Our Crowded Planet Summary

Common Wealth is an outstanding book written by Jeffrey D. Sachs published in 2009. Sachs has been on of the youngest professor at Harvard University, and is currently the director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. His impressive career has made him one of the most important scholars in the world. Therefore, his book is for young students an impressive source of inspiration and a tool to understand the current economic and political situation. In his second Chapter titled, ”Our Crowded Planet”, Sachs gives a summary of his book. Especially, he divides his idea in six points. First, he states that humanity is gradually getting richer in terms of income per person. Second, he highlights that because the world population will continue

He highlights that some countries are stuck in a poverty trap, and if nothing will be done this economic condition will be stronger in the future. Sachs writes, ”The poverty trap is self-reinforcing and not self-correcting. Therefore, overcoming the poverty trap requires special policies an global efforts” (Sachs 31). Some countries have already started to make radical changes in order to improve their economic and political condition. In fact, big corporation are starting to make long-term investments in developing countries. Most importantly, developing countries are not anymore easy sources of cheep manual labor. Many developing countries present an optimal ground to create stable and sophisticated markets. For example, Rwanda in les then 20 years has been able to grow significantly and become one of the pioneers of the African continent. Rwanda, as many other developing countries, is trying to skip the industrialization era, and is trying to attract in the country big IT corporation. Rwanda is the perfect example of convergence. Since 2001 the countries experienced an average 8% year-on-year growth, and if the country will be able to keep up this trend, Rwanda will finally be considered a strong market.
As Sachs predicts in his essay, the world will look deeply different in 2050. Especially in terms of economic conditions, developing countries will be the biggest contributors to the world’s output. Therefore, students must follow the follow the flow and prepare themselves for this radical change in the