Top Highlights

• The difference between seeing economic disparities as due to differences in the production of wealth and seeing those disparities as due to the transfer of wealth from some people to other people is fundamental. History shows that either cause of economic disparities can prevail at particular times and places.
• PROGRESS AND RETROGRESSIONS
• might seem that a lagging minority needs to unite in solidarity behind political leaders representing their interests to the larger society, in order to get ahead, the historical record shows no such pattern of economic success for politics, as compared to education, job skills and intact families.
• The all too familiar cliché about “the paradox of poverty in an affluent society” is a paradox only to those who start with (1) a preconception that equality would be a natural outcome, in the absence of some adverse human intervention— a preconception in defiance of both geography and history, and (2) a disregard of the arbitrary nature of the gov...