Quotes About Inequality

tienen el poder toman decisiones que crean pobreza. No lo hacen bien, no porque se equivoquen o por su ignorancia, sino a propósito.

Ignorance can explain at best a small part of world inequality.

It is impossible to understand many of the poorest regions of the world at the end of the twentieth century without understanding the new absolutism of the twentieth century: communism.

las economías basadas en la represión del trabajo y los sistemas como la esclavitud y la servidumbre carecen claramente de innovación. Esto es así desde el mundo antiguo hasta la era moderna

The geography hypothesis claims that the great divide between rich and poor countries is created by geographical differences. Many poor countries, such as those of Africa, Central America, and South Asia are between the tropic of Cancer and Capricorn. Rich nations in cntrast tend to be in temperate latitudes. This geographic concentration of poverty and prosperity gives superficial appeal to the geography hypothesis.

But if out of every dollar given to aid, ten cents makes it to the poorest people in the world, that is ten cents more than they had before to alleviate the most abject poverty, and it might still be better than nothing.

these densely settled civilizations interacted in a perverse way with European colonialism to create a "reversal of fortune," making the places that were previously relatively wealthy in the Americas relatively poor. Today it is the United States and Canada, which were then far behind the complex civilizations in Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia, that are much richer than the rest of the Americas.

Now imagine a different society, for example the Congo or Haiti, where a large fraction of the population has no means of attending school, or where, if they manage to go to school, the quality of teaching is lamentable, where teachers do not show up for work, and even if they do, there may not be any books.

poor countries are poor because those who have power make choices that create poverty.

La desigualdad mundial existe actualmente porque, durante los siglos XIX y XX, algunos países fueron capaces de aprovechar la revolución industrial y las tecnologías y los métodos de organización que aportaba mientras que otros no.

También mostraremos que la desigualdad del mundo no se puede explicar por las diferencias en la productividad agrícola. La gran desigualdad del mundo moderno que apareció en el siglo XIX fue debida a la desigual distribución de las tecnologías industriales y la producción manufacturera, no a la divergencia en los resultados agrícolas.

Those controlling political power will eventually find it more beneficial to use their power to limit competition, to increase their share of the pie, or even to steal and loot from others rather than support economic progress. The distribution and ability to exercise power will ultimately undermine the very foundations of economic prosperity

In fact, Egypt is poor precisely because it has been ruled by a narrow elite that have organized society for their own benefit at the expense of the vast mass of people.

The average Egyptian has an income level of around 12 percent of the average citizen of the United States and can expect to live ten fewer years; 20 percent of the population is in dire poverty. Though these differences are significant, they are actually quite small compared with those between the United States and the poorest countries in the world, such as North Korea, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe, where well over half the population lives in poverty.

poor countries are poor because those who have power make choices that create poverty. They get it wrong not by mistake or ignorance but on purpose.

The great inequality of the modern world that emerged in the nineteenth century was caused by the uneven dissemination of industrial technologies and manufacturing production. It was not caused by divergence in agricultural performance.

los países pobres lo son porque quienes tienen el poder toman decisiones que crean pobreza. No lo hacen bien, no porque se equivoquen o por su ignorancia, sino a propósito.

As the United States began to experience the Industrial Revolution in the first half of the nineteenth century, Mexico got poorer.

The institutional dynamics we have described ultimately determined which countries took advantage of the major opportunities present in the nineteenth century onward and which ones failed to do so. The roots of the world inequality we observe today can be found in this divergence. With a few exceptions, the rich countries of today are those that embarked on the process of industrialization and technological change starting in the nineteenth century, and the poor ones are those that did not.

Poor countries are poor because those who have power make choices that create poverty. They get it wrong not by mistake or ignorance but on purpose. To understand this, you have to go beyond economics and expert advice on the best thing to do and, instead, study how decisions actually get made, who gets to make them, and why those people decide to do what they do. This is the study of politics and political processes.

Egypt is poor precisely because it has been ruled by a narrow elite that have organized society for their own benefit at the expense of the vast mass of people.

Five hundred years ago, Mexico, home to the Aztec state, was certainly richer than the polities to the north, and the United States did not pull ahead of Mexico until the nineteenth century. South and North Korea were economically, as well as socially and culturally, indistinguishable before the country was divided at the 38th parallel after the Second World War. Similarly, most of the huge economic differences we observe around us today emerged over the last two hundred years.

Though the extractive institutions that the Mayas created produced sufficient wealth for the cities to flourish and the elite to become wealthy and generate great art and monumental buildings, the system was not stable. The extractive institutions upon which this narrow elite ruled created extensive inequality, and thus the potential for infighting between those who could benefit from the wealth extracted from the people. This conflict ultimately led to the undoing of the Maya civilization. W

As we will show, poor countries are poor because those who have power make choices that create poverty. They get it wrong not by mistake or ignorance but on purpose.