A Commonplace Book

Poverty, meanwhile, is "no longer a significant problem in America" [says D'Souza], since the poor here are so much better off than the poor everywhere else in the world, and are also better off than average Americans were 50 years ago (evidence: 98 percent of the poor have refrigerators).

... But what is puzzling is that capitalists who are so ruthless about improving the quality of their companies -- only the paranoid survive, you know -- are so ambivalent about improving the quality of their country. If the successful capitalist is always engaged in the act of making things better, of raising standards, of never accepting the status quo, why then express satisfaction that the poor have refrigerators?