I think one big improvement would be if we somehow made it cheaper and easier for developing countries to learn from the sad experience of some of the developed countries, and also from some of the positive experiences we have of building good transportation systems, like high-speed rail.

Given the total income and wealth available in the world today, we could easily overcome poverty, which would require raising the share of the bottom half from three to roughly five percent. Unfortunately, the trend is going in the opposite direction.

Economics is like a church, and it fulfills the same function the church had fulfilled for centuries: the justification of the status quo.

In order to achieve something, in competition with the powerful and smartly wielded influence of corporations, we need to join forces and be as well-organized as they are. This does not come natural to us more intellectual types, as we tend to be averse to hierarchy and groupthink; we don't like to be part of anything like a disciplined and well-organized team or movement. But the alternative is to continue losing politically - which means continued failure to protect the world's poor, who are really bearing the brunt of our disorganization.

It is irrational to charge high prices for socially valuable innovations as this guarantees that they will be underutilized. It is much better to sell them at cost and then to reward the innovator in some other way. This is not always possible, because in some cases the value of an innovation is in the eye of the beholder; it's very difficult to value how much a new Madonna song is worth, for example. But in the case of medicines, green technologies and seeds in agriculture, such an alternative reward mechanism is fairly straightforward.

Our global institutional arrangements - the basic ground rules that govern our world economy - are human-made. They don't exist naturally, nor are they God-given. We make these rules, those of the WTO [World Trade Organization] Treaty for instance, which fill tens of thousands of pages. These words have been strung together by human beings and are also interpreted and enforced by human beings.

This splendid book discusses how, in the last two hundred fifty years, large numbers of people have achieved levels of well-being that were previously available only to a few individuals, and how this achievement has given rise to equally unprecedented inequalities. Unique in its focus and scope, exceptional knowledge and coherence, and careful argumentation, The Great Escape is highly illuminating and a delight to read.