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Inclusion

So I read this article this morning:

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/16/economic-inclusion-key-growth-prosperity/?utm_campaign=Brookings%20Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=61599999

It's a bit technical, but the last line is the point of the article, anyway:

This admittedly wonkish analysis thus points to a simple insight that should guide regional economic development efforts: although it may be elusive from year to year, in the long run, inclusion may provide the key to true economic success.

I won't pretend to understand all of the sordid details in the article, much less the social implications of what is there. What I would like to point out is that this idea is at once fairly intuitive as well as revolutionary. As in, literally revolutionary. This is what Marx was talking about nearly 200 years ago, when the industrial revolution was just in the throes of making a bourgeois plutocracy even more distant from the proletariat than the original aristocracy. I don't subscribe to Marx's theories, but on some things he was right on. This is one of them.

I've written about this before (here and here). But now you have some empirical proof of what I'm on about. Economic progress does not just equate to growth - it implies stability and diversity. Those economies (in this study, the metro areas are noted, but I believe it applies to regions, nations, and globally as well) that are most inclusive are also the most progressive and therefore the most robust and resilient. And eventually the disadvantaged will take power unto themselves and work to achieve a more equitable solution. Whatever that is, and however it is achieved.

The solution? Easily said, but immensely difficult to achieve. I believe the solution is love. It's love on behalf of those who could have more for those who are disadvantaged, where they share what they have so that the poor can be better off. It's love on behalf of the disadvantaged, recognizing that people who have things are not inherently better or worse than they. It's a willful and proactive elimination of pride in an effort to support, respect, and care for one another.

So, yeah. Probably not going to happen. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

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