Sachs Understanding Of The Good Life

Given Sachs’ beliefs, values and issues that he wrestles with, he has his own vision of development or what the good life looks like that mimics the Westernized trajectory and focuses on economic development as a way to improve culture in societies. His vision of the good life moves beyond the freedom to maximize personal utility which is what neoclassicists argue is the good life. Rather, living a good life “means finding a golden mean, living by virtue and being able to flourish” (Guo 2014). This connects back to Sachs’ understanding of the individual as part of a global community in which the target or objective is for everyone to reach the good life. Sachs explained in an interview that “We are chasing wrong things and living in a framework
He argues that income inequality can be addressed “if governments use revenues to ensure widespread access to education and health care” (Sachs 2015, 59). Governments are also responsible for ensuring that all children have a chance of both economic and social mobility, and redistribution policies can be “highly efficient investments in the health, skills and productivity of the poor,” according to Sachs (Sachs 2015, 131,225). For this reason, Sachs is an advocate and supporter of the Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals. Sachs highlights that “a shared focus on economic, environmental, and social goals is a hallmark of sustainable development and represents a broad consensus on which the world can build” because “the need for urgent, high-profile, and change-producing global goals” is necessary due to environmental and social threats worldwide (Sachs 2012,
I am also most passionate about alleviating poverty in order to relieve human suffering and would argue that it should be a priority in terms of addressing other areas of concern as well. This perspective has most evidently been shaped by my time spent in Romania, living in an economically-depressed town. As families are forced to leave and seek other ways to be a part of the economic system, the city is dying. While I saw good work being done to build social capital, building social capital and fostering trust was not going to bring about jobs or incomes to allow families to afford their basic needs. Thus, my first and foremost concern is with poverty. I believe that it has the most immediate, direct, effect on well-being, and can play a huge role in the survival of communities and