Stephen Law

George Monbiot has written a thought-provoking piece on Romney and myths about self-made men and women in the "land of opportunity", the United States. The piece reminded me of a conversation I had a while back. I was at a dinner at Christ Church College Oxford, attended by some very, very wealthy people (sponsors of an event I shan't name). I talked to the person sitting next to me. He explained he was a self-made multi-millionaire who had made it after moving to the US. He said he knew many others (some in the room) who had done the same, which demonstrated that the US mentality and culture was really far superior to that in Europe. In response, I said: wasn't there actually less social mobility in the US than there was across much of Western Europe, and especially the supposedly "socialist" countries such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark? If you are born poor in the US, surely you are rather more likely to stay that way than if you lived in Sweden, ...