Me and Jeffrey Sachs

20th October, 2011

Two days ago I happened upon a church,which had a sign outside it advertising a talk by the economist, Jeffrey Sachs. I was excited to go along as I have read a number of his books about Eastern European transition and poverty. He was speaking at the "Westminster Town Hall Forum". The Presbyterian church in Downtown Minneapolis have guest speakers every month in the church. It is a very interesting idea. The events are free and open to the public and usually concern ethics.

Today they had two musicians playing at the beginning. They were pretty good and played some Irish songs. Then at noon, Jeffrey Sachs was introduced. He spoke about why America is failing economically and socially. He said that by all international indicators, the US is towards the bottom of lists of developed nations when it comes to life expectancy, educational attainment, debt burden and hapiness.He argued that the two parties have been to close with Wall Street and big businesses. He argues that America should follow the example of social democracies like Sweden and other Northern European countries. America needs to be civilised but the price of civilisation (the title of his new book) is higher taxes. While I wouldn't agree with him on many of his solutions, he does point out a lot of problems that I have noticed in America.

After the talk, copies of his book were on sale and he was signing books. I bought a book just so that I could meet him. He signed my book and I asked him for a photo (see above). Although I would disagree with him about many things, I look forward to reading his book. After the talk, there was a free lunch provided.

After lunch, I went to the Arts Institute, finally. It was a lot better than I thought it would be. They have paintings from a number of big European artists such as Rubens, Van Dyck, Goya, El Greco and Rembrandt. As well as their European section, they had a decent-sized Chinese, Japanese and Korean sections. They also had some ancient Greek, Roman and early Christian pieces. Their modern art section was a good laugh. I saw everything briefly but saw that they were open late on the third Thursday of each month (which was today) and they have special events. So I went back to spend a bit more time there in the evening. I heard a bit of the live music, learned a little about caligraphy and spent a bit more time in the European section.

I was pretty lucky today as I only accidentally heard about both the Forum and the Art Institute events.