'Progress' belies deepening problems

From Prof Jeffrey D. Sachs.

Sir, Larry Summers' glib claims of progress in the US ("For America, political gridlock is not the problem", April 15) bear witness to the utter disconnection of the ruling elite from America's deepening problems. Perhaps the US did move faster than other countries to "contain a systemic financial crisis", but only after Professor Summers and his colleagues had implemented financial deregulation of such recklessness that it almost destroyed the global economy. Perhaps the ratio of debt to gross domestic product will "decline for the next five years", but only after it has doubled since 2007. Perhaps the growth of healthcare costs has "slowed to the rate of GDP" - but only after America's bloated healthcare system cost 50 per cent more as a share of GDP than any other country. Perhaps "within a decade . . . the US will no longer be a net importer of fossil fuels", but only because it has large-scale drilling for oil and gas and exports of coal, thereby setting back the control of climate change. Perhaps "most schools and teachers are for the first time evaluated on objective metrics", but those metrics show the dire quality of US schools.

The obtuseness is magnified by Prof Summers' strange expression of relief that the US did not implement a single-payer health system that might have controlled costs, and by his expressed uncertainty on the way forward on reducing inequality and controlling climate change, two crucial issues on which he has never shown leadership in all his years in and out of power.

Jeffrey D. Sachs,

Director,

Earth Institute,

Columbia University,

New York, NY, US