Required reading:

In the Observer, there is an thought-provoking essay by Will Hutton on Tony Blair and American conservatives. Mostly about the conservatives. Excerpts:

... a new generation of intellectual conservatives took on the apparently effortless liberal dominance, and beat it at its own game - the realm of ideas. The great right-wing thinktanks - the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute - became the intellectual inspiration of the conservative revival. The rich were virtuous and moral because they worked hard; the poor worthless and amoral because they had not boot-strapped themselves out of poverty. Welfare thus bred a dependency culture, they claimed, and made poverty worse. Taxation was an act of coercion and an affront to liberty. Markets worked like magic; choice was always better than public provision. Corporations spearheaded wealth creation. Conservatism was transmuted into a moral crusade.

and

The capture of universities by the rich and the lack of education for the poor has meant that social mobility in the US has collapsed. American capitalism, in thrall to the stock market and quick bucks it offers, has hollowed out its great corporations in the name of the hallowed conservative conception of share-holder value - the sole purpose of a company is to enrich its owners. Productivity and social mobility are now higher in Old Europe than in the US - despite a tidal wave of propaganda to the contrary.

Is it true that social mobility is higher in Old Europe than in the U.S.? If so, that's quite a development.

posted by Quiddity at 3/31/2003 08:04:00 AM