Word: basic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There is one basic explanation for this. As the libertarian economist Friedrich von Hayek once pointed out, the bulk of information generated in any economy is local in nature. If this local information has to be processed through a centralized hier- archy--whether government ministry or even overly large corporate bureaucracy--it will inevitably be delayed, distorted and manipulated in ways that would not happen in a more decentralized economic-decision-making system. The U.S.S.R. used to have an office called the State Committee on Prices, where a few hundred bureaucrats would sit around setting every price in the Soviet...
...long as co-workers need to brainstorm, bat around ideas and just plain gossip, they will always return to the water cooler, choosing a little face-to-face time over e-mail and the Web. Says Christine Albertini, vice president of advanced concepts at office-furniture maker Steelcase: "The basic nature of work is social...
...This narrow analysis then takes the uncomplicated form of predicting trends and counting the poor. It is a cheap way of telling "the future of the poor." But human lives can be impoverished in many different ways. Politically unfree citizens--whether rich or poor--are deprived of a basic constituent of good living. The same applies to such social deprivations as illiteracy, lack of health care, unequal attention to the elementary interests of women and of young girls...
...contrast, China, which did much better than India in several respects, such as the spread of basic education and health care, had the largest famine in recorded history in 1959-62, with a death toll that has been estimated at 30 million. Right now, the three countries with continuing famines are also in the grip of authoritarian and military rule: North Korea, Ethiopia and Sudan...
...hopeful about the future, it is because I see the increasingly vocal demand for democracy in the world and the growing understanding of the need for social justice. Democracy is recovering some of its lost ground in Asia, Latin America and even Africa. Gender equity and basic education are beginning to receive more attention in India, Bangladesh and elsewhere. I am not unconditionally hopeful, but certainly conditionally so. We must, however, take a sufficiently broad view of poverty to make sure the poor have reason for hope...