“Let’s face it. [Big business] is not a group that hates government,” says [Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute]. “Government at its best, as far as they are concerned, is a partner. Because this is a populist movement, anti-government means also being sceptical of government investments in education, which business needs.”
Here again the ruling class is ensnared in its own popular rhetoric, which is anti-government. Decades of anti-government sentiment have convinced many in the lower tier of the working class that government is their problem, so let's vote Republican for less government. If that amounts to nothing, let's vote libertarian for less government! Now the business community is beside itself that electoral success has come at the price of class consciousness: the rulers want more government for themselves, and less for everyone else. But the Tea Party-types are still sincere; they have yet to discover the betrayal embedded in their world view.
2 comments:
Normally I don't find myself taking AEI or Ornstein seriously, but I can't resist here:
anti-government means also being sceptical of government investments in education, which business needs
"needs"? Ornstein hasn't actually worked a "business" job lately since he's been a think tanker for so long. He doesn't know that the vast majority of educated workers spend 85% of their on-the-clock time browsing the Internet, and about 15% doing actual "work." This is not evidence of a "need" for education -- it's the opposite, it's evidence that education is NOT needed, despite requiring a PhD in geophysics for doing door-to-door 3-question polling.
It's actually 83%, Charles. This is a busy time of year for us.
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