Mark W. Bitz remembers teaching English in Poland in 1980. He saw people in homemade, decades-old clothes waiting in line for a food truck, only for the food to be gone in about an hour.
He would sometimes wait in line for 30 to 45 minutes, only to find that not even a scrap remained as he inched closer to being waited on, he said.
These and other experiences he had while visiting all 50 states and over 40 countries got Bitz thinking about what experiences all humans share regardless of geographic or cultural borders. He wondered why the fortunes of some countries rise while the economies of others stagnate, and which actions and concepts help improve lives.
