Quotation of the Day…
by Don Boudreaux
on May 20, 2021
… is from page 43 of economist Arthur M. Diamond, Jr.’s, important 2019 book, Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism (footnote deleted; link added):
During the Industrial Revolution, not only was the past remembered as better than it really was, the present was seen as worse than it really was. Historian Patrick Allitt suggests that one reason for the belief in an increase in poverty during Victorian times was that the movement of the poor from the countryside to the city made them more visible. Also, the increasing size and living standards of the middle class made them more sensitive and sympathetic to poverty.
Comments
