Flutterby™! : intangible wealth and its destruction

Reason: The Secrets of Intangible Wealth takes a look at a World Bank report on why, for instance, a worker can come from Mexico to the U.S. and be worth so much more. After you account for natural resources and capital investment there's still a huge gap between countries:

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 wasn't going to post this, but then I saw Doc Searls posting on corruption...