A woman hears from her doctor that she has only half a year to live.
The doctor advises her to marry an economist and move to South Dakota.
WOMAN: "Will this cure my illness?"
DOCTOR: "No, but the half year will seem pretty long." - P87
We wrote this book to hold on to hope. To tell ourselves a story of what went wrong and why, but also as a reminder of all that has gone right. A book as much about the problems as about how our world can be put back together, as long as we are honest with the diagnosis. A book about where economic policy has failed, where ideology has blinded us, where we have missed the obvious, but also a book about where and why good economics is useful, especially in today’s world. - P68
We eventually decided to take the plunge, partly because we got tired of watching at a distance while the public conversation about core economic issues—immigration, trade, growth, inequality, or the environment—goes more and more off-kilter. But also because, as we thought about it, we realized the problems facing the rich countries in the world were actually often eerily familiar to those we are used to studying in the developing world—people left behind by development, ballooning inequality, lack of faith in government, fractured societies and polity, and so on. - P80
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