What really drives the poor.

[TalkingDog]

http://www.livemint.com/2011/06/24201858/What-really-drives-the-poor.html

he story of the women in Guntur offers some explanations about why the poor find it so difficult to improve their lot: Their tiny enterprises cannot be scaled up and multiple occupations do not allow them to specialize in a particular task. The dosa makers made their way into a brilliant paper on the economic lives of the poor, written by Banerjee and 38-year-old Esther Duflo, his MIT colleague and winner of the prestigious John Bates Clark medal awarded by the American Economics Association to young economists under the age of 40. Almost one out of every two Clark medal winners has eventually landed the Nobel Prize.

Some of the insights from that 2006 paper have been expanded in their new book, Poor Economics: Rethinking Poverty and the Ways to End It, that is due to be released in India next month. The book has already made waves in the West. “It has been years since I read a book that has taught me so much. Poor Economics represents the best that economics has to offer,” wrote Chicago economist and Freakonomics author Steven Levitt in a review.

Banerjee and Duflo steer clear of tall claims about a yellow brick road out of poverty. Their implicit message is that we should take the poor seriously, because a considerate look at their lives and choices can give policymakers, aid givers and action groups a better sense of how to spend money in programmes that are supposed to help the poor. Such a focus on the little things that matter also means that the policy solutions offered by Banerjee and Duflo involve small interventions rather than grand solutions—a sore point with some critics.

[grasswire]

1. such as affordable housing?

When waiting lists for housing assistance are ten years long, then some attention to the needs of the poor is certainly overdue.

Damn it.

[Mimosa]

2. America is going third world.

Sad to say. How do we stop it?

[Citizen Worker]

3. We stop it by investing in a massive public works program on the scale of the New Deal. Sadly, I

don't believe the political will exists in the congress, on either side of the aisle, for such an undertaking. But that's what it will take.

[chervilant]

9. Or,

revolution. Think satyagraha. Commit to occupying Freedom Plaza this October--until we break the stranglehold of the Corporate Megalomaniacs.

Think about it. If every single unemployed person could find a way to Freedom Plaza...what would the fascists DO with that sea of humanity?

[avebury]

4. K&R

[bemildred]

5. Helping the poor is not that difficult.

It's like helping the rich, you give them money, but in the case of the poor, you can stop once they have enough.

[larwdem]

6. LOL

YOU CAN STOP ONCE THEY HAVE ENOUGH TRUE SOOO! TRUE

[LeftishBrit]

8. That just about sums it up!

[provis99]

7. if that right wing idiot Steven Levitt endorsed their book,

I really don't want to read what it says.

The guy is a follower of Austrian "economics", fer chrissakes.