“But Marx and Mill were wrong. The problems of the demographic transition turned out, in the long sweep of things, to be easy presuming successful development and income growth: They solved themselves within two generations after girls attained the leisure to learn how to read.

It was, rather, the problems of technological and institutional development and transfer that turned out to be the nastiest and most stubborn ones for the Global South. The U.S. was about twice as rich as China and India in 1800. It was 30 times as rich as they were at purchasing power parities come 1975. And, at least according to Hans Rosling and company, China and India were no richer in 1975 than they had been in 1800.

Why should this be the case in a world in which the technology was embodied in large hunks of metal shaped in the machine shops of Lancashire–hunks of metal that could be cheaply transported all over the world? Why did the 20th century see a world sharply divided between a Global North and a Global South, with productivity in the Global North growing at 2% per year while the Global South fell further and further behind?”

“The most any kid can ask for,” says [Bill] Russell, “is to succeed or fail on his merits. Success and failure are relative. Everyone doesn’t have presidential abilities and everyone can’t be an All-America. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a failure. My father’s a foundry worker. This doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a failure—because another person’s father is a lawyer. Society needs both. Some people are going to be laborers, but why say a man has to be a laborer because he’s black? One right we never had in this country—we never had the right to be a failure or an individual. Why if one black man fails should all black men fail? That’s what the struggle is about; whether it’s through love, as with Martin Luther King, or through pride, as with the N.A.A.C.P., or through hate, as with Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad.”

“The US, in short, was in a revolutionary situation, and many among the political and business elites realised it. They began to push through a remarkable series of reforms. In 1921 and 1924, Congress passed legislation that effectively shut down immigration into the US. Although much of the motivation behind these laws was to exclude ‘dangerous aliens’ such as Italian anarchists and Eastern European socialists, the broader effect was to reduce the labour surplus. Worker wages grew rapidly. At around the same time, federal income tax came in and the rate at which top incomes were taxed began to increase. Somewhat later, provoked by the Great Depression, other laws legalised collective bargaining through unions, introduced a minimum wage, and established Social Security.

The US elites entered into an unwritten compact with the working classes. This implicit contract included the promise that the fruits of economic growth would be distributed more equitably among both workers and owners. In return, the fundamentals of the political-economic system would not be challenged (no revolution).”