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COMMENTARY JEFFREY SACHS Times Now World: Jeffrey Sachs WARNS: US Political System Has 'COLLAPSED' Under Trump PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cjbz_ajvrY Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess
Jeffrey Sachs WARNS: US Political System Has 'COLLAPSED' Under Trump Times Now World 824K subscribers Premiered 6 hours ago #tnworld #timesnowworld #worldnews Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs delivered a scathing assessment of the current U.S. administration during a recent address to youth development advocates, characterizing American leadership as 'the worst it's ever been' and describing the political system as having 'collapsed' into 'one person rule.' Speaking to what appears to be a UN Sustainable Development Network gathering, Sachs outlined a series of recent U.S. withdrawals from international cooperation frameworks, including trade systems, climate agreements, and the World Health Organization, calling the policy trajectory 'dumber than this, really' while arguing that American isolation is inadvertently facilitating improved relations between traditional adversaries including China-India and regional East Asian powers. #tnworld #timesnowworld #worldnews #internationalnews #timesnews #newsworld Subscribe now: http://bit.ly/3VHIl37 Times Now World is your definitive source for comprehensive global news and analysis. At Times Now World, we bring you breaking news and real-time updates on US news, US elections, Trump, Biden, Putin, Zelensky, Russia-Ukraine war, Israel-Hamas conflict, Gaza, China-Taiwan tensions, Hungary news, NATO updates, and EU developments. Stay informed with our in-depth coverage of politics, economics, and current affairs, exclusively on Times Now World. Explore diverse perspectives and expert insights on international relations, technology, and more, all on Times Now World. Engage with dynamic discussions on global issues, including NATO news and EU updates, on Times Now World. Follow compelling stories and impactful reports on Times Now World. Discover the pulse of international affairs with Times Now World's extensive coverage of global events. Transcript Transcript 0:00 let me spend just a few minutes talking about the situation in the world right now because the last couple of days have been dramatic Now there is no guarantee that we avoid catastrophe because the world's not well led uh and uh the world is in a very unstable uh situation because of all the things that we've been discussing uh of course the climate crisis all of the upheavalss in the world economy even aside from the interventions of uh uh leadersh than than I So this is something um quite dramatic But another thing that's very dramatic is the geopolitical changes that are underway 1:02 They are remarkable They're very dangerous but on the whole not bad Actually what's happening is that a familiar world led so-called by the United States and Europe is no longer led by the United States and Europe uh it was presumptuous to be led by the United States and Europe to begin with Uh it's actually the end of a very long cycle that dates back to 1492 and onward because it started with a voyage that was a little bit went arry and changed the world uh fundamentally Um and they say that how do you know that uh Christopher 2:01 Columbus was an economist by the way uh he didn't know where he was going He didn't know where he was when he got there and it was all on a government grant Uh so this is part for the course But um the world became a Europeanled world with a a lot of uh cruelty and a lot of inequality and a lot of domination Um and with a lot of remarkable technological development uh that came along with it but that was utilized as a form of power and oppression as well and the United States dominated the world for about a half a century after 1945 Now we're in a very different world and um the uh voices of other parts of the world are really important and um 3:02 growing and that means that in the media and in the political life in the western world there's a lot more anxiety actually than there is in China for example or in India where it's not pessimistic It's not feeling that the world's falling apart feeling that the world is changing in the right direction actually and I would say if you look at opinion surveys in Africa there's a tremendous amount of optimism actually Africa is the most optimistic single continent uh in the world uh if you look at opinion surveys so the world's changing and it leads to a lot of anxiety and the anxiety is highest in the United States because nobody likes to be pushed off the perch uh but the Fact of the matter is um the world's becoming a lot more interesting diverse interconnected You're a very diverse group but not quite diverse enough There 4:00 aren't are there any Chinese faces here no we have somebody from Hong Kong Okay good Hong Kong we were just there It's wonderful Uh and uh India Great Okay So between the two you're 40% of the world population but not not exactly 40% of this room So it's just to say we don't have to have a complete demographic equality but you're a very diverse group which is extremely important very important And um the world's even more diverse if I could put it that way So we need to strive for uh for that and viewed in that perspective My own view is I'll say a grim statement and then an optimistic statement If we don't blow things up which is possible then things are going to be okay uh and by that I 5:01 mean the world that is taking shape will be more equal more open actually benefiting from a lot of the breakthroughs in technology The real worry I have is just disaster in the in the short term because my country is the worst lead that it's ever been and our political system has collapsed So we have oneperson rule which is not exactly the way to run a a society of 335 million people and 30 trillion dollars of output but that's what what we have for the moment But if we can avoid the catastrophes we actually not just rhetorically and not just optimistically we really have a lot of solutions in this world for food production for sustainable energy for uh better education and health care systems for all sorts of things that are completely 6:00 wonderful They're not they're getting discovered They're getting developed You're pioneering many of them They're not getting undertaken at any at the scale that they need and the pace that they need by any means but they could be because there's no fundamental shortfall of resources or knowhow We're not running out of particular minerals so that we can't do this We're not running out of land so that we're in a struggle for who eats and who doesn't eat We're not running out of energy because solar radiation is about 5,000 times our power usage on the planet So if we deploy uh solar power which is now cheaper than any other kind of power we're not in an energy shortage as well We're not in a knowhow shortage but 7:00 we are in a fairness shortage We're in a niceness shortage We're in a calmness shortage Uh we're in a geopolitical crisis And we are with a lot of instability from all of the upheavalss of climate which are going to get worse for the next 50 years almost no matter what we do Because underlying our physical reality is a lot of warming built into the system and a lot of shocks that will come from that That doesn't mean that the impacts necessarily get worse because things can get buffered We can become more resilient We can become adapted But the climate itself is going to become more dangerous shortly So this is our state of affairs Now what specifically happened yesterday was the US declared itself outside of the world trade system Two weeks ago the US 8:01 declared itself outside of the climate challenge Uh three weeks ago the US declared itself out of the sustainability challenge Four weeks ago the US declared itself outside of the WH All right Honestly it doesn't get dumber than this really But the US is 4.1% of the world population And as I said the other 95% I don't see things diminishing in intensity of purpose but rather increasing and there are a lot of very good things that are happening even because of the United States strangeness of behavior right now For example China and India which have been at loggerheads for 60 years for a kind more than that for almost 80 years for a complicated reason that the British drew a an 9:02 arbitrary borderline in the Himalayas uh and that has meant border dispute and conflict between China and India since India gained independence in 1947 and the people's republic of China was formed in 1949 and they're still fighting over a line that a guy named name named Mcmah drew arbitrarily in 1880 never having been up to the Himalayas where he drew the line and there is by the way a theorem that I kind of subscribe to that all problems in the world go back to the British Um so that's true in the Middle East It's true in the Himalayas It's true in m much much of the world Yes it's true all over Africa It is actually a very good rule of thumb It's not it's not quite a proven theorem but it's a very good rule of thumb Um in any event the Indian and Chinese foreign ministers got together and said 'What are we fighting about uh we should trade more We should invest 10:01 more.' And then very positive statements came from Prime Minister Modi and from President Xi Then uh last week three other countries that are at loggerheads for no reason in the world Honestly China Korea and Japan They are divided because the United States says you're on our side and they're the enemy Uh to China and Japan and I mean to Korea and Japan visa v China The three got together because they see the US not such a great you know protector of their interests and they said we need to improve relations with each other This is very very good And if you think about Iran and Saudi Arabia for example which was defined by the US to be the uh you know the the the fundamental schism of Shia and Sunni 11:04 and so much of US policy was playing the Sunnis against Shia Iran and so forth They made a raproma last year which China helped to broker in a very wise way The United States would never have done it and never even have thought about it But uh China was very helpful So truly I'm not so pessimistic at all I just see the world changing and I can understand the pessimism in the newspapers that I happen to read in the US because they're all geared around the idea of the US as number one And if you put that aside I like a world in which China's playing a much larger role and India is playing a much larger role and the African Union's playing a much larger role and Saudi Arabia is playing a much larger role To me this a great 12:00 world It's it's a world of diversity much better food uh much better conversation much better places to visit much more fun uh in uh conferences and meetings and problem solving and all the rest Uh but if you just happen to be a US strategist it looks very grim and dangerous and so forth So I don't buy into the danger part I do buy into well I do buy into the danger part for the reasons I said but I don't buy into the inevitability of crisis So what I would really like you guys to do is to stay on the the networking course and the practical course and the problemolving course and I want us to help you to do that Uh so and just to be very clear you know 13:01 SDSN youth is not to empower youth per se It's to help solve global problems of which you have a lot of solutions So that's a little bit different Uh we have a little more access than you do to some places uh being older and gray hair but you uh know how to fix our phones and computers a lot better than we do uh and what's going on with the the latest apps and how to use them and so forth And that's actually unique knowledge in our world right now Um and so it's really important that you're at the table It's true you should be at the table for two reasons One to protect the interests of your generation against uh uh 78-year-old US presidents that don't know how to think ahead So that's true but I don't think that's the main reason you should be at the table The main 14:01 reason you should be at the table is you can help move this agenda forward in a very significant way So I had good experience when I was young I luckily thrust into places where I could do something at an early stage of my career And um thank God it worked cuz otherwise that would have been the end of it Um but in any event um you can do a lot but I also know um we can help you uh too because you learn you learn a lot actually along the way as well Um every day I learn something that I say I cannot believe I didn't know that for the last 50 years of trying to know what I know and pretty fundamental stuff every day which is weird to me actually cuz by now it should be kind of wrote 15:01 but it's not wrote at all There's just so much to learn and I kind of walk around my whole life with a book in my hand or now with a with an ebook or on my phone or something reading reading reading every day and learning pretty basic things actually which is annoying uh really annoying because it should have been done already Uh but it's not So all of that is to say we can help you uh and I can help you and I can help you network and I can help you learn things So don't presume you know everything but don't presume that you don't know what you're seeing with your own eyes about things that can be done So that's really the balance that's extremely important Now what's going to happen after 2030 let me say a few words about that because you're going to play a big role in that 16:01 Um obviously we're not going to achieve what we set out to achieve in 20 2015 September 25th 2015 when Pope Francis ushered in the sustainable development goals at the UN The agenda was pretty optimistic beforehand At the time it was very stretch goals It would have required a lot of capacity and working together to make them happen Um of course we just didn't get the major powers to work very hard on any of this Uh the only one that made a major effort in my view was China Actually uh Europe said a few things at the beginning but Europe got caught in this Ukraine war which to my mind was a just a disastrous mistake because the United States doesn't know how to make peace 17:01 and uh blew the chance after 1991 to help in help create a true collective security arrangement in Europe instead it expanded NATO but I don't want to go there just to say the US didn't try Europe didn't try very much China launched the belt and road initiative which is very big and positive thing uh Africa launched the African continental free trade area which is a very important thing uh and a very positive development but the world as a whole for the major powers didn't try very hard so we're reaching And I don't want to go into it but my view is the US at the University of North Carolina concocted something called SARS Cove 2 and made a pandemic That's another long story Uh but 18:00 um we just lost a lot of time So what are we going to do my hope personally and this is something we can discuss longer is that we continue under the framework of the sustainable development goals And the reason is it's taken 10 years to have governments understand a bit about how to make such a complicated multi-dimensional programming process because it's not simple to do this to plan for 17 major objectives long-term planning strategy and so forth Now the goals won't stay exactly the same but I don't want to redo everything to have a new set of goals and uh a new framework because honestly to my mind it would be it it may be constructive in bringing new voices in to be sure So I don't want to rule out deliberations which will 19:00 take place but I don't think we should throw out everything because it just would be a major loss in time sync and in our world today the US will walk away from the table anyway and it just may be very hard to get a framework other framework So I'm hoping we continue under this broad rubric resetting adding no doubt something about artificial intelligence as SDG-18 or repackaging uh repackaging some of the uh objectives and so on but to keep this framework to midentury because the next period to my mind is is to 2050 is to midcentury and that's in fact what we need to decarbonize the energy system It's what we need to transform agriculture It's what we need to create a workable digital society in which good things rather than bad things happen with these 20:02 new technologies and so forth So that's what I think we will be what I am going to be aiming for in the next few years This will probably be decided more or less around 27 or 2027 or 2028 So there will be a UN process Uh the next secretary general will assign a commission probably There'll be a deliberations You'll be involved in national level and global processes and youth ambassadors and many ways We should really strategize together about this and you should make further outreach to other groups uh in order to do this One basic point is that what makes all of this very hard is thinking ahead on a time horizon and a complexity 21:00 longer than governments know how to do So if you want to change the energy system it's not a one year or a fiveyear or a 10year process You really have to be able to think about 25 years or 30 years and basic changes of technology and learn how to put that into a real political process and so forth And this is what I find most governments don't know how to do effectively Again China is better at planning in this way than any other government that I know among the major governments Europe's not bad at setting goals but it then doesn't necessarily actually create the uh the planning to deliver them very effectively I'll say also I have huge hopes expectations and demands of the African Union in the coming years There's a new AU commission that just came into office on March 22:02 15 and Africa needs to make a breakthrough in the next 30 years It can't go on like this with many conflicts with kids not in school with the systems not working with electricity not reaching still hundreds of millions of people And that's what we were discussing in the financing for development workshop that we had earlier this week How to make those breakthroughs So one thing I'm asking of you is helping to instill the idea of really basic transformation uh in your countries regions and since we're going to do it together at a at a world scale that yes we really can create a better future And it's not only wish fulfillment it's actually very practical work Very for me by the way I 23:05 I caught uh who had a slide that I think uh Chened about the importance of education as being fun absolutely fundamental Was that you Chenade yeah In any event okay there are probably 300 million kids not even in school right now and we have to absolutely say no Are you kidding not another school year like this This is crazy And the reason they're not in school in some places is because of conflict and displacement But for at least 200 250 million kids is because the governments don't have the funds to hire teachers to have the schools and so forth And I want to have a fit together with 24:01 you to the powers that be that this cannot go on any longer You cannot leave kids out of school in this world They cannot have a future that way This is the most basic point of everything that we're trying to do Everything every one of you had the fortune and you probably had a lot of struggles twists and turns good luck parents that helped friends that helped family that helped somehow that you could get an education But I think that's the first thing we really need to do is to put our foot down and say no more faking it to any to the host countries but they don't have the money to the IMF to the World Bank to China to anyone else You got to help make sure that all the kids are in school Period And then there are 25:02 all the other issues that we're dealing with I won't uh be labor the point any longer because I know the time is time is short but let's you guys are really important in this process and to add to your importance connect with others that you think we need to bring into this process cuz this is a very powerful group that can really make a huge difference and can really by the way you can help the older ministers in the government the presidents and so forth Understand this is no joke This is real for your societies This really can be done You can tell them Professor Sax said so and that they got to get on with it and that we're here to help and we're going to get the financing that they need That was we really are going to get the financing that governments need But you 26:00 need to help lay out the plans the ideas very operational the wonderful things that can be done Um and really inspire your countries and your friends and uh your the businesses you're dealing with and uh think very very big and let's uh plan to meet every few weeks to uh keep that

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