In this account, as we see, social, cultural, and psychological factors play a very important role. These noneconomic influences include corrosive ideologies, such as Ayn Rand’s Objectivism and the new mainstream economics, which extolled economic efficiency and market fundamentalism at the expense of improving broadly based well-being. Another development, with somewhat unexpected consequences, was the rise of meritocracy. The philosopher Michael Sandel put it best: Winners are encouraged to consider their success their own doing, a measure of their virtue—and to look down upon those less
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