- Legislators engage in dialogue, not bluster.
- Personal gadgets become our slaves, not our masters.
- Parents bestow love and support, not just money and things.
- Corporations fill needs, not create them.
- News sources inform, not inflame.
Never for money, always for love
According to Tina Rosenberg of the New York Times, the book Getting Better by the economist Charles Kenny argues that measuring quality of life improvements in developing countries by income level and economic growth rate misses the point.
We should not minimize a society’s dramatic improvements in health, education, gender equality, security and human rights over the last twenty years because their average income has remained the same, Kenny says. In many of these countries, sending their kids to school instead of arranging their marriage as young teenagers is becoming the norm.
According to Rosenberg, Kenny attributes many of these improvements to “the global spread of new technologies and ideas – but also rising expectations.” One reason advances in child survival have sped up since 2000 may be that that was the year the United Nations set the ambitious Millennium Development Goals to be met by 2015. While all of the targets may not be met, says Rosenberg, “it is hard to think of a more sweeping accomplishment than the results so far.”
Last night, while having a post-game snack, I got to share the story of Lou Groen with my daughter-in-law’s family. He graduated in 1935 from the high school my kids went to.