It's mid-morning in the Tiby Millennium Village in Mali. Winds from the desert are gusting across the parched landscape. Rokia, a community health worker in the village, sits with a young mother in a spare courtyard of the household. Gently she asks the key questions: "How are your children today?"...

In a recent column my friend Bob Reich wrote convincingly that Ron Paul is attracting the support of many youth because several of his messages are correct, even if wrapped in a misguided overall ideology. As Reich noted, Ron Paul is the only Republican candidate calling for the...

The editorial board of Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has a simple game. They want to cut taxes for the rich and government services for the rest, and end regulations of banks and the environment. They support taxpayer-financed bailouts of Wall Street when needed. They will twist any facts in...

Last week the world mourned and celebrated the life of Vaclav Havel, whose philosophy of living in truth brought freedom to his people and brought hope everywhere. This week we should celebrate another great revolutionary and Democrat, perhaps the world's greatest but least celebrated statesman. In recent days, former Soviet...

The Millennium Village Project (MVP) was launched in 2005-6 in order to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goals in the poorest regions of rural Africa. A dozen clusters of villages around Africa have adopted bold and novel strategies to overcome poverty, hunger, and disease. Halfway...

A recent Wall Street Journal article by Arthur C. Brooks on the Occupy Movement and fairness ("Fairness and the 'Occupy' Movement, November 25) says some interesting things about potential common ground between free-market ideas and the Occupy movement. Yet Brooks also commits some very important errors. Perhaps with...

The wonder of our world is that scientific knowledge is now so powerful that we can save millions of children, mothers, and fathers from killer diseases each year at little cost. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria has mobilized that knowledge over the past decade...

The big political lie of the Super Committee is that the deficit must be closed mainly by cutting government spending rather than by raising taxes on corporations and the super-rich. Both parties are complicit. The Republicans want to close the deficit entirely by cutting spending; Obama has brandished the formula...

On Thursday, President Obama will meet with leaders of the other G20 countries. On the table will be a proposal to introduce a Financial Transactions Tax (FTT). French President Sarkozy and German Chancellor Merkel will support the proposal. If President Obama is true to his recent words sympathizing with Occupy...

The Wall Street elite seems completely befuddled by the Occupy Wall Street movement. The demonstrators are called "unsophisticated," or misguided, or much worse (mobs, communists, and more). Here's a short note to the titans of Wall Street to help them understand what's happening.

Let me...

Around the world, young people -- students, workers, and the unemployed -- are bringing their grievances to the public square. The specific grievances differ across the countries, yet the animating demands are the same: democracy and economic justice. These demands will bring millions around the world together in...

At age 80, Rupert Murdoch will be long gone in coming decades when the planet is grappling with greatly intensified climate change. The recent spike in world food prices and increasing intensity of famines, heat waves and mega-floods has already increased hunger and death in places like the Horn of...

Earlier this week the rumors flew that the U.S. foreign assistance budget will be whacked again. This is a pivotal time, therefore, to understand what to cut and what to increase in America's development aid. The record of the past 10 years tells us a lot about this...

America remains mired in crisis because the mainstream economic prescriptions peddled by both parties are wrong. The Democrats want to jolt the economy back to prosperity through temporary stimulus. The Republicans want to slash government spending to make room for permanent tax cuts they claim are the key to economic...

My new book, The Price of Civilization, describes why America needs a "mixed economy," one where a more effective federal government regulates business and invests alongside the business sector. In his review of my book, Congressman Paul Ryan, an avowed libertarian, describes my book as anti-American in its...

President Obama is defending a basic principle of budget fairness against the wretched selfishness of the Republican candidates. The Republican anti-tax position is so stark and greedy that Obama will win the political debate and probably the polls next year. He deserves our support for facing down the extreme right....

With President Obama's speech on Monday and Speaker Boehner's speech yesterday, we can put the Democratic and Republican Party economic plans side by side. What is stunning is that neither side offers a serious diagnosis or a solution. The truth this time is not in the middle, a compromise of...

Barack Obama sends his American Jobs Act to Congress today. Supporters are thrilled that the president is taking his fight to the people. Even many skeptics are saying that at least Obama is offering a first step, while acknowledging that the plan is not enough.

Unfortunately, the facts are...

America is a country of vast wealth and vast anxiety. America's high Gross National Product per person, around $50,000, and its vast net worth, around $500,000 per household, are among the highest in the world. Yet growing numbers of Americans are unhappy, unhealthy, and increasingly pessimistic. America fought for independence...

There may be no group of people in the world more out of touch with U.S. ground reality than super-rich CEOs of major U.S. companies railing against Warren Buffett's suggestion that the rich should pay higher taxes. The Wall Street Journal today brings a somewhat surprising case in...