Poverty and Prosperity

What's inside

1. Part I: Scarcity and Abudance

   The choices that lead nations to prosperity or poverty. Prosperity arises from creating abundance through efficiency and accountability. A society must produce enough surplus to sustain fairness, health, and sustainability. We need not maximize productivity, but must keep it above a critical threshold: productive nations share prosperity, unproductive ones share poverty. One key to higher productivity is letting wages signal what society values most, allowing unproductive jobs to fade while helping workers transition. Nations thrive when they treat low wages and high prices as structural issues, and falter when they rely on superficial fixes. Examining global policy errors, the book reveals another path to poverty: misplaced priorities, wasteful spending, and swelling opportunity costs. Instead of debating tax rates, we should focus on using existing tax revenues wisely.

2. Part II, Virtue and Decadence?

   We investigate the cultural roots of prosperity and decline. Nations decay when they chase luxuries before meeting basic needs or confuse haste with progress. The dangers of groupthink deserve special attention, especially in identity politics, where the urge to protect 'our own' can sometimes excuse poor behavior. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions; therefore, intentions must be subordinate to outcomes.

3. Part III, Utopia and Dystopia

   Democracy’s paradox: many autocracies arose from democratic roots. What warning signs signal decline, and how can we reverse it? It also examines the foundations of civilization and the need to protect rights even for our opponents. Finally, it warns against the illusion that the end justifies the means: coercion cannot build utopia, but creates dystopia. But does this make utopia impossible? I offer an optimistic perspective and a possible way forward.