Flutterby™! : The Value of a Worker

A while back, I linked to this Reason article on a World Bank report on why a worker from Mexico can come to the United States and be worth so much more. The quote I pulled was:

The rest is the result of "intangible" factors-such as the trust among people in a society, an efficient judicial system, clear property rights and effective government. All this intangible capital also boosts the productivity of labor and results in higher total wealth. In fact, the World Bank finds, "Human capital and the value of institutions (as measured by rule of law) constitute the largest share of wealth in virtually all countries."

I've gotten to wondering, though, as we see Wall Street exposed as the nest of liars and thieves that it is, how much of that "rule of law" that we thought we had was an illusion? Are we, indeed, going to continue to be more productive because we have well defined cultural rules and restrictions on what we do and don't do to each other, or were we just managing to hide our corruption and sleaze better than the Mexico politicians and business people, and we're now destined to have factories that are as productive per person as they are?

Somewhat relatedly, it also occurred to me that the "get rich quick slowly" people, from Ben Stein to Robert Kiyosaki, have been pushing the "save and reinvest" notion, where the investors who've made lots of money gambling, like Nassim Nicholas Taleb, have been quietly espousing the "bet on the odd incident that goes against the popular wisdom" direction.

Wonder what the ratio of Taleb's wealth to Kiyosaki's is. I wonder which one's happier. I have no idea what the take-away from those musings is.