The conclusion to an op-ed by David Rieff in the New York Times last week:
Both sides would probably agree that neither technical innovation nor agroecology can work unless governments are fully committed to reducing the number of hungry and chronically malnourished people. When governments have been committed, progress has been very rapid, as the examples of China, Thailand, Vietnam, Mexico, and, most brilliantly, Brazil, have demonstrated conclusively over the last three decades. When they have not been, as is the case, disgracefully, in India — where the malnutrition rate for children under five stubbornly remains at 46 percent, double the average in sub-Saharan Africa — conditions have deteriorated.
But if the global food crisis is real, it is not unsolvable. One of the greatest accomplishments of the 20th century was to make famine — for all of human history a scourge that seemed as inevitable as the other three horsemen of the apocalypse, war, plague, and death — a rarity. Today, famine is almost invariably the product of evil governments, North Korea being the obvious case, or of no government, as in Somalia. The hunger that maims and blights should be consigned to the past, just as the hunger that kills has been.
American Attitudes toward Big Business
How can we reconcile the apparent contradiction between the outpouring of positive emotions caused by Steve Jobs’ death and the Occupy Wall Street movement? What does this say about American attitudes toward big business?
My colleague Ronnie Chatterji speculates on the answer in a News & Observer op-ed:
My conclusion is there is widespread agreement that getting rich in America while creating value for your company and for society is still a great thing, despite worries about resurgent populism and class warfare. Politics, bailouts and budget deficits have not changed this consensus around the nobility of good business.