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In The Price of Civilization, Jeffrey Sachs examines how America might be able to return to prosperity.

Wade Martzall

In The Price of Civilization, Jeffrey Sachs examines how America might be able to return to prosperity.

The Price of Civilization

Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity

by Jeffrey D. Sachs

Hardcover, 324 pages | purchase

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October 18, 2011

The Occupy Wall Street movement has been criticized for lacking focus — but its main slogan seems to be resonating. That slogan, “We are the 99 percent,” highlights the issue of income disparity. It’s something economist Jeffrey Sachs has been tracking for a long time.

The top 1 percent of U.S. households now take about a quarter of all income, according to Sachs. And wages for the average American male peaked in 1973, he says.

“It means that for the typical young person right now who is a high school graduate — but on average will not get a bachelor’s degree — life is extremely challenging to find a foothold,” Sachs tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep, “with a stable job, with an opportunity to have a reliable income, health and other benefits and a chance to have the kind of middle-class life that we once took for granted.”

Sachs explores the result of the widening income gap in his new book, The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity. The book’s title was inspired by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who once said, “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”

Sachs says middle-class growth suffered in the 1980s when taxes were reduced and programs like energy research were scaled back — programs that he says would have made the United States more competitive in the face of globalization.

And he says current government policies, including President Obama’s jobs plan, are short-term fixes that still leave the country vulnerable.

Interview Highlights

On The Price Of Civilization

“If we’re going to have a society that is fair between rich and poor, we can’t leave vast parts of our society to suffer in a poverty trap, where young people grow up poor and then don’t have the means to make it into the middle class because they can’t meet college tuition, for example.

“Yet, we have become tighter and tighter in the help for higher education, while more competitive and successful economies have helped to ensure a rising proportion of young people actually complete college education. And we’re still stuck below 40 percent.”

On criticism from Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who says Sachs believes that “for people to be happy, their government must increasingly shield them from the challenges of life”

“My view of government is that government helps to empower us as productive individuals, as healthy people, as well-educated people, as businesses that can be competitive internationally — and it helps to do it in a way that’s fair and inclusive, and environmentally sound.

“Mr. Ryan is an extremist, in my view. He professes Libertarianism, which I think is a philosophy that is contrary to Americans’ compassion and sense of an inclusive society — but it’s also very bad economics. Because from the early days of our republic — whether it was building the canals, or the land-grant universities, or the federal highway system, or the National Institutes of Health — we’ve understood that government is part of the process of making us productive, fair and sustainable.”

On emerging from the economic crisis, and “civic virtue”

“The precise point is that money and wealth is accumulated so much at the top that it’s time for the wealthiest, richest and most powerful people in this country to play their proper role, to have the civic virtues to support America’s recovery — to stop saying that everything is theirs, and the rest of society has to suffer.

“I want the people at the top to have responsibility once again. First, to follow the law, because this has been an era of corporate recklessness and scandal and illegality.

“So, part of civic virtue is being lawful once again. But another part … is sharing in the responsibility in our society. And I believe that the richest and most powerful people have done very well over the last 30 years — but they have not done right for the American people. And it’s time that they do.”

Enlarge Rich Pedroncelli/AP

In California, where deep deficits have roiled the education system, a young protester holds a sign against layoffs and other cuts during a demonstration this past May.

Rich Pedroncelli/AP

In California, where deep deficits have roiled the education system, a young protester holds a sign against layoffs and other cuts during a demonstration this past May.

On the success of Northern Europe

“[Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland] have invested significantly in the skills of young people. They’ve created apprenticeship systems and vocational systems to help make the transition of young people from school to good jobs. They have promoted high technology … so that champions like Ericsson have been enormously successful worldwide in very tough global competition.

“I think we have a lot to learn from those countries … through being competitive on global markets, but having the strong, constructive role of government, to make sure that the labor force is well-trained, and that science and technology is continuing with rapid progress.”

On developing nations

“Being a country catching up, like China or Brazil, is a different phenomenon from being a country in the lead. … Both China and Brazil have done remarkable things in the last 20 years to promote rapid catching up.

“China has dramatically slashed poverty rates and developed, of course, what is now the world’s second-largest economy. Brazil, similarly, has made a huge effort from a society even more unequal than the United States … and very unstable politically … to become a much, much more inclusive society, with major investments in helping poor people to surmount hunger and undernutrition, and especially to help poor families and poor regions of the country to achieve solid educational outcomes.”

On America’s challenge

“Our challenge in the United States is, in the face of competition [from developing countries], to ensure that we don’t lose the bottom half of society into instability and poverty — that we continue to have a broad middle-class society. And that requires that we have the public investments alongside and helping to enable the private investments to keep us productive and competitive — with good jobs, and not with very low-paying jobs.”

Read an excerpt of The Price of Civilization

Related NPR Stories

Superrich Americans Driving Income Inequality Sept. 23, 2010

Economist Offers Antidote To Debt Contagion May 8, 2010

Predicting The Economic Recovery: Jeffrey Sachs March 3, 2009

World renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs knows what’s causing America’s economic woes — political lobbyists have too much power in Washington, economic stimulus plans and tax-cutting measures aren’t working, our infrastructure is crumbling and the cost of an education coupled with ever increasing holes in the social safety net is creating a “poverty trap” for low-income Americans.

In his new book The Price of Civilization, Sachs offers some solutions including a return to “civic virtues,” an acceptance of taxation and the adoption of new measures of economic well-being. Even if Sachs has all answers to create a utopia society, could any of them be implemented in this highly polarized political environment?

Guest:

Jeffrey Sachs, director at the Earth Institute; professor of Sustainable Development and Health Policy and Management at Columbia University

Triple Town is a new puzzler on Facebook that had its start on the Amazon Kindle last October, where it flourished in popularity. It was created by Spry Fox, a game studio founded by Daniel Cook, the co-creator of Realm of the Mad God, and David J. Edery, a former Worldwide Portfolio Manager for Xbox Live Arcade. After a spiffy makeover, Triple Town made its debut on Facebook and Google+ Games earlier this month, with plans to go mobile. According to AppData, its now attracted 190,000 monthly players on Facebook.

Hailed by one reviewer as the Civilization of match-three games, Triple Town is a unique title with familiar aesthetics. Spry Fox originally chose the Kindle as the games platform, which was explained as an interesting emerging opportunity by Edery. But as the game grew popular, Spry Fox wanted to spread the love around. Citing a lack of Bejeweled Blitz-type games on Facebook, Spry Fox decided to push for Triple Towns launch on the social network, as well as make it available in both English and Spanish.

As Gibson.com reported a while back, VH1 Classic is planning a slew of special programming to celebrate next months National Metal Day (11-11-11). Now, the cable channel has unveiled exactly what it has in store.

Friday, November 11 will feature three metal programming premieres Behind the Music Remastered: Megadeth at 9 pm, Metal Evolution Chapter 1 at 10 pm and the ninth season premiere of That Metal Show at 11 pm (all times Eastern). The day also will feature The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years and, of course, This is Spinal Tap.

Starting the following week, Behind the Music, the Metal Evolution documentary series and That Metal Show will move to their regular, Saturday night slots. According to a press release, guests on this season of That Metal Show include Slash, Marilyn Manson, Brian Johnson, Dave Mustaine, Sully Erna and others.

In addition to its programming on National Metal Day, VH1 Classic has scheduled a ton of metal concerts, specials and more in the 10 days leading up to the new holiday. Each night, a classic metal concert from the likes of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Alice Cooper and Metallica will be aired. And, on Wednesday, November 9, the channel will show a metal music video marathon (from A to Z) between 11 am and 11 pm

(10-12) 05:32 PDT , (AP) –

The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity (Random House), by Jeffrey D. Sachs: Jeffrey D. Sachs, one of Americas best known economists, has spent much of his career helping repair the effects of World War II in countries from Poland to Brazil. He now directs the Earth Institute at New Yorks Columbia University and is a special adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

He perceives the United States to be in decline, which he writes about in his new book, The Price of Civilization. Its likely to attract strong criticism from both the right and the left.

In the first half of the book, Sachs writes that on many days, it seems the only difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Big Oil owns the Republicans while Wall Street owns the Democrats.

He blames President Ronald Reagan for a new antipathy to government, adding: There is little doubt that a lot of pent-up greed was released, greed that infected the political system and that still haunts America today.

Sachs says Obama has continued down the path of open-ended war in Afghanistan and massive military budgets, kowtowing to lobbyists, stingy foreign aid, unaffordable tax cuts, unprecedented budget deficits, and a disquieting unwillingness to address the deeper causes of Americas problems.

He also accuses mass media and business interests that own them as fomenting many of the countrys ills.

Sachs writes that within one generation, Americans have displayed a shocking array of addictive behaviors, including smoking, overeating, TV watching, gambling, shopping, borrowing and loss of self-control, and are addicted to a miserable diet that has led to a staggering 33 percent obesity rate.

Readers who share his views will enjoy his vigorous criticism of people at the top of the heap; people he sees as misusing wealth to control government. Some readers may find it hard to follow the statistics and extensive graphs that he uses to support his stands.

The second half of the book takes a more cheerful stand on Americas destiny.

Sachs sees American Millennials people ages 19 to 30 as shaping the future of the country more than any other group over the next 25 years. He quotes the Pew Research Center as finding 67 percent of them supporting a bigger government providing more services, while only 31 percent of those over 65 take that view.

He sees education, adapted to the times, as the first decisive area, and writes that each Tuesday at Columbia he has the joy of participating in a global classroom with 20 campuses around the world linked by an Internet-based videoconferencing into a discussion of sustainable development.

He concludes that America will not again dominate the world economy or geopolitics as it did in the immediate aftermath of World War II. But he adds: If we again invest in ourselves for good health, safe environment, knowledge and cutting-edge skills renewed American prosperity can still be secured.

Editor:

For decent, equitable living for all nine billion people by 2050, a sustainable civilization could be nonsense … for many … laughable.

For all humanity, laughable nonsense will be tragic.

Our current political economy, based on selfish anti-social inequality … based on destroying nature’s biosphere and public trust, would appear to justify that our humanitarian dream will never become reality.

Minions supporting dominions has been tragic for humanity … especially for the last 200 years.  Millions of human beings unjustly deprived of their human dignity is a sad price to pay for …, etc.

Would all nine billion of us living decent lives by 2050 be reasonable? Would nine billion by 2030 be too much for our imagination? Imagine the elite top one per cent … or the ultra-elite top 10th of one per cent ever seeing themselves as socially equal to the rest of our human family.

We change our current economic/political worship of dog eat dog, anti-social rushing madness for acquiring personal wealth and superior status or … we make the future of social equality humanly impossible. Only a safe community of social equals can build a real democracy.

Is the vision of democratic evolutionary social equality … peace, harmony, social justice, sustainability, stability for all our children and our children’s children for at least another 1,000 future years? For the first time in human history, could democratic sustainability be fully realized?

The end of this generation will show what future our children and grandchildren will face at the end of this century. It could be wars … humans fighting humans for depleted/diminishing resources… mass climate refugees from hostile climates… further destruction of habitat and biosphere… decimations of species… food scarcity… the loss of human civilization.

We know which choices our current economists and politicians are making… even in our own local community. Will you follow them?

Herb Nakada

Williams Lake

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Like oil in the 20th century, water could well be the essential commodity on which the 21st century will turn.

Human beings have depended on access to water since the earliest days of civilization, but with 7 billion people on the planet as of October 31, exponentially expanding urbanization and development are driving demand like never before.

Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, said Kirsty Jenkinson of the World Resources Institute, a Washington think tank.

Water use is predicted to increase by 50 percent between 2007 and 2025 in developing countries and 18 percent in developed ones, with much of the increased use in the poorest countries with more and more people moving from rural areas to cities, Jenkinson said in a telephone interview.

Factor in the expected impacts of climate change this century — more severe floods, droughts and shifts from past precipitation patterns — that are likely to hit the poorest people first and worst and we have a significant challenge on our hands, Jenkinson said.

Will there be enough water for everyone, especially if population continues to rise, as predicted, to 9 billion by mid-century?

Theres a lot of water on Earth, so we probably wont run out, said Rob Renner, executive director of the Colorado-based Water Research Foundation.

The problem is that 97.5 percent of it is salty and … of the 2.5 percent thats fresh, two-thirds of that is frozen. So theres not a lot of fresh water to deal with in the world.

WATER RISK HOT SPOTS

Over a billion people lack access to clean drinking water, and over 2 billion live without adequate sanitation, leading to the deaths of 5 million people, mostly children, each year from preventable waterborne disease, Renner said.

Only 8 percent of the planets fresh water supply goes to domestic use and about 70 percent is used for irrigation and 22 percent in industry, Jenkinson said.

Droughts and insufficient rainfall contribute to whats known as water risk, along with floods and contamination.

Hot spots of water risk, as reported in the World Resources Institutes Aqueduct online atlas here , include:

– Australias Murray-Darling basin;

– the Colorado River basin in the US Southwest;

– the Orange-Senqu basin, covering parts of South Africa, Botswana and Namibia and all of Lesotho;

– and the Yangtze and Yellow river basins in China.

What is required, Jenkinson said, is integrated water resource management that takes into account who needs what kind of water, as well as where and how to use it most efficiently.

Water is going to quickly become a limiting factor in our lifetimes, said Ralph Eberts, executive vice president of Black Veatch, a $2.3 billion engineering business that designs water systems and operates in more than 100 countries.

He said he sees a reprioritization of resources to address the water challenges posed by changing climate and growing urbanization.

Eberts company is not alone. Water scarcity and water stress — which occurs when demand for water exceeds supply or when poor quality restricts use — has already hit water-intensive companies and supply chains in Russia, China and across the southern United States.

INVESTORS TAKE NOTE

At the same time, extreme floods have had severe economic impacts in Australia, Pakistan and the US Midwest, according to Ceres, a coalition of large investors and environmental groups that targeted water risk as an issue that 21st century businesses will need to address.

The centrality of fresh water to our needs for food, for fuel, for fiber is taking center stage in what has become a crowded, environmentally stressed world, said Ceres President Mindy Lubber.

A Ceres database lets institutional investors know which companies are tackling water risk. Nestle and Rio Tinto were seen as leading the way.

Water risk is already affecting business at apparel maker The Gap, which cut its profit forecast by 22 percent after drought cut into the cotton crop in Texas.

Similarly, independent gas producer Toreador Resources saw its stock price drop 20 percent after France banned shale-gas fracturing, primarily over concerns about water quality.

Food giants Kraft Foods Inc Sara Lee Corp and Nestle all announced planned price rises to offset higher commodity prices caused by droughts, flooding and other factors.

Water risk is more than a corporate concern. For international aid groups, it poses a risk of disaster for those in the path of increasing drought or rising uncertainty about water supplies.

In East Africa, for example, a changing climate could bring changes in temperature and precipitation that would shorten the growing season and cut yields of staple crops like maize and beans, hitting small farmers and herders hardest, according to an Oxfam report.

A scientific analysis of 30 countries called the Challenge Program on Water and Food offered hope. It found that major river basins in Africa, Asia and Latin America could double food production in the next few decades if those upstream work with those downstream to efficiently use the water they have.

(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

As the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed another 420 points and the wealth of our nation continued to drop by trillions of dollars, President Barack Obama boarded Air Force One and headed off to a vacation with millionaires and billionaires on Martha’s Vineyard.

Obama tells us that if only the government could confiscate a few hundred billion more dollars from the rich and middle class, all would be well.  Obama almost daily ridicules those who work hard to make honest money. 

Obama places himself above the American people as if he were our royal monarch and dictator in chief all rolled into one.  Obama tells us that private airplanes are to be condemned and our vehicles should be so small and light as to achieve gas mileages equivalent to motor scooters.

Obama and his family are living high.  He condemns private jets but flies in his own 747 and has several support aircraft in his entourage.

Obama tells us we must conserve gasoline.  He traveled about the American heartland in armored buses with an entourage of 40 large SUVs and other large vehicles in his support entourage.  Barack Obama has the largest carbon footprint of any man in history.

The economic foundations of Western Civilization are burning and are on the verge of crumbling.  Emperor Nero fiddled and recited poetry while his troops burned Rome and he blamed the Jews.  Obama plays golf and lives in luxury while his failed Socialist economic policies are destroying not only the United States of America but also Western Civilization.  Obama blames George W. Bush, hard working Americans, and just bad luck for his leadership failures.

After Nero and others brought down Rome, it took 1,400 years for civilization to again reach the quality of life enjoyed by the Romans.  If Obama brings down Western Civilization, we would enter a Dark Ages from which humanity might never recover.  The conflicting survivors, Radical Socialism and Radical Islam, would rule the ensuing Dark Ages.

I, like many Turks, grew up with a love/hate relationship with the West. Can I be both Muslim and Western? Why are we copying the West anyway? Does that mean we are not good enough? Why are we giving up our civilization, values, script, calendar and dress? Is everything related to Western civilization somehow better and ours inferior?

OK, the power is still out at home but over on Route 1, civilization, plus even a signal (I have Verizons internet anywhere, which is actually anywhere except where I live).

So, while the battery lasts: Alan is a fine choice as chief economic adviser. Hes done excellent work, hes a really good guy, whom I know pretty well, since we keep getting each others mail.

Now the question is whether anyone in the administration listens to him

Update: I gather that theres some commentary to the effect that Alan is a labor economist rather than a macro person like Christy Romer, and that this means less emphasis on actually increasing demand and solving the slump.

I think that may be reading too much into it. Alan may write about labor markets, but he knows macro and is pretty salt-water and activist by inclination, as far as I know. His advocacy of job tax credits comes from an attempt to work within political constraints, not lack of interest in more decisive solutions. And I think the administration was looking for a high-profile, first-rate economist willing to take the job, rather than tilting toward a particular field.

Also, the reason we get each others mail is that Princeton relies on the advanced mail-processing technology known as pigeon-holes, and our slots are next to each other in the Woodrow Wilson School set.