These stages present a linear trajectory of development in a which the traditional society, exhibiting feudal and “backward” characteristics, can transform into a modern society with advanced industries and urban societies. By placing national growth on a linear path to modernization and hails industrialization as the key to development, Rostow's model simplifies complex inequality between nations by claiming that (since various nations began the process of development at different time periods) different societies are simply at different stages of growth. Rostow’s model makes the assumption that the inequality between states will eventually disappear once each progresses on the timeline of modernity—sped up, he argued, through contact with modernized cultures and their modern economic and political models.