“Value” and “productivity” cannot be expressed in objective figures, even if we pretend the opposite: “We have a high graduation rate, therefore we offer a good education” – “Our doctors are focused and efficient, therefore we provide good care” – “We have a high publication rate, therefore we are an excellent university” – “We have a high audience

Instead of creating wealth, these jobs mostly just shift it around.

In other words, the fact that something is difficult does not automatically make it valuable.

The bottom line is that wealth can be concentrated somewhere, but that doesn’t also mean that’s where it’s being created. This is just as true for your former feudal landowner as it is for the current CEO of Goldman Sachs.

Mental illness, obesity, pollution, crime – in terms of the GDP, the more the better. That’s also why the country with the planet’s highest per capita GDP, the United States, also leads in social problems.

the world is governed not by abstract forces, but by people who plot their own course.

The point, of course, is that the war is over. Our standard of progress was conceived for a different era with different problems. Our statistics no longer capture the shape of our economy.

people living in unequal societies spend more time worrying about how others see them.

I’d like to offer two final pieces of advice for everybody who is ready to put the ideas proposed in these pages into action. First, realize that there are more people out there like you. Lots and lots of people.