Why Nations Fail: FROM THE WINNERS OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty

by Daron Acemoğlu

poor countries are poor because those who have power make choices that create poverty. They get it wrong not by mistake or ignorance but on purpose.

Boccaccio noted that “some maintained that an infallible way of warding off this appalling evil was to drink heavily, enjoy life to the full, go round singing and merrymaking, gratify all one’s cravings whenever the opportunity offered, and shrug the thing off as an enormous joke . . . and this explains why those women who recovered were possibly less chaste in the period that followed.”