The Legend Of The Big Push Analysis

In the most globalized era to date, the world faces many policy debates and questions. Many are fearful of globalization and are worried about the negative consequences it can produce. Brawley addresses these concerns in Chapter 3, “What People Fear-or Anticipate-about Globalization”. One issue people have about globalization is its ability to widen the gap of inequality between the rich and the poor, both domestically and across borders. Krugman uses the United States of America as a basis for the study of inequality in his chapter “Inequality and Redistribution.” On a global scale, Easterly explores foreign aid as a remedy for inequality in developing states in his chapter “The Legend of the Big Push.” To dissect these issues, we must start
Easterly explores just how helpful foreign aid actually is. He first assesses the the legend of the “poverty trap.” Through comparing growth rates between the poorest fifth of countries and the other four fifths, Easterly explains that there is no distinguishable difference in the rates. Perhaps the strong case of evidence against the poverty trap legend is that eleven out of the twenty-eight poorest countries in 1985 were not in the poorest fifth in 1950. This means that instead, countries had declined from above; while those thought to be in the poverty trap have actually emerged ahead. Thus, there cannot be such thing as a poverty trap. Easterly does take into account individual cases such as Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo which experienced zero and negative per capita growth rates respectively. However, those seem to be outlying cases that are present in almost any type of research. Botswana strongly supports Easterly’s argument against the poverty trap. Botswana went from being the fifth poorest country in 1950 to increasing its income thirteen times by
Studies were able to differentiate between “good” and “bad” governments based on certain characteristics that took in account corruption, democracy, etc. It was weird that in conclusion the type of government in charge of a state had no impact on how well the aid given to them fostered growth. Part of the reason for this conclusion was that aid would sometimes be given simply for political reasons or other less effective long-term means. The takeoffs that Planners push for are also very rare and largely unrealistic. Meanwhile, booming economies like China and India are growing in no part thanks to aid. In a nutshell, Easterly describes just how useless aid actually is. A further problem with giving aid is much of the aid seems to be going toward consumption and not long-term investment. If this is the case, no one wonder aid isn’t sparking growth. Easterly does also ponder if growth would be even worse without aid. Perhaps aid doesn’t help too much, but it is also very possible that without aid, the poor states would be even more devastated. He addresses all parts of the arguments and takes into account multiple opposing views and