Voting with your feet

The bottom billion have not only integrated into the world economy through capital flight. They are increasingly integrating through migration. People vote with their feet as well as with their wallets. Historically, migration has been the great equalizer. In the nineteenth century the vast movement of people from Europe to North America did more to raise and equalize incomes than trade or capital movements.

-- from "The Bottom Billion" by Paul Collier, p. 93

Other quotes from The Bottom Billion:

• Reciprocity
• Five international charters
• Polarizations
• Public inaction
• Reformers do not have it easy

Links:

• "The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It" by Paul Collier (Google books)
• 4 ways to help the Bottom Billion (Paul Collier TED Talk)
• How the bottom billion are trapped by Martin Wolf (Financial Times, May 15, 2007)
• "Global Inequality: Beyond the Bottom Billion: A Rapid Review of Income Distribution in 141 Countries" by Isabel Ortiz and Matthew Cummins (Unicef Policy and Practice, April 2011)

More:

• How rich countries got rich... (Erik S. Reinert)
• Reconstructing the theory of Uneven Economic Development (Other Canon)
• Sacred Economics
• Dead Aid: counter proposal
• The Credit Crisis visualized (by Jonathan Jarvis)
• Overpopulation is a myth