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I know that is the standard history, I took economics at Berkeley and was taught all that. I simply don't believe that's the major factor. I think productive

I know that is the standard history, I took economics at Berkeley and was taught all that. I simply don't believe that's the major factor. I think productive capacity and innovation are more important than international trade, beyond a certain scale. I do cry for the middle class and lower classes in the west, and for the beset upon labor of the third world. It worries me greatly: my class lives very well, but friends and family that didn't win the IQ lottery are falling apart.

yequalsx 9y ago
Nicely put. I’d rephrase part of your last sentence: IQ + opportunity lottery
wjnc 9y ago
'The west' being US, I imagine? The Nordics and western Europe have a more equal society with a much larger part of society getting by comfortably than the US. Perusing HN I am often amazed at the implicit cultural differences within the west. How your employer treats you (US: at will employment, more like tenure in many western European countries), how we view (access to) healthcare and -insurance, heck a hundred things that make our day to day way of looking at the world vastly different.