> "Why contemporary Western intellectuals skew to the left of contemporary
> Westerners generally is in greater need of explanation, I think. I suspect
> it's mostly a matter of being the group who consciously chose to avoid the
> world of business. Those who won't do, teach."
>
> They do? Do you have any numbers to back this up?
>
>
> Joanna
>
This includes a decent historical survey of the relevant literature: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~ngross/lounsbery_9-25.pdf
This might not be true for Europe or Japan, though; I have no idea about those, so my original statement was probably overambitious.