The Great Leveling

Nice to read Steven Pinker supporting my 2011 post as he writes, “extreme poverty has plummeted and may disappear; and both international and global inequality coefficients are in decline. Now, it’s true that the world’s poor have gotten richer in part at the expense of the American lower middle class, and if I were an American politician I would not publicly say that the tradeoff was worth it. But as citizens of the world considering humanity as a whole, we have to say that the tradeoff is worth it.” excerpted from Enlightenment Now: the Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress, Pinker, 2018.

My 2011 post:

“Briefly describe how you would improve the [U.S.] economy more quickly – without a revolution.” with credit to Alan Kitty at .. [www.linkedin.com]

Wow. Lots of great ideas here. It’s like a …hmm…now, when’s the last time you heard the term “Think Tank?”

I take a MACRO-view because that is what I feel most confident in.

1. Private and government think tanks need to be given the highest priority possible. This includes 100% sharing and cooperation between both types.

2. Those organizations should focus ONLY on QOL/SOL [quality of life/standard of living] issues …in the global economy framework.

3. If we only focus on individual facets of one economy, how would we achieve any improvement in QOL/SOL which are made up of dozens of measures? It’s like trying to wave off one raindrop at a time rather than opening the umbrella.

For a decade I have been talking about what I call “The Great Leveling.” People of good-will want everyone on the planet to have high QOL/SOL. As that is happening some national/regional economies will suffer while others grow. The most developed nations might suffer the most while The Great Leveling is in process. All of this is being accelerated by global communications becoming as easy as talking with the person sitting next to you. A focus on QOL/SOL, I believe, is the best way for any developed country to identify ways to minimize relative decline and maintain strength in the global economy. * Wikipedia and the World Bank are places to start to examine QOL measures.