As Tom Sowell has pointed out, blacks were making great progress before the 1960s. From 1940 to 1960, not an easy time for blacks in America, the incidence of black poverty dropped 50 percent.
I find it particularly ironic that Sachs chooses to wave his finger most accusingly at his own country. Listening to Sachs, you would think that the United States, the world's greatest engine of prosperity, is the most guilty for current levels of global poverty.
This gets back to the fact that Sachs thinks that foreign aid (translation: government spending programs) is what creates prosperity. So, by Sachs's measure, the United States is stingy and not doing its part.
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.
Recently I had the privilege of meeting John Coors, a businessman, entrepreneur and Christian philanthropist. While flying over sub-Saharan Africa at night, he looked down from his plane and saw darkness, even though he knew he was flying over a highly populated area. He knew what to do. He started a program setting up energy stores and delivering batteries and small propane stoves to these communities. He found that families were willing to invest two months of their meager income to purchase these stoves. Coors is bringing light to Africa and he is doing it through his own initiative.
Certainly, I share Sachs' concern about poverty and suffering. But the answer is what Coors is doing. This option is open to Sachs. He could use his energy to mobilize private resources and private philanthropists and encourage freedom and the values that go along with this.
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.