Two mistakes are commonly made in setting goals. One is putting them very high that they can never be realized. When a not-too-bright young man was asked what he aspired to be, he replied, “A genius”. That’s an example of an unattainable goal. The other mistake is setting our sights too low. Psychologists tell us that the people who come from poor families often do this. They work hard and attain a better standard of living than their parents, but they may actually be capable of going much higher.
Globalization and the attendant concerns about poverty and inequality have become a focus of discussion in a way that few other topics, except for international terrorism or global warming, have. Most people have a strong opinion on globalization, and all of them express an interest in the well-being of the world's poor. The financial press and influential international officials confidently assert that global free markets expand the horizons for the poor, whereas activist-protesters hold the opposite belief with equal intensity. Yet the strength of people's conviction is often in inverse proportion to the amount of robust factual evidence they have.As is common in contentious public debates, different people mean different things by the same word. Some interpret "globalization" to mean the global reach of communications technology and capital movements, some think of the outsourcing by domestic companies in rich countries, and others see globalization as a byword for...
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