>I skimmed No One Left to Lie To again and like to imagine one of those
>conservatives residing in their conservative city reading this:
>
>"But, as we are endlessly instructed, while rich people will *not* work
>unless they are given money, poor people will *only* work if they are not.
>(These are the two modern meanings of the term "incentive": a tax break on
>the one hand and the threat of the workhouse on the other.) And, once the
>Democratic party had adopted this theology, the poor had no one to whom they
>could turn. The immediate consequence of this was probably an intended one:
>the creation of a large helot underclass disciplined by fear and scarcity,
>subject to endless surveillance, and used as a weapon against any American
>worker lucky enough to hold a steady or unionized job."
Terrific stuff, eh? I'm a rusted-on Hitchens fan, myself (and not just because he's a chain-smoking, booze-slurping, middle-aged, recalcitrant-leftie, culturally-insensitive lover of words - but it all helps). I am reminded here, though, of JK Galbraith's visit to Oz in the late '80s (after a few years of Labor's 'reforms'). He was asked, as impressive foreigners always are by our culturally cringing media, what he thought of Australia (a question often breathlessly asked just as said luminary is shuffling down the steps from the aircraft), and replied thus: "Let me get this right - you guys reckon that if you pay poor people less, they work harder - and if you pay rich ones more, they work harder?" The journalist did not reply.
I'm off to order Hitchens's book now.
Cheers, Rob.