Currie Says Misguided Planning Hurts Underdeveloped Countries

Lauchlin Currie, former economic advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt '04, said yesterday that outside Southeast Asia, poverty is caused by faulty economic planning and not by inadequate natural resources.

In a speech at Littauer Auditorium, Currie, a consultant to the Colombian government since 1950, added that "the underdeveloped nations have not made nearly as much use of modern knowledge and techniques" as they should have.

The former Harvard economics instructor said that economists are too concerned with raising the gross national product, increasing capital investment, and redistributing rural property. He contended that the most pressing problems for developing nations are low productivity, the population explosion, and education.

Currie blamed slow industrial growth on a lack of effective demand for products rather than on a shortage of capital investment. He said that low income and rising costs of consumer goods are the causes of depressed demand in underdeveloped countries.

Currie proposed government controls to avoid a wage-price spiral. He added that mechanized agriculture, compulsory primary education, national health programs, and public housing projects would insure "additional work and income from hither-to unemployed resources."

He also endorsed government restrictions on the manufacture of "unnecessary luxuries" and urban planning to reduce transportation costs.

He said that the entire increase in output, with the exception of municipal services and education, could take place through private enterprise.

However, Currie doubted the ability of any underdeveloped country to initiate such policies without outside help. He suggested that a "consortium" of international agencies, in-the U.S. Agency for International Decluding the Inter-American Bank and Development, underwrite part of the foreign exchange cost of the operation.

While insisting that the initiative must come from the outside, Currie also maintained that international agencies lacked the boldness to "tackle a new plan." He exhorted economics professors in leading universities to use their prestige to agitate for such a policy.