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I've always - and not always happily - considered myself an outsider. Certainly at Fettes. And then the Scots are always outsiders in England. They are always putting you in your place in one way or another, and there is this pretty rigid class hierarchy.
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Economic growth is very important, but it is not the only thing, and it must be accompanied by sharing with those who are left behind, through effective social services and provision.
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China and India are the success stories; rapid growth in large countries is an engine that can make a colossal dent in world poverty.
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A lot of people, including me, are worried that inequality will lead to bad things.
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Although globalization and technological change have disrupted traditional work arrangements, both processes have the potential to benefit everyone. The fact that they have not suggests that the wealthy have captured the benefits for themselves.
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The key is to somehow find a way of tackling rent-seeking, crony capitalism, and corruption - legal and illegal - and build fairer, more equal society without compromising innovation or entrepreneurship.
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I think lower wages have made men much less marriageable than they were before. It's not just like your job goes to hell. Your marriage goes to hell. You don't know your children anymore. Your children have a higher chance of being screwed up.
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Many people have mixed views about unions, but unions used to give people some measure of control at work. They gave them a social life and political representation in Washington, which doesn't really exist anymore.
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When I was a boy living in Edinburgh in Scotland, especially in December, when the hours of daylight were few, and it was cold, and often wet, I used to dream of escaping to a tropical magic kingdom.
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Trade, migration, and modern communications have given us networks of friends and associates in other countries. We owe them much, but the social contract with our fellow citizens at home brings unique rights and responsibilities that must sometimes take precedence, especially when they are as destitute as the world's poorest people.
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We are trying to say that low income and low job opportunities, after a long period of time, tears at the social fabric.
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I was born in Edinburgh, in Scotland, a few days after the end of the Second World War. Both my parents had left school at a very young age, unwillingly in my father's case. Yet both had deep effects on my education, my father influencing me toward measurement and mathematics, and my mother toward writing and history.
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I doubt that Donald Trump would be happier... if he was a different person. But Trump is always telling people how great his life is and about all the great things that he's done, and that's also all about his income. And that's also what we found. If you ask people how their lives are going, as a whole, it seems they tend to point to income.
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Inequality is partly a marker of success.
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People who have children, by and large, want children. People who don't want children are people who, by and large, don't want to have children. And why would you expect one set to be happier than another?
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Political and legal institutions play a central role in setting the environment that can nurture prosperity and economic growth.
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I think inequality has gone past the point where it's helping us all get rich, and it's really becoming a serious threat.
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You accumulate emotional wisdom as you get older. You know, when you're 25, you go on blind dates with people that, when you're 50, you know to stay away from.
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I feel passionately about measurement - about how difficult it is, about how much theory and conceptualization is involved in measurement, and indeed, how much politics is involved.
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The Nobel thing is like dying and going to heaven for a while. It's like being transported to a fairyland.
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High quality, open, transparent, and uncensored data are needed to support democracy.
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The school in the Yorkshire mining village in which my father grew up in the 1920s and 1930s allowed only a few children to go to high school, and my father was not one of them. He spent much of his time as a young man repairing this deprivation, mostly at night school.
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A lot of people in America and Europe feel that their governments are not representing them very much.
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What is not OK is for rent-seekers to get rich.