I lys av min sterkt fallende tro på menneskeheten i det siste, var det interessant å lese kjendisøkonomen Tim Harfords nyeste artikkel i Forbes om hvorfor jeg gjør lurt i å tro på menneskeheten likevel. Han skriver:
Being able to trust people might seem like a pleasant luxury, but economists are starting to believe that it’s rather more important than that. Trust is about more than whether you can leave your house unlocked; it is responsible for the difference between the richest countries and the poorest.
“If you take a broad enough definition of trust, then it would explain basically all the difference between the per capita income of the United States and Somalia,” ventures Steve Knack, a senior economist at the World Bank who has been studying the economics of trust for over a decade. That suggests that trust is worth $12.4 trillion dollars a year to the U.S., which, in case you are wondering, is 99.5% of this country’s income. If you make $40,000 a year, then $200 is down to hard work and $39,800 is down to trust.
Resten av artikkelen finner du på Forbes.com, og kommer anbefalt for desillusjonerte menneskevenner.
1 kommentar
september 30, 2006 at 11:20 am
Jepp. Tillit er penger. God erkjennelse Harford har kommet til der.
Noen går tydeligvis inn for å ødelegge for fellesskapet. Du skal ikke se bort fra at dama som kibba sykkelen din hadde en overordnet plan om å ødelegge for verdensøkonomien.