I found a few moments to resume this blog! I've read 3 books recently that got me to thinking about economic development in the larger social context of what economic development means to society. Forget, for a moment, about the stuggles of the creative class to find cool places to live and consider a few other perspectives...

In The End of Poverty, Jeffrey Sachs describes a series of economic development efforts he has personal experience with--from working with the government of Bolivia following the collapse of the world tin market and hyperinflation in the 1980s, the integration of Poland into the world economy following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and most poignantly, the struggles of Africans to overcome "extreme poverty" where the most basic needs are not being met. His optimistic agenda for helping the poor of the world requires a great deal of "national action," for lack of a better word. Debt forgiveness, billions of dollars of aid, fundamental and sweeping changes in world policies. Too much to describe here, but the point is the problem is not unsolvable and much of our despair and/or defeatism is based on convenient myths about the corruption and ignorance of the poor. But I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it unless I can get myself a Ph.D in Economics and take over the World Bank and IMF.

Closer to home, after becoming a bit jaded from reading too much career advice from the Brazen Careerist--which is great stuff, don't get me wrong, but targeted at people who are generally trying to get from upper middle class America to upper upper or middle/happier class instead of starving to hungry class--I read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, her story of how she tried to subsist on minimum wage jobs in America. It is a predictable and sad story where nobody is worrying about how to manage up; they are just worrying about how to manage.

One of her jobs is working for "The Maids" - a franchise cleaning service - in Maine. It is a hard life; scrubbing floors on her hands and knees, spending all day cleaning a house, not allowed to eat or drink anything, then trying to work a second job to make ends meet. It is useful to read these stories and understand that many people have to put up with a lot of crap (sometimes literally, in the case of the Maids) and for very little gain. It is easy to blame people for bad decisions, but it is never that easy. People live in hotels because they can't afford to rent an apartment. People eat junk food all the time because it's what they can get. Life is hard for many Americans and they are a long way from climbing any ladder or realizing their creative potential.

But reality check time and back to Africa...Sachs mentions a number of success stories of how diseases like river blindness have been eradicated with a sustained commitment from people with resources. Jimmy Carter, in Our Endangered Values, tells part of the story of how the Carter Center is helping to eradicate Guinea worm:

Depending on drinking water from ponds that fill during the rainy season, villagers imbibe worm eggs that grow in the stagnant water. After a year, the egg grows within the body into a worm about thirty inches in length, which then stings the inside of the skin, forming a large sore that destroys muscle tissue and incapacitates the sufferer with intense pain. Taking about a month to emerge, the worm lays countless eggs as the victim wades into the pond for more water or to ease the pain.

Rosalynn and I first saw the ravages of Guinea worm in small and isolated villages in Ghana, where two-thirds of the people had worms emerging from their bodies...

We found 3.5 million cases of the disease in 23,700 villages in India, Pakistan, Yemen, and eighteen countries across sub-Saharan Africa, and begant he slow and methodical task of instructing people in every affected village on the necessary steps to protect themselves....

My point in quoting this is not to disgust, but to stretch our perspective a bit. People like me are worrying about how to get the best deal on a new car and support my family on a single income in a housing market where starter homes cost $500K+. Lots of people wish they had that worry. And nobody around here has worms coming out of their bodies. It's not to say that we should just be happy for what we have because there are people worse off, but to realize that we all need to figure out how to be better off.