Need Versus Greed
Columbia economics professor Jeffrey Sachs quotes Gandhi who famously said that there are enough resources on Earth for everybody’s need, but not enough for everybody’s greed.
The pace of the world economy’s growth is putting a strain on resources. “Our fate now depends on whether we cooperate or fall victim to self-defeating greed. The limits to the global economy are new, resulting from the unprecedented size of the world’s population and the unprecedented spread of economic growth to nearly the entire world. There are now seven billion people on the planet, compared to just three billion a half-century ago. Today, average per capita income is $10,000, with the rich world averaging around $40,000 and the developing world around $4,000. That means that the world economy is now producing around $70 trillion in total annual output, compared to around $10 trillion in 1960.”
