"In the long run our economic life, like every other aspect of our common existence, depends on the quality of people. How effective will our economy be if it depends on a generation of listless, anxious people unable to concentrate on anything very long and unconcerned about planning a coherent life for themselves?" (p. 261)
Wouldn't it be great if we we all lived by this principle. As soon as I read this quote I was overtaken by paradoxical feelings of both hope and skepticism. In a perfect world that first sentence should be the motto of the nation, but why care for the welfare of the people? Let's just focus everything on being economically competitive, and the welfare will come later because everybody will have a good job and so forth. Don't even think about the people or their communities because they brought all their own woes upon themselves anyway, and if they really care they will take care of their own problems, no matter how large. After all, countries like Norway and Sweden that devote so much of their funding, time, and energy to concerns of human development are such economic wastelands, right? Oh, silly me, both of those countries have higher per capita GDP's than the US.
That was cathartic.
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