Pages 39 – 46
How to control the gap instinct is a very useful section of the book. I’m not going to analyze it or even summarize it here because that’s what the book is for.
First, let me just say that it is always good to dig deeper into whatever data you are presented with.
Second, yes, the income levels of various groups of different countries may overlap. OK, this describes the modern situation rather well, meaning that it shows that there are both wealthy and poor people in every county.
But #1
The fact that this overlap exists first, may not necessarily suggest the absolute absence of a gap and second, it still describes differences between two groups.
The issue here is probably of how one interprets the word gap. There may be a range of people earning from low to high-income levels in two separate countries thus there’s no gap, but there are still people who earn a little and people who earn a lot.
Then there’s the fact that those who earn a little in a so-called rich country may actually be worse off in several ways than those who earn a little in a poorer country or the opposite, due to lower basic goods prices for example, and the people who earn a lot in a poor country may be worse off than everyone else in a rich country if we consider the possible factor of high criminality. If these people live in constant terror of getting kidnapped or killed then are they better off?
Overall, I think the world is far too complex to think in gaps and spreads.
Then on page 44 the author talks in some way about what was mentioned in every previous weekly post, benchmarks.
Basically, it says that from the top of level 4 everyone else is going to look poor, because of perception. So even though the world is doing better and the majority is in the middle-income level, the people on level 4 can’t see it because they most likely have no idea what it means to be on the lower levels.
And that concludes chapter one.
The next chapter deals with the negativity instinct. Let’s see if I’ll be convinced because so far I think my analysis falls on the negative side even though I agree with the author. I can’t even imagine what I would be writing if I didn’t agree….
A point perhaps worth considering is the emphasis on the majority. Is that how we should try to see the world to have a more accurate picture of what’s going on? By looking at the majority?
The world is far more than numbers and income levels. In my opinion, we should look at the world like a brain with trillions of connections. In order for anyone to claim that the world is doing better, all the connections must be doing better, not just the majority.
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Week 5