the end of poverty, pt.1

Just finished reading The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs. First off, it was at the same time an inspiring and an infuriating read; in fact, I'm sure it was meant to be so. The foreign aid and world poverty situation is absolutely unnecessary, and relatively easy to solve; this makes the topic itself infuriating. But very few people are aware of the facts, and even differing opinions on the issues, and the ones that do have too many other concerns, bureaucratic obstacles, and idealistic differences to create true change. I'm not going to sit here and repeat everything he says either, and I have my skepticism as to the volition of Americans and other rich countries to give their money to the poorest of the poor, as well as to their citizen's goodwill at the expense of their own wealth (this includes me, but now I feel like I need to do something... ...wow, sad that I need a kick in the butt too). But I do agree that this is a solvable issue. Sachs says the whole can be solved with foreign aid given to state governments, who must submit a plan of action to the UN, and be supervised by its agencies on the field. The argument is that monetary aid to individuals, or private program aid, does not solve the problems of the countries in any sustainable manner; these are merely stopgap or localized measures. Commendable, to be sure, but they don't solve all of the problems.