If we have $50B to do good, how do we spend it?
Ex: Governance corruption, Sanitation and water, Global warming, Malnutrition, etc
This question was asked at Davos
UN existed for 60 years, but we’ve never made such a list and discussed how to prioritize them
Prioritization is incredibly uncomfortable
But it’s like walking into a pizzeria but not knowing the price of each pizza
3 well-known economists were tasked to come up with such a list
“Bad projects” = invest $1, get <$1 back
Bottom of list was climate change
This offends people
But why is it a bad deal (eg, Kyoto)? It’s very inefficient – can only do very little, at very high cost
Benefits don’t accrue for many decades – and by then most of the affected people will be much richer and more prosperous (even better than 1st world citizens today)
Kyoto agreement estimated to cost $150B/year – 2-3x global development aid to Third World yearly
For half of that amount – $75B/year – we can solve all major basic problems – clean water, sanitation, etc to benefit everyone on the planet
Top priorities – the “best deals”
1. HIV/AIDS – $27B over 8 years, avoid 28M new cases, prevention > treatment
2. Malnutrition – lack of micronutrients, lacking iron zinc vitamin A, $12B
3. Free trade – cut subsidies in US and Europe, enliven global economy, $2.4T improvement in global GDP
4. Malaria – few billion cases each year, invest $13B over 4 years to cut incidence by half
We should do all of them – but we don’t – in fact aid to developing world has been decreasing not increasing
It’s not about making us feel good, about things with the most media attention
Copenhagen Consensus – mapping out right path for world, think about political triage
“Let’s do enormous amount of good at very low cost right now”