I fully acknowledge the inequalities. They are there, and of course we want to reduce them. Of course we do. But at the same time, I think we are ignoring the larger picture. As Professor McCloskey has noted, in the last 200 years the average human being around the world has gone from a dollar a day in the western countries to $150 a day almost overnight, from 1800 to 1900, and this is something that we should be celebrating, I think, rather than condemning.
On April 25th, 2013. See this statement in context.