Wall Street Journal: Smart Aid for the World’s Poor
Matt Ridley, member of the British House of Lords and author

“…The lesson, surely, from this first round of setting development goals is the need to be even more ruthlessly selective next time. A list of eight goals is too long for most outsiders to remember. … Several development experts I spoke to say that the new list should have just five discrete, quantitative, achievable goals. … Figuring out the best way to help the world’s poor isn’t like solving a math problem. There are not right and wrong answers. But there are better and worse answers, and the only way to assign those priorities is to set aside our sentimental commitments and do the hard work of assessing costs and benefits” (7/25).