One-third of the entire landmass of Europe consists of islands and peninsulas but only one percent of the land mass of South America consists of islands and peninsulas. Milton Friedman, for example, has said that he never received any enjoyment from music. Surely a man who could win a Nobel Prize in economics could learn to play a piano. But do not expect anyone to become another Artur Rubinstein or Ray Charles if he doesn't even like music. Different people like different things.
Whole cultures differ in what they like.
In innumerable ways, people differ individually and collectively in the range of skills they have and do not have. While nothing is easier than to find sins among human beings, making the sins of others the automatic explanation of any group's economic condition is as inconsistent with logic as it is wholly consistent with politics. Politics is highly congenial to notions of equality and equity, if only because these nebulous terms provide politicians with ample opportunities to exercise power and hand out favors to their supporters in the name of high-sounding ideals. If there were, there would be no basis for exchange, on which our whole economy depends. Imagine that you pay 60 cents at a newsstand for a copy of the New York Times .