It may be true that all successful countries have incredibly rich people, but so do (by your own admission) a number of unsuccessful countries. By saying that your rule of thumb doesn’t apply in countries where wealth is amassed due to exploitation of resources, you are honouring a long-time tradition of economists, who build a model, then discount all cases that disagree with their model.

I would counter-argue that there is a huge correlation between being highly-ranked in the Gini index and highly-ranked in the Human Development Index, and that the US, not Nigeria is the exception to the rule. And egalitarianism, as proven by the scandinavian example is the way to eliminate poverty.

As I started of saying, in fact i think there’s some truth to both these arguments, i.e. strengthening the ability for entrepreneurs to accumulate wealth to a certain degree is important, but egalitarianism as a goal is at least as important.

Of course the correllation between HDI and Gini is somewhat strengthened by the fact that HDI is a composite figure which includes the Gini index, but i’ll defend myself with the argument that you brought up these 2 figures, not I

With all due respect to the Martin and the comments so far, this is PRE-INTERNET THINKING. I’ve only realized this myself recently, so I didn’t really get it either for a long time. The web is a different animal, and we’re all just figuring it out. There are fundamental opportunities the Internet presents which we are largely failing to exploit. I’ve developed a new growth model which better leverages networks and the Internet. The FON network would be a great place to use it or experiment with it. I’d love to work with FON as they try it out. For an introduction, click my name above to go right to it. It’s on the ProxThink River blog (http://proxthinkriver.com), and you can search or look for “Letter of Introduction for ProxThink.” The main ProxThink website is http://proxthink.com.
Thanks!

I think you are confusing eliminating poverty, which is what I am writing about, with eliminating poor people, which is of course what I am not talking about.

Countries with vast natural resources are not doomed to vastly unfair wealth distribution. In fact, Norway is a lonely but potent counter-example, having both vast natural resources and a fairly egalitarian mindset and society.

So the issue in my mind is more about governance than natural resources. Could democracy and fair (well, fairer) wealth distribution go hand in hand?

The problem I see is the possible confusion of the objective with the way to achieve it. If you’d stated “The goal is not to have fewer rich people, but to have fewer poor,” I’d have to agree 100%.

You see, we won’t make the world a better place by going around eliminating poor people, which might be implied by your conclusion.

Indeed, I believe, that inspite of the corrupt ones which come with the package, the world would be better off by having more rich people because of the fact that weath tends to filter down, which explains why the well-off contries which you cite have a much higher standard of living for everyone, including their poorer citizens.

What do you think are the factors that influence the adoption of knowledge-based activities into our economies/markets?

What do you think about the link between technology development and knowledge-based economies and how do latin american markets influence local technology development?

In my opinion, the answers of these questions might help making more rich people