Brave New Wealthy World: Winning the Struggle for World Prosperity

Chapter 10. Wealth Concentration and Diffusion

In the poor countries there are extremes of wealth amidst the poverty. In Panama I saw a gleaming 20-story luxury apartment building and a shack right against the base of it, with an impoverished family living in the shack. Countless other images made an impression on me, but one was so striking that it stands out in my mind and evokes feelings of despair surpassing all the others. This example was not a scene of undernourished children dressed in rags crowding around a rich person hoping for a few coins; it was a whole country. The country was Haiti in 1974. I visited for a few days and spent a large part of my time trying to figure out what was causing the distribution of income to be so skewed. ...