the benefits of social trust, honesty and compassion. Our society has turned harsh, with the elites on Wall Street, in Big Oil and in Washington among the most irresponsible and selfish of all. When we understand this reality, we can begin to refashion our economy.”
According to him, “Two of humanity’s greatest sages, Buddha in the Eastern tradition and Aristotle in the Western tradition, counseled us wisely about humanity’s innate tendency to chase transient illusions rather than to keep our minds and lives focused on deeper, longer-term sources of well-being. Both urged us to keep to a middle path, to cultivate moderation and virtue in our personal behavior and attitudes despite the allures of extremes.”
Sachs explained: “Both urge us to look after our personal needs without forgetting our compassion toward others in society. Both cautioned that the single-minded pursuit of wealth and consumption leads to addictions and compulsions rather than to happiness and the virtues of a life well lived.”
“Throughout the ages,” he said, “other great sages, from Confucius to Adam Smith, to Mahatma Gandhi and the Dalai Lama, have joined the call for moderation and compassion as the pillars of a good society.”
“To resist the excesses of consumerism and the obsessive pursuit of wealth is hard work, a lifetime challenge. To do so in our media age, filled with noise, distraction and temptation, is a special challenge. We can escape our current economic illusions by creating a mindful society, one that promotes the personal virtues of self-awareness and moderation, and the civic virtues of compassion for others and the ability to cooperate across the divides of class, race, religion and geography. Through a return to personal and civic virtue, our lost prosperity can be regained,” he argued.
America is ready for reform
After meticulously vetting America’s burdensome economic history in the first half of his 322-page book, Sachs was specific on what should be done. He said:
“First, can we really afford more government activism in an era of huge budget deficits? I’ll show that we both can and must.
“Second, can a program of thoroughgoing reform really be manageable? Here, too, the answer is yes, even by a government that currently exhibits chronic incompetence.
“Third, is a reform program politically achievable in an era when politics is as divisive as it is today?”
“Successful reforms,” he said, “are almost always initially greeted with a broad chorus of skepticism. ‘That is politically impossible.’ ‘The public will never agree.’ ‘Consensus is beyond reach.’ These are the jeremiads we hear today whenever deep and real reforms are proposed. During my quarter century of work around the world, I’ve heard them time and again, only to find that deep reforms were not only possible but eventually came to be viewed as inevitable.”
Much of his book is about the social responsibility of the rich, “roughly the top 1 percent of American households, who have never had it so good. They sit at the top of the heap at the same time that around 100 million Americans live in poverty or in its shadow.
“I have no quarrel with wealth per se. Many wealthy individuals are highly creative, talented, generous and philanthropic. My quarrel is with poverty. As long as there is both widespread poverty and booming wealth at the top, and many public investments (in education, child care, training, infrastructure and other areas) that could reduce or end the poverty, then tax cuts for the rich are immoral and counterproductive.
“I’m a firm believer in the market economy, yet American prosperity in the 21st century also requires government planning, government investments and clear, long-term policy objectives that are based on the society’s shared values. Government planning runs deeply against the grain in Washington today. My 25 years of work in Asia have convinced me of the value of long-term government planning—not, of course, the kind of dead-end central planning that was used in the defunct Soviet Union, but long-term planning of public investments for quality education, modern infrastructure, secure and low-carbon energy sources and environmental sustainability.”
Sachs, an author of five highly acclaimed and persuasive books, is the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and a United Nation special adviser. He is internationally renowned for his contribution to solving some of the world’s most daunting economic and social crises in his role as a leading scholar and an economic mentor to governments and international organizations.
Don’t miss his books!
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.